Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, today, we are debating the re- authorization of the welfare program. It is a repeat of the debate we had last Congress, when Republican ideology prevented a common-sense reauthorization. I believe that we have a responsibility to help families transition into the workforce and provide essential support to make work play. The Cardin substitute will do that. Regrettably, the Republican bill will not.

Two provisions within this re-authorization are in the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Commerce: transitional medical assistance (TMA) and abstinence-only education. The Republican versions are inadequate; the Cardin substitute fixes both.

First, TMA is a program that provides health insurance coverage for families leaving welfare to go back to work. It is a program that makes good sense. Individuals moving off welfare often wind up in jobs that do not offer health insurance coverage or find that employer-sponsored coverage is too costly on the family's limited budget. TMA allows these families to keep their health insurance coverage in Medicaid so that getting a job doesn't mean losing health coverage. The Republican bill, however, only extends this program for one year; many of us prefer making this common-sense program permanent, as the Cardin substitute provides. In addition, the Republican bill does not include the simplifications that would help families get coverage and keep coverage. These provisions were in the President's budget this year, and are in the Cardin substitute. They should also be in H.R. 4, but they are not.

Of added concern, Republicans would cut other parts of the Medicaid program in order to pay for this extension. For some reason, Republicans believe the only way they can afford to help working families is if they cut other

parts of safety net programs that truly allow the poor to work. This is illogical and I oppose it.

Second, the bill extends the Title V abstinence-only sex education program, but locks states into an inflexible curriculum; it is controversial, and rights to. The Cardin substitute to this bill provides states with the flexibility to offer programs that are best suited to the needs and desires of their citizens and to ensure that Federal funds are spent on effective programs that provide medically accurate information. State flexibility allows each state to use Federal funds to support the abstinence-based comprehensive sex education program it determines will be most effective in protecting its young people's health. Many leading public and private sector health experts, including the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Public Health Association, recommend school-based comprehensive sex education programs, yet states are unable to fund these types of programs with Federal dollars.

The Cardin substitute also contains a requirement that Title V programs provide information that is determined to be ``medically accurate'' by leading medical, psychological, psychiatric, and public health organizations. Some abstinence-only programs are actually harmful to teenagers because they provide incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading information with regard to contraceptives, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. Depriving teens of medically accurate information will not protect them; it will only make them more vulnerable.

The Cardin substitute also requires Title V programs be based on models that have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing teen pregnancies or the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases or HIV/AIDS, and calls for a comparative evaluation of programs so policymakers can determine the relative merits of abstinence-only programs versus comprehensive school-based, age-appropriate, sex education curricula. Advocates of abstinence-only programs oppose any realistic and objective look at those programs, apparently content to waste Federal dollars in the name of ideology.

The Cardin substitute maintains state flexibility, helps welfare recipients to find real work, helps families escape poverty, removes the sunset on TMA, and makes important changes in the abstinence education provisions. I support it.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 395, the ``Do-Not-Call Implementation Act,'' authorizes the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to collect fees to fund its national do-not-call registry. Unwanted sales calls have become a nuisance that many consider an invasion of privacy. A national do-not-call registry will allow consumers to limit these unwanted intrusions and once again answer their telephones without aggravation.

Consumers, charities, telemarketing companies, local governments and other interested parties, have voiced their complaints and communicated their concerns. In the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, passed in 1994, we gave the FTC the discretion to create a national do-not-call program. Based on that authority, the FTC has considered a wide range of complicated issues and has produced a reasoned result. I urge the appropriations in the Omnibus Appropriations Conference to include full funding of this program now. In fact, I have no objection under these circumstances to inserting H.R. 395 itself into the Conference Report.

As the FTC launches the do-not-call registry, we must monitor its progress closely. By any measure, coordinating the efforts of the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and state authorities into one national system will be a challenge. The rewards, however, can be great. As these many parts work together as one, we can achieve a comprehensive program that will empower consumers without unnecessarily burdening industry.

This is an important issue to consumers across the nation that should not be delayed any further.

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating a resolution congratulating Israel for conducting free and fair elections. I, too, rise to offer my congratulations to the people of Israel for their recent free and open elections.

That being said, I have concerns with the wording of the resolution. I find it curious that a resolution of congratulations to the Israeli people also contains condemnations of the actions--or inactions--of the Palestinian people.

Mr. Speaker, the resolution refers to President Bush's statement of June 24, 2002. But what is the vision of this Administration? Secretary Colin Powell said it is to build, ``a region where Israelis and Arabs can live together in peace, security, and dignity.'' The resolution before us mentions peace and security for Israel, but it says nothing of peace and security for the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories. Where is the balance?

Unfortunately, we again have a resolution before the House that is perceived to be one-sided in nature, and which does not present the United States as an honest broker to both sides in this conflict.

I will support this resolution, but I wish to make it know that the Congress of the United States should strive to support the goal of peace in the region for all peoples. The United States must act as an even-handed honest broker to all parties in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict if there is ever to be peace in the region.

Congratulations.

(Applause, the Members rising.)

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the House Rules packages being offered today by the majority. Over the previous

four Congresses, which have been controlled by the Republican party, the House rules became increasingly hostile to the rights of the minority. This proposal continues that trend.

Let there be no misunderstanding--when I speak of the rights of the minority I am speaking of the rights of the 47 percent of all Americans who are represented by Democratic and Independent Members of Congress. It is their rights which are being abused when their Member of Congress is treated unfairly.

For example, the right of all Members, and particularly the minority, to file its views on legislation reported by a committee, has been reduced to 2 days. During the 40 years of Democratic control the minority was always permitted 3 days.

Similarly, committee ratios have been consistently stacked against the minority. For example, on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, during Democratic control the majority representation of the committee was always within two percentage points of its ratio in the House, and the difference averaged less than one percent. In the past three Congresses, under Republican control, the difference was more than 3 percent. In short, the Republican majority has robbed the Democratic minority of seats they deserve in our committee.

In the last Congress, the Republican rules package radically changed the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee by transferring its jurisdiction over securities and insurance to the Committee on Financial Services. This change was done without a single hearing at which Members of the majority or minority were permitted to present their views, or without a single markup at which minority Members could vote or suggest alternatives. Now the Republican majority is doing the same thing with the establishment of a Select Committee on Homeland Security.

The majority has not only trampled upon the rights of the minority, but also upon the rights of individual citizens. For example, Republicans eliminated a longstanding rule of the House that permitted individuals who were required to appear before a committee under a subpoena the right to have television cameras turned off. The rule had permitted all other media to cover the hearing, but the rule gave the witness the right to some level of fairness.

In this context, I look with interest every year to see what new rules will be adopted in response to the majority's irritation with the minority's invocation of its merger remaining rights.

This year there are several interesting changes. Perhaps the most interesting one is the permission to committees to adopt rules allowing the chairman to postpone votes on bills and amendments in committee. When my Republican colleagues took control of the House they complained that proxy voting permitted Members to cast votes on matters without attending the debate that accompanied the matter. It now appears that by permitting votes to be postponed to a time certain, Members will no longer have to attend committee markups while important amendments are being debated. Instead, they will merely have to show up at a specified time to vote. It sounds an awful lot like proxy voting to me.

Another rule change stretches out the length of time before the minority may offer motions to instruct conferees by requiring a minimum of 10 legislative days. Again, this rule limits minority rights.

While some rule changes are technical in nature, it appears that the other substantive amendments are designed to make it easier for my Republican colleagues to plunge our Nation further into debt. Not satisfied with throwing away the progress made during the Clinton administration, which changed annual budget deficits to surpluses, the Republicans in the last Congress immediately threw the country back into budget deficits while raiding our Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

While they seemed to take delight in placing more and more tax cuts on the Floor during the past Congress, it was a lot more painful for them to figure out how to pay for them. So this year they are adopting a host of rules to hide their budget profligacy. No longer will they require Members to vote on raising the statutory limit on the debt. Now their vote on the budget resolution will automatically raise the debt limit.

Moreover, the rules continue the so-called ``deeming'' resolution, which allows the House to pretend it has adopted a binding budget resolution when in reality, only one House has acted. The rules would also require the Ways and Means Committee to include so-called ``dynamic scoring'' on amendments to the tax code. While ``dynamic scoring'' has no real definition, it is generally understood to mean a way to pretend that a tax cut increase revenues rather than decreasing them. We heard all of this same nonsense during the Reagan administration and talk about the Laffer curve. Ultimately, we saw only greater deficits.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for my Republican colleagues to stop playing games with the House rules. We must respect the rights of Democratic Members of this body, and more importantly, the rights of the 47 percent of Americans who they represent. We must stop using the House rules to make it easier to plunge the Nation into debt, while hiding raids on the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. The Republicans' procedural thumb on the scale demeans this institution and reduces its credibility.