Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in honor of the 182nd anniversary of Greek independence. As a member of the Congressional Caucus on Hellenic Issues, I once again join my colleagues in paying tribute to the Greek nation and its people.

Today in the Congress of the United States we commemorate not only the independence achieved by the Greeks in 1821, but the freedom, civil liberties and self-determination sought by people everywhere.

Today is also a day to mark the longstanding special relationship between our two countries. We Americans owe a special debt of gratitude to the country upon which our democratic process is founded. Greece was the cradle of democracy, birthplace of ideals and values that shaped human history. Whenever we promote participatory democracy, public service, and equal rights, we pay testament to our shared heritage.

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, modern day Greece was one of the first nations to offer its support to America in the struggle against terrorism so that we could create a safer world where future generations grow up in a free and open society. And during these days of war, cherished democratic principles are more vital than ever.

In my district in Massachusetts, thousands of Greek American families will participate in political, religious and cultural festivities, expressing pride in their Greek heritage and patriotism in their American citizenship. I extend congratulations to them, to all the people of Greek heritage in the United States, and to the people of Greece on this important holiday.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in the face of mounting evidence of a national crisis in retiree health care, and I want to announce the reintroduction yesterday of the Emergency Retiree Health Benefits Protection Act, known as H.R. 1322.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1322 will stem the tide of post-retirement cutbacks or elimination of health care benefits that have victimized millions of American retirees.

Now, Mr. Speaker, one would think that businesses and business values and basic fairness and, in fact, the law would ensure that retirees could rely on health benefits promised to them by employers. But the case is that increasingly, large profitable employers, even those who enticed employees into early retirement, have now changed and are reneging on their commitment.

These corporate cutbacks in retiree health care have reached intolerable proportions. For too long, working people have been denied health care benefits that were promised upon retirement to the lack of strong laws in this area. The retirees lived up to their end of the bargain, Mr. Speaker, and now the companies must live up to their end.

To renege on these promises jeopardizes the life savings of people who are forced to absorb the precipitous decline in their standard of living and dip into their savings in order to make up for a cut or a cancellation in health benefits. Even worse, retirees with preexisting medical conditions may not be able to obtain or afford any new health coverage at all. As a result, their health declines rapidly and, in some cases, needlessly.

A recent study by the Employment Benefit Research Institute found that a 65-year-old retiree without employment-based insurance may require up to nearly $1.5 million to fund lifetime medical expenses. That is assuming death at the age of 100 and medical inflation of 14 percent annually.

All of this is happening against a precipitous drop in personal savings. According to the AARP, which published ``How Americans Save,'' the United States savings rate has been steadily declining over the last 25 years. The Economic Policy Institute reports that in September and October of 1998, personal savings rates for Americans consisting of contributions to individual savings accounts, as well as employer and personal contributions to 401(k)s and IRAs and similar pension plans, dipped below zero for the first time since the Great Depression. The United States Department of Commerce reports that at the beginning of the 1990s, households saved on average about 8 percent of their disposable income. By 2001, the proportion of income set aside for savings had fallen below 2 percent.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1322, the Emergency Retiree Health Benefits Protection Act, would reverse these recent trends and bring common sense and fairness back to retiree health. With certain limited exceptions, the bill would prohibit employers from making post- retirement cancellations or reductions of health benefits that retirees were entitled to when they retired.

In addition, the bill would obligate employers to restore benefits taken away after retirement, unless the employer can demonstrate substantial business hardship if compelled to restore the benefits.

Boosting a profitable bottom line would not qualify as a substantial hardship. While many employers are crying hardship today, Mr. Speaker, the hard truth is that many were aggressively cutting employee benefits in the midst of the economic boom of the 1990s when profits were high.

Basic fairness dictates that we ensure that the promises that have been made to those whose life's efforts have contributed to the great economic prosperity of our Nation are kept. We can ill afford the collapse of private

sector retiree health initiatives because retirees no longer have faith in their employers' promises.

Last Congress, this bill garnered national support from retirees across the country. My office received hundreds of testimonials from people affected by these cutbacks, and tonight I want to share three.

From my own district in Massachusetts: Leo Murphy of Ipswich, who is the regional Vice President of the National Association of Retired Sears Employees, which represents 154,000 retirees nationally, has this to say: ``H.R. 1322 will ensure that companies don't sell out their retirees whose hard work grew the companies in the first place. We all made plans anticipating our retirement years, and those plans have all been torn apart. Enactment of H.R. 1322 will restore credibility to private sector health care plans and assure that retirees and their families continue to have the health coverage they were promised and worked for all their lives.''

From a retiree in Morristown, New Jersey: ``What a hardship it has been to see the health coverage I retired with, and fully expected to continue as is, be constantly whittled away. It just isn't fair. Not only is it eating into my pension every year, but my pension has not received a cost of living increase for the past 10 years. Please help us; we are counting on you. And thank you again for caring about us.''

And from Wellington, Florida:

``I am writing you concerning retiree benefits. I retired in 1991. Since that time, the company has reneged on promised retiree life insurance. The company has also made the retiree medical plan almost unaffordable by raising premiums far beyond the normal type increase. They have cut averages and cut coverages, they have raised deductibles, and made it pretty obvious that retirees are a liability, and please go away is the preferred method of handling retirees. Legislation is needed to protect retirees from vigilante actions of companies and protect retirees from unscrupulous company executives. Since many companies can no longer act in a trustworthy manner towards retirees, it will take Federal legislation to protect retirees when those retirees are the most vulnerable and least able to provide replacement benefits.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for their courtesy, because I have received hundreds of testimonials from these people. Congress should act, and I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting H.R. 1322.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for the time, and with due respect to our colleagues that have spoken on the other side of this issue, I want to say that we all understand the issues that are here and we understand the impact that premiums have on doctors, but it is a shame that we have to choose a vehicle in this bill that pits doctors against victims of malpractice.

The doctors that come into my office understand that if there is an error made they want the patient to be compensated. There is no offer in this bill to give us a system better than the jury system. There is an arbitrary amount set that even doctors, when they look at it, understand that there is not nearly enough to fully compensate people.

This is simply an insurance company bill, an HMO bill, a prescription drug manufacturing bill that will limit their liability, and in order to try to push it through, pits doctors, well-intended doctors, against patients, victims.

The fact of the matter is this legislation should be looking at ways to weed out undeserving suits so that doctors are not exposed to them, while making sure that we preserve a way for people that are injured to get their full compensation in a fair manner. We have to also add into that premium control because the insurance companies simply are not a well-run organization, and that is where the answer is for doctors, improve that with insurance reform.

I thank the gentleman from New Jersey and ask that he stay nearby because I want to have a conversation with him if I can eventually on this.

I have had some very interesting conversations with constituents in my office for a period of time now about this issue, ever since the bill was filed. Primarily the concept was that people come in and they are upset because of what they think are the consequences of this bill from whatever perspective they come.

Consumer groups come in on behalf of patients and talk about how unjust it is for the limitations that it puts on patients. Lawyers come in because they are concerned. They, of course, believe that they are doing the right thing in representing victims of malpractice. They believe that part of what they do that is noble and right is that they try to get people recovery so that they can continue on with their lives in some sort of respectable manner after some consequence or some

disaster has happened to them. And doctors come in because they think that the bill may be helpful to them because they do not want to bear the unlimited exposure to lawsuit damages and do not want their premiums rising through the roof. So we have those three groups sort of pitting against themselves, or some combination. But when you sit people down and talk to them, it is really easy to see that this bill is not about doctors, it is not about lawyers, it is not about patients, it is about insurance companies. It is about insurance companies and those others that you mentioned at the end of your remarks who somehow managed to get into a bill that they are billing as being a limitation on premiums for malpractice but managed to sneak in there immunity for themselves and total absolution from any liability for their malfeasance or their mistakes or their negligence or their wrongful acts even if they are deliberate. The fact of the matter is that that does not serve the American public at all. It does not serve any of those other three groups that we talked about.

I have any number, as I am sure you do, a number of friends that are doctors, physicians in different fields, ranging from those that have a very high risk factor to those that have a very small risk factor. There is not a one of them that when I engage them in conversation that does not have compassion for their patient. When you say to someone, as I did just the other day to a doctor, this particular doctor deals with people with cerebral palsy, an absolutely dedicated physician. I said to him, if one of your patients by virtue of your mistake was injured at a very young age and the consequences were that they were going to have this disaster for the rest of their lives, do you think that $250,000 would fairly compensate them?

They say, well, no, of course not.

I ask if they realize that in this bill that is the limitation that is put on that. And that women that get injured that may not be working, may be bringing up a family in a household, they do not have economic earnings from which they can then generate a recovery but they have the rest of their lives to go forward when they may then have to go out and try and earn a living and they may be stopped from doing that, do you think for someone in that consequence, that $250,000 is enough?

Well, of course not, was the answer. And right on down the line, example after example. I came in late, but I know you were giving some examples earlier.

Their answer back to me was, why don't you engage and try to do something that is reasonable? If you don't think $250,000 is reasonable, why don't you engage them in that? I tell them that the simple fact of the matter is that this is not about a conversation. We are more than willing to sit down and talk about what is fair and what is just. The problem is that the insurance industry and the HMOs and the others that are driving this piece of legislation and I think using the doctors as a tool in this by trying to get them to believe that their premiums will go down when they will not, and history shows that they have not and studies indicate that they are not intended to by this bill, that they try to get them involved in that instead of realizing that this is all about the insurance industry, all about the HMOs, all about those other manufacturers that want to be absolved from liability and they do not want a discussion. They want to try to generate the heat high enough so that you are either for it or against it. There seems to be a lot of that going on around here these days. They make a bill very difficult and absolutely without any compromise.

You will find out that when the bill comes to the floor tomorrow, they will not be asking for amendments to make it better or to improve it. They will not be asking for any prolonged debate to talk about all the aspects of this, not just premiums but how do we protect doctors from unlimited liability, how do we protect patients to make sure they get their just due without putting doctors out of business. None of that will be open for debate. It will simply be a vehicle for people to make a case, perhaps in the next election in 2004 or whatever or to show themselves to their benefactors that they are out there waving the flag on their behalf. That is unfair. It is unfair to patients, it is unfair to doctors, it is unfair to lawyers and it is unfair to the American public at large.

The fact of the matter is that if you couch it in terms that this is all about keeping premiums down, it is something interesting to note that in California, where this is supposedly the model for this whole program, in the 1970s when they put in a cap on recovery, the fact of the matter is premiums did not go down. The next 4 years they went up considerably, and since that point in time, they have been pretty much running the average of around the rest of the country. So that is a fallacy. In Florida, when the Florida legislation said to the insurance industry, well, then if we are going to pass a bill like this, you have to certify to us that premiums will go down, the insurance industry said, no, we won't do that. In Nevada the same thing happened out there where they talked about enacting severe damage caps. The insurance industry came out and said very clearly that they would still not lower premiums. The studies indicate and history indicates that the insurance industry makes its money primarily not from premiums so much as from the investment of those premiums into other vehicles, whether they are bonds and to a lesser extent stocks and other vehicles and generate income from that. When the market is down, as it is now, and they are not paying off as they are, when it goes down, then they have to jack up the premiums to get the profits to which they think they need to go on with their company. Then they have to tell somebody that it is not about insurance companies and profit because they know that will not be extremely profitable because everybody wants people to have a profit but they do not want necessarily to be gouged. So they cannot go out and tell people that we just want to get a higher profit and we are going to do anything, we are not going to take any decrease in our profits, but instead we are going to go out and get the doctors, they cannot say that. They turn around and they say, you know what the problem is here? The people that are subject to malpractice, the people that have lost something in their lives, they are the problem. They are getting too high a recovery. Obviously because they are represented by lawyers helping them get that recovery, then lawyers are bad people, too.

The fact of the matter is many times these are complicated cases. Something happens, and if a doctor makes a mistake, it is complicated, and it is difficult sometimes to find out just where that mistake occurred, which part of the process, which doctor or other health care person was involved in that. A suit might be filed to find out, to discover where that was. Then the people that are not involved are let out or the person who is responsible, their insurance company gets engaged in the situation. You would hope that this is a system we have structured to give that person a fair recompense for their injuries. That is the way that it is supposed to work.

The problem is of course that now they are putting up there, they are saying that this whole idea of somebody recovering is where the culprit is. There has not been any great increase in huge recoveries across this country. They cannot point to statistics showing that all of a sudden we have had a spike in incredibly high recoveries for people. And those few high recoveries are generally knocked down by appeals courts to a much more realistic number. It just happens that there was something in the course of that case that the jury got upset with, whether it was somebody trying to cover up something that was done or an insurance company failing to pay off on time, or something that caused them to get an award up there and courts generally ratchet that back.

But if we are not going to proceed on the basis that we have done in the past of having a system where somebody who through no fault of their own is seriously injured, looks to the person who was negligent, to the person who conducted the malpractice for a contribution, which they then in return insure against, then we have to find out what else it is that we are going to put in place for a system. If we think that we want somebody else to decide other than a jury as to what somebody's fair recovery is, then let us hear what it is.

Let us have a debate about that. Who should replace a jury of your peers in deciding that? If you think there should be a cap on the amount of money that people recover, let us have some experts as well as the general public engaged in the debate about what would a fair amount be, because you certainly need to take care of these people. We have decided as a society that the innocent part of that should not be the one that suffers the burden and goes without having any ability to sustain the rest of their lives. We have decided that we have to try and share that blame by making the person who has been negligent responsible and letting them insure for it.

Society has to have a replacement. We can complain about the system that we have all we want, but we should be having a debate instead about what changes in it we are going to make if we think that parts in it are not working. As I said in the beginning of my remarks, I have great sympathy for the doctors who feel they have to practice defensively, for the doctors who feel that their exposure is unlimited, for the doctors who insurance companies abuse by raising their premiums on the false pretense that it is the situation where people are getting too much for their injury. We have to sit down with people and say, what else are we going to put in place, how else are we going to make these decisions in a fair way so that people get fairly compensated for their injuries and so that we understand that doctors have to remain in practice and they have to remain in practice without the fear of being put out of business either financially or because they were constantly engaged in litigation.

I do not hear that kind of conversation coming from the other side of the aisle, from the majority. I frankly do not hear anybody saying we are going to sit down and try to iron this out. Did it go to committee? It went to committee, but people should not feel that there was an open dialogue in committee, that there was any deliberation and honest debate and suggestions about what changes might be made. It went to committee so that the majority who put forward the bill could ram it through on a straight party line vote and get it to the next level so we could do the same thing so that they would have some talking points to go back to their benefactors with and to campaign against and say like, oh my God, other people that don't vote for this bill want to put the doctors out of business, and we are the ones who want to save the doctors when in fact the premiums will not go down a stitch, the insurance companies will not allow the bill to be amended to put a requirement that if the recoveries go down, the premiums go down, and the fact of the matter really is it is all about the insurance companies, the HMOs and the others that are going to be shielded from liability and it is not about the doctors, not about the lawyers and, shamefully, it is least about the people that are really the ones that we should be focusing on here, the people that are injured through malpractice.

The best thing these insurance companies could do, one of the best things they could do is help doctors put in place some way to police those 5 percent of the medical profession that are responsible for 54 percent of the claims. It seems to me and I think others that that is one area to look at that would take care of a large part of the problem of legal actions and a large part of the problem with that small percentage of the premium increase that may be attributable to claims.

My recollection of reports and data shows that it is about half a percentage point on those premiums. But that would make sense. Find ways to hold accountable that 5 percent of doctors that have 54 percent of the claims, and make sure they are either reeducated so they are no longer guilty of malpractice, or move them out of the profession to someplace else where they are happy, to a less risky end of the business.

Then let us make sure we take a look at the insurance companies. If they are going to jack up prices every time their investment returns go down, then we have to look at the company industry and say something is wrong here. Doctors should not be subjected to these spikes in premiums just because the economy has gone down and that is where you invested all of your eggs, and now you are suffering a loss and you want to maintain your high profits, you are not satisfied with a lesser profit. Then we have to find a way to deal with that through insurance regulation.

Short of that, and if they are going to insist on putting that bill through, we would at least hope they would have provided some discussion about what is a fair amount; and $250,000, even by doctors accounts, is not a fair amount of a cap. We would have had some discussion about what are we going to do about policing those 5 percent of the medical profession that create 54 percent of the incidents that end up in lawsuits. And we would have done something with the fact of trying to work our way around so that doctors did not feel they were subject to legal suit in order for people to get discovery as to who is responsible, find some way earlier in the process for the facts to be known so that people could move forward, and have a good public debate about this so that everybody's interests were resolved.

That is not happening, my colleague from New Jersey, you know that very well; and I would just say to you that I would be happy to have a conversation with you on it if you want, but I think you would agree that we could have done a much better job sitting down as a full House, with a full complement of the committee, with all three parties, the Independents, the Republicans and the Democrats, and people representing the consumers, patients, the doctors, and the insurance companies, and talked about what is needed to be done in order for this to really be done correctly.

I think it is shameful we started out with this yelling and screaming contest, that it is all or nothing, there cannot be any reasonable conversation. Doctors feel they are put in the position of, gee, in order to save ourselves, we have to go along with this low cap, and we have to go along with the provisions of the bill that effectively make it difficult for people injured to even find legal representation, because it is going to be so expensive to proceed on that suit; and there will not be any compensation because the amounts have been capped and lawyers will not come on, and they will be without a lawyer.

Only one in eight people that are subject to malpractice now file a claim anyway, and I guess the insurance companies would like to collect those premiums from the doctors and have that one in eight number be even less. Their profits would be that much higher, but society would not benefit from it. People that were injured would still have to go through their lives with those egregious situations and without help; and I think that we should focus on making the situation better, not having a political battle here that does not allow for debate.

If the gentleman will yield, I think you take it back a step further. If you remember the debates about the Patients' Bill of Rights, where doctors and consumer-patients, consumer groups and others were together on this issue, understood that we needed to have protections against HMOs and the like, needed to be able to

file an appeal to an egregious situation, I think a lot of it stemmed from the insurance companies and HMOs at that point in time saying we have to get back the equation here, and the way we will do it is we will improve our financial situation, and we will try to drive a wedge between those patients and their doctors.

Where they finally have come together and have focused the light on us and we are losing ground on the Patients' Bill of Rights, we have to again drive that wedge, and the way we will do it is by telling doctors that their premiums are going up, because patients that are subject to malpractice are getting too much compensation for their injuries, which they cannot justify and cannot move in that direction.

It is shameful. As I say, the doctors, in my view, are good people with the right mind, the right heart on this thing. When you sit down and talk with them, they understand that they are being used.

Their first comment always is, well, why do the Members of Congress not talk about what would be the right amount, if any amount, to talk about fair compensation? Why do they not talk about what should have to happen before a claim is filed? Why do they not talk about reining in the insurance companies?

I said we are perfectly willing, but conversation needs two parties, and there is one party here. We are listening. We would be more than willing to talk. The other side is not willing to have anybody listen, and they are only willing to ram things through; and unfortunately, that is what you are going to see tomorrow, and I do not think anybody is going to be served by it.

Hopefully, the other body in this institution will have the wisdom to stop that and force it back; and then maybe, maybe if there is enough pressure from other groups, we can have a conversation trying to improve the situation for everybody's benefit.

I just want to thank the gentleman for taking the time this evening to allow for some debate, probably much more than we will get tomorrow on this, so we could have a full discourse on what is going on and what the content of the bill is and what the effects are going to be on people. I think tomorrow we will hear a lot of the standard positions that people are taking, one side or another.

This discourse hopefully allowed us to broaden that out a little bit and talk about some the specifics. I thank the gentleman again for taking the time to do it and showing his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his hard work in putting this time together.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss President Bush's 2004 budget which, unfortunately, and I think disturbingly, at a time of continued economic insecurity and global instability, fails to put America's priorities ahead of politics and idealogy. The President continues to pursue an irresponsible economic policy that focuses solely on multiyear tax cuts for our wealthiest citizens, while offering little assistance to countless working individuals and families that need it the most. One of my colleagues said it best earlier today: This is the most irresponsible fiscal situation of an administration since the days of Nero.

All this is going on while the same wealthy individuals and corporations that have already pocketed the lion's share, the disproportionate share of $1.6 trillion in tax cuts for 2001 and 2002, are out there, while the number of unemployed workers, white-collar and blue-collar, are higher than they have ever been in decades.

Further, although the President says he supports education, homeland security, prescription drugs for seniors, and a myriad of other responsible needs, his budget reflects otherwise. There is a clear disconnect between what the President promises and what he produces. His rhetorical support for many critical domestic processes is simply not reflected in the budget's numbers and figures. The reality is that children will be left behind. Our first responders, those that protect our borders and ports, will not be adequately funded; and our senior citizens will be short-changed.

On top of all of this, we are having the biggest defense buildup in the past 20 years. The costs of disarmament or a potential war with Iraq are not even included within the President's budget or within those Department of Defense numbers. While the White House speaks of little else besides Iraq these days, the one place they are conspicuously silent is in the budget.

Today's report in the Washington Post says the President is going to request a supplemental spending bill of as much as $95 billion to pay for any military action in Iraq. Why is that not in the 2004 budget? Why is it not being talked about with the American people today as the cost of what we are looking at here?

They have already offered $26 billion to Turkey for the use of our bases on their northern front against Iraq. All of this, the $95 billion, the $26 billion to Turkey, God knows how much else to other countries whose silence or participation is being bought with respect to the invasion of Iraq, is in addition to the $400 billion in the fiscal year 2004 budget already proposed for the Department of Defense for our military, and there is no end in sight.

Estimates for the cost of war, even if it is successful in military terms, and Iraq's reconstruction are between $50 billion to $200 billion. At the same time, we are continuing to spend 650 to $750 million a month in Afghanistan to try to rebuild that country. We are going to continue to do that for the foreseeable future.

We have to put this budget in perspective. When we add all of that up, without the cost of Iraq, this $5.6 trillion budget surplus we looked at at the beginning of this Presidential term has already been replaced by a $2.1 trillion deficit. This is close to an $8 trillion turnaround in just 2 years, and the numbers are staggering.

At the same time, there are record job losses and poor economic growth. Two million jobs have been lost since January of 2001. The stock market has gone down while the unemployment rate has gone up. Consumer confidence is at its lowest level in nearly 10 years.

Meanwhile, in response to all of this, all this administration can do is to continue to promote and advance the narrow economic plan of tax cuts for the few without regard to the plight of the many.

There are consequences for this flawed fiscal policy, and our vital domestic programs on which many people depend are what are going to suffer. They were underfunded even before we started talking about what is going to happen in Iraq, and they are going to be even more severely underfunded after that.

No Child Left Behind will leave many children behind. It is $9 billion beneath the amount that the President promised.

After-school programs, a cut. Two million children will be left without the benefit of those programs. In April of 2002, the President went to New Mexico and told us all about his support for Even Start, but he cuts that program; and he cuts the Head Start program, as well.

The President cuts vocational and technical funding. Even though 34 percent of our children are all that go on to higher education for 4 years, he is cutting money from vocational and

technical programs that might give other children the chance to go on and have a well-prepared background for a life that gets them ready for the future.

I could go on and on, but I know other Members want to speak. I would simply say this budget is totally irresponsible, and it has yet to put in the amount of money we are going to be spending in Iraq and in occupying Iraq.

I think the President owes the American people an explanation of just what that amount is and what are the costs, not only in terms of human life of Iraqis and United States individuals, and others, but what is the cost in treasure, and what are we giving up for his decision not to go ahead and contain this country, and not to go through the United States Security Council to bring that matter to a resolution, but rather to go in unilaterally and peremptorily invade at a significant cost. That is what the American people have to know and debate.

I thank the gentlewoman for California for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have simply put a new number on last year's bill without any apparent attempt to address the new realities of this worsening economy. That bill is, in terms, harsh and seems to be divorced from today's reality. As written, the legislation will impact some 48,000 families in my State of Massachusetts alone, which is now in its toughest economy in a decade. It would cost the State, which is already drowning in red ink, some $222 million over the next 5 years in order to implement what essentially are unfunded mandates. Health care and housing assistance are already being cut back, and in my district the unemployment rate is now 7.3 percent.

In this type of an economy, we should be helping States, not putting a further strain on the safety net for America's families. Obviously, first we need a better policy to create jobs than the one being offered by this administration and the majority. But then we need this measure to be crafted so that it will actually help people qualify and enable them to fill jobs and to lift them out of poverty to self- sustainability.

In the current economic climate, we have to look at the principles that really work. Education and training have to count towards the work requirement more than the bill on the floor allows for. Common sense, educators and countless examples concur with that opinion. People have to be able to make contacts, develop skills and find careers, not just jobs, but jobs that bring them out of poverty. Working parents need child care.

Our alternative keeps up with inflation and increased work habits and addresses that situation. The opponents' bill does not, adding $1 billion; and a $1 billion promise does not meet the $11 billion that we are told is going to be impacted on the States and cost them to meet these requirements. We cannot be forcing parents to choose between leaving their children home alone and working to put food on the table or staying home with their children who are hungry.

And we have to allow State flexibility. States like Massachusetts have effectively used those waivers, Mr. Chairman, to design their own versions of welfare, and they have worked in their economies. Those are the principles that have to underlie this bill. Those are the changes that have to be made. If they are not made, I would recommend that we vote against the bill, but for the alternative.