Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this morning here on Capitol Hill I stood with

other Members of Congress to receive more than 1.6 million signatures on petitions calling for the immediate repeal of last year's huge health care law.

We've now had 18 months to find out what's in the bill, and it only looks worse every day. We found the billions of dollars in slush funds that the Secretary of Health and Human Services controls, without any input from Congress. We found a CLASS Act, a long-term care insurance care plan that is so broken that HHS had to stop planning for its implementation. We've seen health care premiums climb faster, despite promises that the law would save every American family $2,500 per year. We've seen Federal courts reject as unconstitutional the notion that the government can force you to buy insurance.

I'd need much more than 1 minute to catalog all the ways this bill is hurting job growth and destroying health care innovation. Simply put, this is a rolling train wreck, and the American people know it. We need to listen to them and repeal this destructive and unconstitutional bill.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome members of the Hospital and Health System Association of Pennsylvania to Washington today.

Hospitals are an essential piece of Pennsylvania's economy. Annually, the total economic benefit for our State is $2.7 billion a year.

More than 16,000 Pennsylvanians are employed by hospitals, and they are paid an average salary of more than $52,000 a year. In my home district, Lancaster General Hospital is now the largest employer. Doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers are contributing to our economy and saving lives. They're working hard to come up with new ways to save lives, new methods to improve our health, and ways to reduce the cost of care.

Working in a hospital is not easy. Doctors, nurses, and administrators help individuals and families who are hurting and who are struggling with illness and disease. And they work long hours performing difficult tasks.

We thank our hospital professionals for their service; and as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, I will always listen to their voice as Congress works to improve our health care system.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2005) to reauthorize the Combating Autism Act of 2006.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2005, the Combating Autism Reauthorization Act of 2011, would enable the Department of Health and Human Services to continue its important work to understand, treat, and cure autism spectrum disorders.

In 2000, Congress passed the Children's Health Act that included funding for research and surveillance on autism. Eventually in 2006, Congress passed the Combating Autism Act that is now being reauthorized.

The Combating Autism Act authorizes HHS to research on autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities at NIH, convene an Interagency Autism Coordinating Council, conduct surveillance to identify the extent of the disorder, and promote early screening and train medical personnel to identify children at risk.

Since the program was first passed in 2006, research has led to better diagnosis, more comprehensive surveillance and programs that offer support and respite for families. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and thank him for his leadership on this issue.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Harper).

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I have no other speakers. I urge Members to support H.R. 2005. I commend, again, Chris Smith and Mike Doyle for their leadership on this issue.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1852) to amend the Public Health Service Act to reauthorize support for graduate medical education programs in children's hospitals.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1852, the Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education Support Reauthorization Act of 2011, would enable the Department of Health and Human Services to continue to provide funding to freestanding children's hospitals to support the training of pediatricians and other residents. This funding is critical to ensuring the adequacy of the pediatric workforce in the United States.

The program was first enacted by Congress in 1999 with wide bipartisan support and has been reauthorized twice. Since the enactment of the bill, the number of pediatricians trained has increased by 35 percent.

The week we marked up this bill, I met 10-year-old Anna Lipsman. Anna is a bright, outgoing young girl who is fighting leukemia. Diagnosed just a few months ago, Anna spent 2 weeks undergoing treatment at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She is successfully fighting her disease, but will still need additional treatments over the next 2\1/2\ years. Anna is a strong, personal reminder of why I introduced this bill.

With the reauthorization of H.R. 1852, we hope to send a clear message to the Obama administration and the Department of Health and Human Services that this bill is important to ensuring that children receive adequate health care.

I would like to thank Mr. Pallone and all the 114 cosponsors that worked on this legislation.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Lance), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials into the Record.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the ranking member of the subcommittee, Mr. Pallone, for his leadership on this issue. It has been a bipartisan effort on the Health Subcommittee and Energy and Commerce Committee.

I urge all Members to support the Children's Hospital Graduate Education Support Reauthorization Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the American people can finally see Harry Reid's debt ceiling plan. Only 5 days before the deadline set by the President, the Senate majority leader finally put something on paper and submitted it to the Congressional Budget Office. I think we understand why he waited so long to do this. The plan before the Senate is filled with gimmicks and does almost nothing to put our country on a better fiscal footing.

Of course, the largest gimmick is claiming to save $1 trillion by shutting down wars that are already winding down. Despite having these phantom cuts in his bill, Majority Leader Reid gives the President the full amount of debt ceiling increase that he needs to push everything past next year's election. Once again, the financial security of our country would be sacrificed for political expediency.

By contrast, Speaker Boehner's plan cuts spending by $1 for each $1 increase in the debt limit. It may not be perfect, but it is necessary to keep us paying our bills and prevent a debt rating downgrade. It is a start to getting our country back on the path to a balanced budget.

Mr. Speaker, the Hill newspaper recently reported that there's another prominent glitch in last year's health care law. Millions of families could struggle to purchase insurance because of the sloppy manner in which the bill was written.

The law mandates that every individual pay insurance. If the insurance offered by an employer is deemed affordable by the government, then an employee must purchase it. However, the Federal Government will only look at the individual plans offered by companies--not the family plans. While the plan for an individual may be affordable, the family plan could be significantly more expensive.

Correcting this mistake in the law would mean at least $50 billion more per year in government subsidies. The President told the American people that the new health care law would not increase the deficit. Now we find yet another example of how this bill will cost both American families and the Federal Government far more than what was claimed.

Clearly, we need full repeal before this law full of glitches and mandates is fully implemented, bankrupting families and the government.

I rise to urge this Chamber to support H.R. 440, a bill that requires the President to appoint a special envoy at the State Department to advocate for religious minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia. I commend the gentleman for his leadership on this matter.

I have personally met with oppressed people from all over the globe, but predominantly ones from the Near East and South Asia. The region has long been a hot-bed of religious discrimination, and little has been done by our government to aid these innocent practitioners of faith. Revolutions striving for democracy and greater expression in the region have been matched by a wake of religious intolerance and extremism. As we cherish our right to the free expression of religion here at home, our State Department needs to reflect our dedication to protecting this right in our diplomatic engagements abroad.

Religious minorities in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and countless other countries are left without an advocate in the political process of their respective governments. H.R. 440 would provide an envoy that can advocate for these religious minorities and focus solely on their plight while being able to avoid bureaucratic red tape. As basic human rights are increasingly under assault in this region, our government needs to rapidly respond to the new challenges rapidly emerging. It is in our strategic interest to pass this legislation. I ask the Members to join me in supporting it.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, tonight, Representative Gabrielle Giffords' office is organizing a Special Order to recognize Border Patrol agents who were killed in the line of duty last year.

I want to thank her and her staff for working to acknowledge these dedicated servants who died serving our Nation. While I won't be able to speak tonight, I wanted to take a moment to honor Agent Michael Gallagher, who grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

On September 2 of last year, Agent Gallagher was on patrol near Casa Grande, Arizona. A drunk driver ran a stop sign, colliding into the patrol car and ejecting Michael from the vehicle. He served in the Border Patrol for 2 years, and also served our Nation in Iraq, risking his life to protect our freedom.

He is dearly missed by his wife and his two sons.

Even though he moved away, I understand that he remained a dedicated Pennsylvania sports fan. We cannot thank him and his family enough for his service. We can only honor him for dedicating his life to keeping Americans safe here at home and abroad.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the House passed the cut, cap, and balance plan to control government spending and raise the debt limit. Now we need the Senate to act and put their plan on the table.

While it was good to hear yesterday that at least six Senators have reached agreement on a plan to control our debt, what we really need is the other Chamber to bring a plan to the floor and pass it out of the Senate. We have passed a clear plan, one that can be scored by the CBO, a plan that calls for a long-term solution to keep Congress responsible, the balanced budget amendment.

It is clear that we need to act on the debt ceiling soon. Our credit rating is certainly at risk. However, we cannot forget that what is truly at risk is the long-term solvency of our Nation. If we continue on the current path, we will end up being controlled by our creditors, just like Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. Our very independence is at stake here.

By acting responsibly now, we avoid greater pain later. Kicking the can down the road is only kicking our Nation's future.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this important resolution to renew sanctions against the brutal military dictators in Burma.

The plight facing the people of Burma remains terrible. The ruling party in Burma continues to use the rule of law and government apparatus to deprive minority groups of their human rights and their lives, and it does so with impunity. The regime's human rights violations continue to be horrific. The regime in Burma is responsible for committing virtually every human rights violation imaginable. The atrocities perpetrated by the regime range from the use of rape as a weapon of terror, the recruitment of child soldiers, ethnic cleansing, forced labor, political detention, and the list goes on.

I have received firsthand reports in my office which detail the dictatorship's use of ethnic minorities as human landmine sweepers. Over 1 million refugees and 500,000 internally displaced peoples have been forced to flee their homes, and 750,000 of the country's inhabitants remain stateless. Indicative of the times, the regime has now turned to the censorship of the Internet, as well as that of individual e-mail accounts and social networking sites, to block the dissemination of evidence related to the atrocities.

The Burmese Government must realize that such attempts to hide its record of abuse, as well as its dishonest elections and mock constitutional reforms, cannot cover up the junta's war against its own people. Such a record only demonstrates the regime's illegitimacy.

I call on the administration to renew its efforts in fulfilling the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003, particularly the provision which requires our government to craft a multilateral sanctions regime against Burma.

By renewing these sanctions, Congress is making our Nation's concern for human rights paramount in our foreign relations interests. The administration should do the same. The people of Burma must know that we stand with them.

Mr. Speaker, would you invest in a company if there were a 40 percent chance that you would lose all of your money? That doesn't sound like much of an investment. Most people would call that gambling. But that is exactly what the Federal Government is about to do in setting up the new ObamaCare health care co-ops.

The Department of HHS will loan more than $4 billion in the coming years as an attempt to set up at least one co-op in each State. They project that 40 percent of the loans given out to plan the co-ops will go into default. 35 percent of the loans to keep the co-ops solvent are also projected to go into default. This could add up to billions of dollars lost.

We raised taxes by more than $1 trillion so that we could burn it away on

projects with an extremely high rate of failure. When we take money away from the private sector and then burn it away on government projects, the result is going to be lost jobs and a struggling economy.

We need jobs, not more failed government programs.

Madam Speaker, briefly, here are some examples of why the $1 trillion in government stimulus spending bill failed to hold down unemployment or reinvigorate our economy:

Over the past few years, the EPA has spent more than $27 million on grants to foreign countries. This includes funds for Breathe Easy, Jakarta, an Indonesian campaign to improve air quality. Now, President Obama may have some affection for a city he lived in as a child, but is that any reason to send them Federal stimulus dollars?

There have been 65 grants handed out since the stimulus bill was signed; six of these grants went to Russia and ten grants went to China. We already owe China interest on our debt. Why on Earth are we giving them grants to keep their own country clean? The Energy and Commerce Committee has launched an investigation into this spending. We need to know how much has been spent and if the EPA has further plans to send money overseas.

Our growing debt is hurting job growth. This is just another sad case of Federal spending wasted on projects that do nothing for the American economy.

Mr. Speaker, some may wonder why the nearly $1 trillion in government stimulus spending failed to hold down unemployment or reinvigorate our economy. Phillip Greenspun, owner and operator of a helicopter company in Boston, understands why government doesn't efficiently spend the public's money. In a June 16 blog post, he relates his maddening experiences with Federal bureaucracy.

As the manager of his company, he must administer a random drug test to employees. As the only employee, he must surprise himself with a drug test. As the manager, he must take a course on giving drug tests. As the only employee, he must take a course on his rights regarding drug tests. Mr. Greenspun notes that all of these requirements and steps don't just cost him money, but cost the Federal Government since FAA employees must ensure all of these requirements are met. It's just a small illustration of how the government manages to make the simple complex and hurt both businesses and taxpayers. It's just another reason why we need a smaller, less expensive Federal Government so that our private sector can grow again.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be withdrawn as a cosponsor of H.R. 1380, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011.

Mr. Speaker, a few days ago from this very Chamber, we heard the Israeli Prime Minister make clear that Israel seeks a permanent peace settlement with recognition of a Palestinian state. He reiterated that Israel seeks peace with its neighbors. Unfortunately, some of its neighbors do not feel the same way.

The charter of Hamas clearly states that peaceful solutions are contrary to their beliefs. As a party, they stand for the destruction of Israel, they glorify the murders of women and children, and even mourn the death of Osama bin Laden. Despite these positions, Hamas was recently welcomed back in to the Palestinian Government, and Egypt has opened the border to the Gaza Strip.

By no means should U.S. taxpayer money go to support these murderers. We cannot support a Palestinian Government that has no intention to live peacefully with its free and democratic neighbor. We must stop sending hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid until all parties in the Palestinian Government recognize that Israel has a right to exist.