Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the remarkable life of J.R. Richards. J.R. was an exemplary leader in my community, the 23rd Congressional District. I had the pleasure of knowing and working alongside J.R. during my time as a school nurse in the Santa Barbara School Districts.

As a teacher, he devoted his life to public education, through which he daily strove to serve young people. In this capacity, he taught mathematics; and many of his students have commented to me on how interesting and dynamic he made the subject for them. J.R. told me once that his greatest pleasure came from drawing out math skills from a classroom of students for whom math was particularly challenging. As one of the most dedicated teachers in the Santa Barbara School Districts, he embodied the highest principles of the teaching profession.-

J.R.'s teaching extended beyond the required classroom curriculum. He challenged not only his students but also his colleagues to strive to achieve their highest potential. His role as a teacher was expanded to one of a friend, mentor and confidant to multitudes of his students, their families and the school staff and faculty.

When J.R. became principal of Santa Barbara High School in 1995 he came not as an outsider but as a leader among his peers. He was one of the family. He had graduated from the school in 1957 and in some ways never left. In his new position, he brought a light and warmth to the campus that enabled all students of all backgrounds to feel welcome. In return for his dedication, he has left a lasting impression on all of his students who feel his impact on their lives today. Each person who recalls J.R. Richards holds close at heart that welcoming, affirming ``DON'' standing in the halls before class. He inspired confidence, urging each of us to strive to be the very best we can. We won't let you down J.R. You mean too much to us.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that today we join with J.R.'s family in mourning the passing of this exceptional man, whose presence will be greatly missed.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the harmful cuts in care amounting to $1 billion a year for all those who are being treated for cancer.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the Medicare conference report. Seniors deserve a good prescription drug benefit through Medicare. This bill cripples Medicare and truly is not a prescription drug benefit at all. It forces seniors into private insurance plans to get all of their health care and contains a time- released poison pill that will starve Medicare of needed resources by arbitrarily capping federal funds.

But on top of this, the conference report cuts cancer care by $1 billion a year, $10 billion over 10 years. So many rural cancer centers will close as a result, and others will lay off oncology nurses and critical support staff. These centers are essential to the delivery of cancer care today. How can we do this to cancer patients? It is hard enough to live with this dreaded diagnosis, let alone the horrendous side effects of the treatments. And now this.

I repeat. This bill cuts $1 billion out of cancer care. I am ashamed.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this important resolution honoring Seeds of Peace. I thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) for authoring this resolution.

In describing the Day of Redemption, the Prophet Isaiah tells us ``a little child shall lead them.'' During the past 3 years of violence and bloodshed, it is clear that the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority have failed their people. The beauty and wisdom of the Seeds of Peace program is to instill within Israeli and Arab children a sense of understanding, reconciliation, and acceptance so that some day these future leaders can bring peace to their embattled peoples.

Mr. Speaker, my office is well acquainted with Seeds of Peace through its relationship with one of its most illustrious graduates, a young man named Fadi El Salameen. The oldest of nine children from a Palestinian family in Hebron, Fadi has overcome incredible hardships in his life and is currently studying at Earlham College in Indiana. He tells us that he owes his success, self-confidence, and his optimism for peace in the Middle East to his experiences in the woods of Maine with Seeds of Peace.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to think after months of such terrible news, perhaps the seeds of peace are finally growing roots in the region. After so many acts of Palestinian terrorism and Israeli reprisals, after the deaths of dozens of innocent people on both sides, we are seeing some hopeful signs. In particular, I think the upcoming signing of the Geneva Accord and the continued strength of a grass roots peace petition called the People's Voice hold out hope that a comprehensive political settlement of the conflict is not an impossible dream.

And if Israeli and Arab children are willing to live together in Maine each summer to participate in Seeds of Peace, we owe it to them to continue working as hard as we can to bring peace and security to their homelands. I support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the ranking member, for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, it must be close to Thanksgiving because this bill has the energy industry doing a lot of thanking and taxpayers doing a lot of giving.

Odd couple Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the Sierra Club together call this energy bill ``three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics.'' They are absolutely right.

For our colleagues to consider themselves friends of the environment, I note the following: This bill drills holes in the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, NEPA, and the Coastal Zone Management Act. It reverses a long-standing polluter pays principle by forcing taxpayers to clean up leaking underground storage tanks. It is clearly the most anti-environmental bill in a long time.

As for my colleagues who say they are concerned with wasteful government spending and heavy-handed government mandates, this bill's $23 billion of tax provisions are triple the administration's proposal. They shovel billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies to wealthy corporations. The cost of the bill could be as high as $135 billion in new government spending, industry subsidies, and mandates increasing consumer prices for gas and electricity. So much for fiscal discipline.

May I cite, Mr. Speaker, one set of provisions which epitomizes the bill's failures. This bill grants liability protection for MTBE producers responsible for polluting groundwater in virtually every State, leaving harmed communities saddled with billions in cleanup costs. Supporters claim it is fair to protect producers from liability since Congress mandated its use in the Clean Air Act, but there is no mandate for MTBE. And, in fact, nearly 100,000 barrels were added to gasoline a year before the Clean Air Act regs were issued.

It is also a fact that manufacturers knew MTBE would get into groundwater and that it would render groundwater unusable. Adding insult to injury, the bill provides these same companies with $2 billion, that is $2 billion worth, to help them get out of the MTBE business. What a ripoff. And this is just one example.

I urge my colleagues to give their constituents something to be thankful for this holiday season. Vote no on this turkey.

Mr. Speaker, it must be close to Thanksgiving because the energy industry is doing a lot of thanking and taxpayers are doing a lot of giving in this bill.

Odd couple Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the Sierra Club call the energy bill ``. . . three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics.'' They call it ``a complete waste of energy'' and say the ``1700 page bill fails to address the fuel and power needs of the average American.''

They are absolutely right!

For my colleagues who fashion themselves as friends of the environment I would note the following extremely troubling provisions:

The bill seriously weakens the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Federal law that States use to manage development and preservation of coastal resources. The bill limits States' roles in weighing in on oil and gas proposals and fasttracks the decisionmaking process. I would note that it was CZMA that California successfully used in forcing the termination of 36 undeveloped leases off the coast.

The bill provides major incentives for energy development in sensitive coastal areas. It also permits coastal States to spend so- called ``impact assistance'' funding, which is supposed to be designed to promote environmental protection, on activities that could further damage sensitive coastal areas. There is nothing in the bill to prevent a coastal State from spending most of all of their allocation on environmentally damaging infrastructure construction projects, including roads, ports, or jetties. The money made available under this section for areas impacted by offshore oil and gas development should be used to prevent and mitigate environmental damage; not create more.

The bill also contains a provision to assign unilateral permitting and regulatory authority to the Secretary of Interior for all energy- related industrial facilities within the Outer Continental Shelf, including those under areas long protected by executive and Congressional moratoria. Under the bill, all leasing, permitting, and regulation for a broad range of unidentified ``oil and gas related'' projects, including offshore Liquefied Natural gas (LNG) facilities, would be expedited through the use of one-stop permitting under the sole authority of the Secretary of Interior. California is presently facing two proposed offshore LNG terminals and gasification facilities off the coast of Malibu and Oxnard, and several other LNG proposals elsewhere along its coastline. California's local communities and the State of California would be stripped of important jurisdictional oversight over such projects if this bill were approved. Industrial projects in our coastal waters must not be allowed to circumvent existing laws that ensure protection of environmentally and economically sensitive coastal and marine areas.

The Leaking Underground Storage Tank program ensures that polluters clean up the damage caused by leaking tanks. But the energy bill violates this longstanding ``polluter pays'' principle by forcing taxpayers, rather than polluters, to pay for cleanup of contamination from these leaking tanks. This provision wasn't included in either the House or Senate bill.

The bill excludes deals between energy companies and tribes from National Environmental Protection Act, the Federal law that insures energy projects meet environmental and public health standards. It also requires the Department of Interior (DOI) to act as an enforcer for energy companies in their deals with tribes to make sure the tribes live up to the agreements. Unfortunately, there is no similar DOI oversight of energy company obligations to the tribes.

The Clean Air Act classified cities by their level of pollution, with dirtier cities given longer time to clean up their air, but also being required to adopt tougher anti-pollution standards. If an area fails to clean its air up by the statutory deadline, the area is ``bumped up'' to a higher classification, meaning it gets more time to meet their standards, but it has to institute stronger pollution controls. The energy bill will allow these polluted cities extended deadlines for achieving healthy air, but without ``bumping up'' the city. This means cities with dirty air won't have to clean up for a long time. And people living in these cities--and people living downwind--will suffer longer from dirty air and its damaging health effects.

The bill undermines the Clean Water Act by giving oil and gas companies a permanent exemption from pollution control requirements, like obtaining a permit to control polluted stormwater runoff caused by construction activities at drilling sites. But the industry already has a temporary exemption for small sites and EPA is now studying this issue. There is no reason to shortcut this process.

Hydraulic fracturing is a drilling technique that injects chemicals into the ground during oil and gas development. But the bill exempts hydraulic fracturing practices from the Safe Drinking Water Act, threatening drinking water sources, public health and the environment.

The energy bill does nothing to decrease our dependence on oil. There is no increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE), even though 70 percent of imported oil is used in our cars. Clearly, one of the most important steps we could take to increase our energy security would be to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Instead, we are going in the opposite direction with average fuel economy on the decline and Congress even giving tax breaks for businesses that want to buy luxury SUVs. At a minimum, the bill should encourage us to stop wasting oil. The Senate adopted a provision to reduce U.S. demand for oil by 1 million barrels per day. Yet, the conference report even leaves this minimal step out.

The bill drops provisions establishing a Renewable Fuels Standard, which would require utilities to get increasing amounts of their energy from renewable sources. Increasing utilities' use of renewables is a key step in achieving energy security for the Nation; that is why thirteen States already have or are considering setting similar goals. My own State of California has such a requirement and the utilities there tell me they have no problem complying with its provisions. The Senate supported such a provision but the House was never even given an opportunity to vote on the matter.

The bill does not contain any provisions to address global climate change, even though many have previously passed the House, or even unanimously passed the Senate. The provisions that were included in the Senate energy bill are modest steps on this important issue. They include: ensuring public disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions from large factories and power plants, creating a White House Office on Climate Policy, encouraging U.S. participation in global talks on climate change, and expanding research and innovative technology. These provisions do not create any mandatory programs to cap greenhouse gas emissions, but would lay the groundwork so we can understand the nature of this problem and begin to work on solutions.

Mr. Speaker, this is clearly the most anti-environment bill in a long time.

And for my colleagues who say they are concerned with wasteful government spending and heavy-handed government mandates, I bring the following to their attention:

The bill's $23 billion tax provisions are triple the Administration's proposal, shoveling billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies to corporations.

The overall cost of the bill could be as high as $135 billion in new government spending, industry subsidies, and mandates increasing consumer prices for gas and electricity.

Right now, oil and gas companies pay royalties to taxpayers for the privilege of drilling on public lands. The bill grants these wealthy industries royalty ``holidays,'' so they pay nothing for extracting billions of dollars worth of oil and gas from public lands. The bill also changes the royalty payment programs, modeling them on pilot projects GAO says have cost taxpayers up to $367 million annually.

The bill mandates a tripling in the use of ethanol, effectively forcing consumers on both coasts to subsidize giant Midwest agribusiness. The Energy Information Agency has indicated that gas prices could rise by 10 cents and it is likely to be even higher as the ethanol mandate will also make gas prices subject to even more variables--such as drought or other factors affecting the price of corn. In addition, a Cornell University study indicates, it takes about 70 percent more energy to produce ethanol, than the energy ethanol creates.'' Because much of the energy that goes into making and transporting ethanol (by truck, since it can't be sent in pipelines) comes from fossil fuel sources, this provision will do little to reduce foreign oil dependence.

While the 1700 page bill was drafted in secret, some of the pork barrel spending has begun to leak out. For example, there is one $1 billion in subsidies for a nuclear power plant and millions in subsidies for an Alaska pipeline. But the list of pork barrel projects is certain to be long and embarrassing when it finally becomes public. Senator McCain said the bidding process reminded him of a ``bazaar.'' So much for fiscal discipline.

Mr. Speaker, one set of provisions epitomizes the bill's failures.

The bill grants liability protection for MTBE producers responsible for polluting groundwater in virtually every State. This liability is granted even though documents unearthed in recent court cases show that manufacturers knew as early as the mid-1980's that their product would contaminate groundwater, but continued to push it.

Even when present in extremely small amounts MTBE makes water taste and smell like kerosene, rendering it unusable. This contaminated groundwater is difficult and extremely expensive to clean up, and a growing problem in hundreds of communities across the country. MTBE may also be a suspected carcinogen.

Supporters claim it is fair to protect MTBE producers from liability since Congress mandated its use in the Clean Air Act. But there is no mandate for MTBE in the Clean Air Act. In fact, nearly 100,000 barrels of MTBE were being put in gasoline a year before the Clean Air regulations were issued.

This provision leaves communities with MTBE polluted groundwater saddled with billions of dollars in cleanup costs. For example, in my district the town of Cambria recently reached a $10 million settlement with Chevron to clean up the MTBE contamination that has ruined a good part of the town's drinking water supply. Under this bill, there will be no incentive for MTBE producers to be responsible for the damage they have caused and towns like Cambria will be left to fend for themselves.

Finally, adding insult to injury, the bill provides these same companies with $2 billion in taxpayer funds to help these wealthy oil and gas companies get out of the MTBE business. There is absolutely no justification for this blatant waste of money.

I urge my colleagues to give our constituents something to be thankful for here on the eve of Thanksgiving. Vote ``no'' on this turkey.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for yielding to me.

I want, first of all, to acknowledge this motion to instruct conferees and thank my colleague from Nevada. It is very appropriate that this motion be submitted at this time as we are aware that the conferees on the Medicare modernization bill are meeting, but some news has been trickling out, even though to my knowledge there are Members only on one side of the aisle attending that conference report from the House of Representatives, and so it is just bits and pieces of news that come.

I am thankful that my colleague from Ohio mentioned the fact that AARP has endorsed this legislation which we really have not seen yet, but they must know some things about it, and I just want to say to my colleague that I sent Mr. Novelli a letter today resigning my membership, withdrawing my membership from AARP. I remember so clearly members from the organization from the Washington office coming to my office to tell me in very strong language this summer about the four principles that they were high bound must be in a prescription medication bill, a Medicare modernization bill, including defined benefits, including no means testing, including other standards, all of which are fast disappearing from the legislation as it is being prepared to bring to the floor for a conference vote before we adjourn here.

As this discussion goes on, I cannot get out of my mind the faces of the seniors in my district, several meetings over the past several weeks that I have had with them, seniors who signed up for Medicare+Choice, that partnership between the private sector, the HMOs, the insurance companies and Medicare, a volunteer program, voluntary program that they signed up for to help pay their prescription medications. In my congressional district which is, a lot of parts of it are rural, one after another of these HMOs after raising their premiums, after raising their copays, have left. In parts of my district, there is no choice for seniors but straight Medicare or medigap programs, and in other areas, there is one program just hanging on by a thread.

So the high cap program, the part of Medicare that provides a voluntary counseling service, had gathered seniors together to explain to them why they got this letter from the HMOs saying that they were going to withdraw from the area, not serve them any longer, confuse seniors in their eighties, many of them with health conditions. They were frightened. They were frustrated, and they do not want this legislation. They know very well what happens when we begin the process, which this bill most certainly will do, to take us into privatizing of Medicare, exactly what the former speaker, Mr. Gingrich, had in mind when he became Speaker of the House in the last decade.

This bill, the House bill and the Senate bill which are now being reconciled, are trying to impose an untried and really unnecessary privatization scheme. Medicare works. The piece that needs to be modernized is the prescription benefit. Privatizing Medicare will, contrary to what someone from the other side of the aisle said, will not give seniors that backup, because it will force and by bribing the HMOs, by putting money up front to the HMOs, which this motion to instruct seeks to remove, by bribing the HMOs to come into an area, the folks who are left with Medicare, straight Medicare will be the older and the sicker seniors, because those HMOs will raise their rates. They will raise their premiums, they will cherry pick, and only the sick seniors, the old seniors who have the highest costs will be left with straight Medicare. That is not a choice and that is going to happen. It will be happening before the end of this decade if this bill is passed and goes into effect.

This is something our seniors know very well, and the seniors who have contacted my office today in response to my removing myself from AARP are thankful that we are speaking up because they know that this is something that will not benefit them.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy) for his leadership on this motion to instruct conferees for full funding for senior nutrition programs and to note that it is a second generation to take leadership in this area. I commend, also, the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), for his leadership in senior issues and the Older Americans Act.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this motion because it is just at the bottom of our priorities that we pay attention to senior nutrition. Very few images are more upsetting and unsettling to any of us to think of our parents and our grandparents, our neighbors, and the elderly going without proper nutrition. Unfortunately, too many seniors live in poverty in our communities and must struggle daily to get the food they need. This is unacceptable and that is the reason for the passage of the Older Americans Act and its reauthorization.

And here we are struggling with the fact that our Federal budget and our appropriation process in this hallowed body is really a reflection of our values as Americans as people, with mothers and fathers, and children and neighbors, and a responsibility to care for those who have cared for us. That is the way this world runs when it is run according to the highest values which we espouse.

Yes, budgets are tight, but we do make priorities. And I am here to agree with my colleague, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy) that our older Americans ought to be a priority. It is such an honor to represent a community and communities in my district, as we all do, to visit among the people who make this program come to life. We fund the Older Americans Act. We fund programs that allow Meals on Wheels to exist. And when we see them at work in the communities, these programs that are run by volunteers, that leverage our precious few dollars and make those dollars stretch, I cannot believe the quality food that is prepared on the budgets that we give them, that they get volunteer donations, the drivers are so committed, their routes mean so much to them, that knock on the door is life-giving to the person who resides on the other side. For some it is their single connection to the outside world. It is food but it is so much more than food.

Now, I just implore all of us here in this body to take seriously our responsibility to fund this legislation at the proper amount that will do justice to our reasons for being here.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1648, the Carpinteria and Montecito Water Distribution Systems Conveyance Act of 2003--a bill I introduced that would authorize the title transfer of federally owned water distribution systems in my congressional district.

I want to commend my colleagues from California, the chairman of the Resources Committee, Mr. Pombo, the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Water and Power, Mr. Calvert and Mrs. Napolitano, as well as the ranking member of the full Committee, Mr. Rahall for expediting the consideration of this legislation in their respective committees and for bringing H.R. 1648 before us today.

This legislation will authorize the title transfer of two federally owned water distribution systems from the Bureau of Reclamation to the Carpinteria Valley Water District and Montecito Water District, as requested by the two Santa Barbara area Districts.

The purpose of the legislation is to simplify the operation and maintenance of the Districts' water distribution systems and eliminate unnecessary paperwork and consultation between the Districts and the Bureau of Reclamation.

The Carpinteria Valley Water District and Montecito Water District, which have operated and maintained the facilities proposed for transfer since 1956 and 1995, respectively. The Districts have worked through all requirements of the Bureau of Reclamation's title transfer process including public meetings, fulfillment of their repayment obligations, completion of an environmental assessment, which resulted in a finding of no significant impact (FONSI), and compliance with all other applicable laws. The only step remaining to complete the process is an act of Congress enabling the Secretary of the Interior to transfer title.

The proposed transfer would apply only to lands and facilities associated with these facilities and would not affect the Districts' existing water service contract with the Santa Barbara County Water Agency nor the Federal government receipts from water deliveries under the contract. In addition, the proposed transfer does not envision any new physical modification or expansion of the service infrastructure.

Mr. Speaker, the proposed transfer of ownership would include the following facilities:

Carpinteria: The distribution system consisting of 36 miles

of pipeline and laterals; Gobernador Reservoir; Shephard Mesa

Tank; Lateral 10L, Carpinteria and Shephard Mesa pumping

plants; several pressure regulating vaults located throughout

the system; fences and structures; and rights-of-way,

easements, leases and other property permitting access to the

Federal system.

Montecito: 9.5 miles of pipelines and laterals; the Asegra

Pumping Plant (a deactivated pumping plant connected to a

portion of lateral 3 located on Asegra Road); Ortega Ridge

Pumping plant located on Ortega Ridge Road; pressure

regulating vaults, fences and structures appurtenant to the

distribution system; and rights-of-way, easements, leases,

and other property permitting access to the Federal system.

Again, I would like to thank the Committee on Resources for supporting this bill, and urge its immediate passage.

Mr. Chairman, I was not able to be present for the following rollcall vote and would like the Record to reflect that I would have voted as follows: Rollcall No. 611--``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me time, and I rise in support of the Bell motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, there is not a Member of the House who is not terrifically proud of what goes on at the NIH and proud of the role that we play in funding this tremendous use of taxpayer dollars. We can see the direct connection between that investment and the very best health care in the world that is available because of the science that goes on there and the connections that are made between what happens out in Bethesda and the daily lives of not only American citizens, but people around the world who depend upon the research and the difference that it makes. These investments have provided us with cures for the diseases that once killed so many people.

Now we are faced with what the completion of the Genome Project has brought us, poised as we are on the edge of discovering treatments, prevention methods and cures for some of the most debilitating and costly diseases that we know in our world today.

As people are living longer, we find so many who struggle with heart disease, with diabetes, with Alzheimer's, with ALS, with a myriad of conditions, where the research that is going on there now and the studies that are building upon the Genome Project and being developed are going to bring us those cures.

I want to speak just for a minute, following in the sequence of other speakers, about cancer and what clinical trials mean. I speak from personal experience as well, knowing as I do how lives depend on the pipeline that comes from the research right here, that is the hope for the future for people who struggle today, who face being cut off, many in midlife with promising futures, and the economic value that we place on them.

For this, and many other reasons, I want us to turn what we are creating, a deficit in NIH funding, into an increase. I support the Bell motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this motion to instruct conferees on the Energy Policy Act. This motion is about a subject about which the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner), my colleagues, and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and I sent around in a Dear Colleague letter recently as part of my efforts on the energy subcommittee to alert Members of this body about the raft of terrible provisions in the energy bill conference report.

This particular provision undermines the Clean Water Act by giving oil and gas companies a permanent exemption from pollution control requirements at drilling sites. The Clean Water Act requires developers to obtain a stormwater permit from EPA to ensure that their construction practices do not lead to harmful runoff. In fact, if you go right outside the Capitol, especially on a rainy day like today, you will notice some of the measures these permits require for the visitors center construction site right here.

In this case, it is simple things like rocks and mesh over storm drains that keep out stormwater that could be polluted by construction activities.

Currently, the oil and gas industry enjoys a temporary moratorium on complying with these storm water permitting provisions. This moratorium is for construction sites of less than five acres. EPA is continuing to study the issue further, and the agency is expected to issue a final rule March 25.

Yes, the drafters of the energy bill cannot wait for EPA to determine an appropriate course of action. Instead, the energy bill shortcuts the process and gives the industry a permanent exemption for all construction activities for oil and gas exploration regardless of size. As a result of this exemption, oil and gas exploration would be the only construction activity not subject to Clean Water Act requirements. Oil and gas operations would be under no obligation to control pollution that would pollute our Nation's lakes, rivers and streams. This is an end-run around one of our Nation's most successful environmental laws. And, of course, no hearings have been held on this issue in the committee of jurisdiction, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

This amendment to the Clean Water Act is bad for public health, bad for environment, and certainly does not belong in the energy bill.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to note how deeply disappointed I am in the conduct of the energy conference to date. To date there has been one official meeting of the conference, despite assurances by the leadership that it would be an open conference with full debate on the key issues. Instead, the bill is basically being drafted in secret with only occasional press reports about what is exactly in the bill. And from what we can tell, the bill will make major policy changes on a raft of issues. It will spend billions and billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to some of the richest industries on this planet; and all of this is being done basically in the dead of night.

It is very much like the way the appropriations process has been run and most of the rest of the major issues as well. This kind of closed, secretive process does not produce good policy. Quite frankly, it is scandalous. It is undemocratic.

For that and other reasons, I certainly do appreciate the gentleman from California's (Mr. Filner) efforts on this motion. I urge all Members to support it and oppose any energy bill that contains such a shameful provision.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this Cardoza motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003. I support it for what it protects, Medicare as we know it, and for what it supports, our underfunded DSH hospitals.

The House and Senate Medicare bills, as we know, would impose a privatization scheme on Medicare. This would jeopardize health care for our seniors and turn them over to the tender mercies of the private insurance industry whose strongest obligation is not to seniors but to their bottom line.

We created Medicare precisely because the private insurance industry cannot afford affordable health care for seniors, and recent experiences with Medicare+Choice simply reinforce that lesson. Covering Medicare beneficiaries is too expensive for private plans to justify to their investors, and this is especially true in rural areas, where the low population and the lack of providers has proved to be too high a hurdle for private plans. But in spite of this experience, the House bill would turn Medicare into a voucher program.

The Senate bill would simply pay HMOs more per beneficiary than the traditional fee-for-service Medicare costs, and this would result in what my colleague from Texas does not think will happen, but it is naive to assume that this bribery for the HMOs to take these patients would inspire patients to stay in traditional Medicare. Therefore, they would opt out and Medicare would end as we know it. Why not just stick with traditional Medicare as we have it now?

This is a waste of money, this plan to privatize, and the net result would drive premiums up for Medicare beneficiaries, way up. At the same time this Medicare modernization bill deals a double whammy to hospitals that deal with a disproportionate share of populations whose resources do not match their needs. These hospitals have suffered a cut of hundreds of billions of dollars in this bill because of efforts to limit spending on Medicare. So these cuts threaten hospitals' ability to provide health care for America's poor and uninsured, just when uninsured seniors will find themselves without the ability to pay for their medications. They are told that this is because the budget is so tight, we cannot afford to properly fix this problem. We simply should not be throwing money at the private insurance industry when so many hospitals are just struggling to stay open.

So I urge support for this motion to instruct conferees so that they will continue to support hospitals and patients over HMOs and protect our constituents from the ill-conceived changes which will eventually eliminate Medicare as we know it today.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my motion would do three things. It would instruct conferees to drop privatization language from both the Senate and the House bills. It would direct any savings derived from dropping these provisions to pay for increased physician fees, and finally, the conferees on the Medicare bill would be instructed to protect the language in the House bill that provides for a small increase in Medicare payments to doctors for the next 2 years.

Essentially, this motion would tell the conferees to reject an untried proposal that would jeopardize Medicare and, instead, spend our precious resources to make sure that our doctors will be able to see their patients.

Mr. Speaker, in 1965, we established Medicare because the private insurance industry demonstrated that it could not provide affordable access to needed health care for seniors. I recognize the power of the market, but in trying to provide for the health care to senior citizens, this market falls short.

Our recent experience with Medicare+Choice just shows how true that is. Just 2 weeks ago in Ventura County, California, two private plans serving seniors pulled out, leaving these seniors with no more HMO service. Covering Medicare beneficiaries is too expensive for private plans to justify to their investors, and this is especially true in rural areas where the low population and the short number of providers has proved too high a hurdle for private plans, but in spite of this experience, proven now over many years, the House bill would turn Medicare into such a voucher program.

The Senate bill would simply pay HMOs more per beneficiary than traditional fee-for-service Medicare costs. Basically, it would bribe them to take care of these patients, but if these plans cannot provide the same care as Medicare for less, why would we want to pay them more? Why not just stick with traditional Medicare? This idea is a waste of money, and both approaches would drive premiums for Medicare beneficiaries way up.

The chief actuary of Medicare estimates that under the House bill, premiums would rise by 25 percent under this provision. This would force many beneficiaries to join HMOs and other plans since they could not afford to stay in traditional Medicare any longer, and so these provisions would end the Medicare program that has worked now for nearly 40 years, the Medicare program in which our seniors have such great faith.

Medicare under this plan will be replaced with the program where the health insurance industry itself decides how much a senior will pay and what kind of care they will get, and a senior's cost-sharing and premiums would no doubt change from one area to the next and perhaps from 1 year to the next.

Seniors have paid their payroll taxes all their lives. They were promised that Medicare would provide them with health care no matter where they lived, and now, they see that some in this place are trying to change the rules of the game on them.

AARP is strongly opposed to these kinds of changes, and so is the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. These organizations are devoted to protecting America's seniors, and they believe that this is a mistake. They think these resources should be put to better use, and so do I.

I think instead of finding new and faster ways to funnel money to private health insurance plans, we should be shoring up the providers who actually treat and provide health care to our constituents, our physicians. In my District and all across this country, doctors were stunned to see a 4 percent cut announced for next year. This latest cut comes on top of the 5.4 percent cut in 2002. The net result of these cuts would put doctors' reimbursements at 8 percent below their 2001 levels, and it would represent the fifth reduction since 1991.

Payments between 1991 and 2004 will have fallen 19 percent behind inflation in practice costs even using Medicare's own conservative estimates.

These cuts are indefensible.

We are already having a hard time keeping enough doctors and other health care providers to care for the public in many areas of the country.

A number of surveys have indicated physicians increasingly are limiting how many Medicare patients they see and that more will be forced to do so if payments are cut again.

Medicare cuts have ripple effects into non-Medicare health care, because it makes it harder for health care institutions and for rural areas to attract and keep their doctors.

We simply cannot afford another round of cuts.

So this motion would also instruct the conferees to protect the language in the House bill that would give doctors a 1.5 increase in payments for the next 2 years. Though this is a small increase, it is much better than the cut physicians were facing.

The motion would also direct conferees to take the money that would have been spent on privatization to be spent on increasing these physician fees.

This motion is a very simple choice. Do we want to pay the HMOs more money so they may or may not cover our constituents, or would we rather put that money to use ensuring that there are enough doctors, the true professionals, who treat America's seniors and those with disabilities?

I urge my colleagues to choose our doctors and their patients over the insurance industry. I urge them to support this motion and make clear where they stand.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I just want to note how unfair this entire conference process has been. The ranking members of the committees of jurisdiction, members of the conference and Representatives of hundreds of thousands of Americans are not even allowed in the room to be heard on this bill. The voice of the minority is a very important part of our public debate.

This exclusionary, undemocratic process that disenfranchises more than 100 million Americans is all too common up here.

Comprehensive and controversial changes like this bill cannot be sustained without the broad bipartisan support that this bill lacks.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Is the gentleman reserving the balance of his time at the moment?

That is very fine.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health on the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardoza).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), whose rural district has faced the experience of having insurance companies up and leave.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank my colleague from Florida. I do appreciate his discussion about the importance of supporting our physicians and our Medicare providers. I have noticed his leadership in the past of restoring the cuts that have been coming with a steady drumbeat since 1997, really, and have gone to the bone in terms of their ability to stay, delivering Medicare to our seniors and our citizens with disabilities. I support his efforts to do that as well.

That is what this motion to instruct conferees is all about. It is about the ability to keep that 1.5 percent that is already in the underlying bill and to perfect the bill, to make it something that we can support in a bipartisan fashion, by taking the funding that would be used for the privatization that would be used to subsidize the insurance companies to deliver Medicare services, amounting to $6 billion, and put that funding right away instead to the providers who need this kind of support.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

We are assuming the Senate bill will have some play in the discussion that is perhaps going on in the conference committee at the moment, and that is where we would urge the attention of the conferees to be put, that there is funding that has been set aside in the Senate bill that would make quite a difference in Medicare providers being able to stay, particularly in rural areas to continue to deliver the service.

I have seen the statement of the AMA and the osteopaths on this motion to instruct, and I need to say clearly for the Record that these letters do not describe correctly my motion to instruct. My motion to instruct supports the AMA position on physician fees. This motion explicitly supports the provision in the House bill that provides immediate assistance to doctors. In no way does it delay or support a delay in fixing the physician fee problem. Despite what the AMA and other groups have said, this motion does not delay permanent actions on fixing the sustainable growth rate. This motion does not address a long-term fix, but neither does the House bill.

The reason the House bill does not have a long-term fix is because it is very expensive. My motion would prevent the conference from spending money on risky privatization schemes when that money should be used to help finance a long-term solution to the physician fee problem. I believe the AMA must have been reading a different motion. Their statement says we are taking money from patients to give it to physicians. It could not be further from the truth.

Section 231 of the Senate bill has the Federal Government paying private plans, not patients. I frankly think that patients would be better served if that money went to their own doctor than to bribe some private plan to pay for their services or to play in the field.

I am disappointed that the AMA has so inaccurately described my motion, and I hope this is an inadvertent mistake. I have work very closely with the AMA and other professional groups on the problem of physician fees; and recently I brought Tom Scully, the administrator of Medicare, to a meeting of doctors in my district. The motion I am offering today is designed to respond to the concerns that they raised in that meeting with Administrator Scully. The AMA is wrong about what my motion does, and their position does not reflect the position of doctors in my district.

In addition, I wanted to address the gentleman's comments about leaving traditional Medicare in place. This House bill, which we have dealt with in the House before, will lead to rising Medicare part B costs because it would leave the sicker patients in traditional Medicare, while healthier seniors will go to HMOs. We have seen this in the Medicare+Choice plans, and we will certainly see it in a plan such as is proposed in this underlying bill. This is going to lead to much higher premiums for those who remain in Medicare. Seniors who do not want to join an HMO will be forced to because their premiums will be to expensive.

Mr. Speaker, this is a clear and very simple choice. On the one hand, we have HMOs and the insurance industry. On the other hand, we have the doctors who administer care, who know how to do this every day under Medicare, and their patients. The House and Senate bills seek to impose an untried and unnecessary privatization scheme onto Medicare. They will overpay HMOs in a bribe to get them to cover beneficiaries. These provisions would force seniors into private plans and drive up the premiums on those who stay in traditional Medicare. It would mean that seniors in different parts of the country would be paying different amounts for the same care. Instead of jeopardizing the Medicare system in this way, we could be ensuring that Medicare beneficiaries could see their doctors by making sure that they are reimbursed appropriately.

Support this motion to instruct to be sure that conferees support doctors over HMOs and protect our constituents from ill conceived changes.

So that is the motion to instruct conferees that we have proposed and that we hope will be passed in this House of Representatives so that the conferees will take seriously these recommendations to improve the underlying Medicare bill and make it something that could receive bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Con. Res. 94, the Direct Support Professional Recognition Resolution. I was pleased to join Representative Sessions and Representative Langevin in introducing this resolution. They have been tireless in their efforts to pass it and deserve credit for their leadership on this issue.

Right now more than 8 million Americans have mental retardation or other developmental disabilities. Though they need some degree of assistance, they deserve to live the fullest, most complete lives possible. And they can, with the help of America's direct support professionals.

But it is harder and harder for community-based homes and other institutions to find and keep men and women who want to do this kind of work. There are not enough new people taking up this calling and too many are leaving the field. Though this line of work can be very rewarding, it is also very challenging. Those in the field now are overworked and often underappreciated by our society. Those who commit themselves to it should be recognized and honored for their dedication.

But we need to do more to ensure that our support network for the developmentally disabled does not collapse in the face of this problem. That is what this resolution is about.

Demand for these services, and for direct support professionals will also continue to grow in the coming years. But right now our Nation's long-term care system relies on a variety of public and private funding sources that may not be reliable in the long run.

Medicaid supports many of these programs, but the amount of their support varies from State to State. And now some critics of Medicaid are trying to make sweeping reforms that may jeopardize the support this system has now.

Congress needs to take a serious look at this problem and begin developing solutions. We cannot afford to have a shortage of direct support personnel. I urge my colleagues to give these men and women the support they deserve. I urge my colleagues to dedicate themselves to helping avoid a shortage. And I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Madam Speaker, under rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act.

The form of this motion is as follows:

Mrs. Capps of California moves that the managers on the

part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes

of the two House on the Senate amendment to the bill, H.R. 1,

be instructed as follows:

Number one, to reject the provisions of subtitle C of title

II of the House bill.

Number two, to reject the provisions of section 231 of the

Senate amendment.

Number three, within the scope of the conference, to

increase payments for physician services by an amount equal

to the amount of savings attributable to the rejection of the

aforementioned provisions.

Number four, to insist upon section 601 of the House bill.