Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I support the original intent of SCHIP to cover our low-income children at 200 percent of the Federal poverty level; yet the bill before us really strays from that, and we all know it.

And we're debating this under a lockdown rule because the Rules Committee refused to allow Republican amendments to this bill, and I will tell you, I found that 1 a.m. meeting for the Rules Committee informative and entertaining in an unfortunate sense.

The debate on this, as my colleague said, is pretty simple: Who will manage and control the health care sector that comprises one-seventh of our Nation's economy. That's what this is about today. Are individual Americans going to have the freedom to make those choices or are those Americans going to be relegated to being a faceless file on a bureaucrat's desk with that bureaucrat making those life-and-death decisions? Our future health care system is going to be shaped by the way we answer those questions on this floor today.

Under this Democrat bill, there will be billions spent to enroll children into SCHIP.

I encourage my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, what a fascinating debate it is that we are having; and I thank the gentleman for yielding a few moments of time.

You know, we're beginning to hear from some of the nearly 54,000 Medicare beneficiaries that we have in our district because they have figured out that this is going to be financed on their back; and we have nearly 9,000 Medicare Advantage beneficiaries that are in our district. Our Congressional Budget Office estimates are telling us that this looks like it's going to end up costing us over $11 million in our district.

Now, we know that we're going to see the tax on private insurance. We've heard from some of our individuals who are questioning why in the world are you putting a tax, you've got a tax on everything, why are you taxing our health insurance benefits?

We're hearing from our tobacco farmers and our friends in the agriculture community that are quite upset about cigarette and cigar and tobacco taxes there. And as the gentleman from Georgia just said, this grand plan basically says, seniors, we need you to smoke more so that you can help pay for this plan to expand SCHIP to middle- and upper-income families.

And being a mother, I can tell you that a 25-year-old probably is a little bit offended to be called a child, because 25-year-olds are adults. They are young adults, and they are working, and they do not need to be on those programs.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I thank the chairman, and I thank the gentleman from Georgia for his legislation to make a 1 percent reduction. We have got to start taking these first steps.

Year after year, I feel there is a group of us that come down here talking about how we slow the growth of government, talking about how we make reductions in what the government spends and talking about the necessity to begin with those little, tiny savings, \1/4\ percent, \1/ 2\ percent, a solid percent, that will yield a savings. We are talking about $5.5 million. I find it just amazing that we can't even find $50,000 in there. We can't agree to make that kind of reduction. There are ways to do this. That is something government should be doing.

The gentleman from Wisconsin mentioned the SCHIP program. Indeed, in our Committee on Energy and Commerce, we have been quite disheartened that the SCHIP bill that he mentioned is not going through regular order. We didn't have a committee hearing in our Health Subcommittee. We would have welcomed that.

There is nobody against health care for low-income children. What we have great concerns about is all the other stuff, all the pay-fors that are in this bill, all the expansion of policy, taking a block grant, moving it to an entitlement. It brings us back to the initial question with the gentleman's bill on this appropriations bill of making a 1 percent reduction. There has to be a way to yield a savings that will pay for some of these things, because we can't take it out of Medicare Advantage.

The SCHIP legislation that the gentleman mentioned would make an incredible reduction to Medicare Advantage. My goodness, we would see $193 billion in reductions to our Medicare Advantage program over a 10- year period of time, which would be $15.3 billion in cuts to Medicare Part A for seniors. This would include skilled nursing facilities, rehab facilities, and long-term care hospitals. That would be one of the pay-fors in the SCHIP bill that the gentleman referenced.

That is why the gentleman from Georgia has a great amendment that says, let's get going. In title 1, page 1 of this bill, let's start finding a way to make some reductions. $9.6 billion in cuts to Medicare Part D for seniors is in that bill, that SCHIP bill that didn't go through subcommittee, didn't get a complete markup in committee. It is going to be moved to the floor.

So, there, again, the gentleman from Wisconsin's points on this bill is the reason we have this amendment to title 1, section 1 of this bill, to make that reduction in the Secretary's spending, $5.5 million. Certainly, we can find $50,000. $3.6 billion would be cut out of end- stage renal disease in that bill. There has to be a way to start making reductions so that you're paying for the government that you are trying to spend, the money you are trying to spend, the government you are putting out there. There has got to be a way to pay for this. Unfortunately, that is not something that we are seeing considered.

Mr. Chairman, $50,000 may not be much to the Secretary, but it is a lot to my constituents in Tennessee and especially those that are on Medicare Advantage.

I thank the gentleman from California for the time.

Mr. Speaker, today I'm rising to oppose this bill.

We are all for fair pay; we are all for equal pay for equal work, and we are all against discrimination. But, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2831 does much more than just simply overturn a Supreme Court case in order to provide relief to one plaintiff, Lilly Ledbetter. It constitutes a major change in and extended application of employment discrimination law.

In my opinion, what this change would do would serve to impede justice and undermine the important goal of having allegations of discrimination expeditiously resolved. The bill essentially limits the 1964 Civil Rights Act statute of limitations regarding almost every claim of discrimination available under Federal law and potentially broadens the scope and application of the civil rights laws to entirely new fact patterns, practices and claims.

It also would allow an employee or any individual who can arguably claim to be affected by an allegedly discriminatory decision relating to compensation wages, benefits, or any other practice to sue for discrimination that may have occurred years or even decades in the past. The anticipated increase in legal and recordkeeping costs created by this legislation would, indeed, be staggering.

Congress should not be in the business of removing incentives for prompt resolution of discrimination claims. And that is what this would do; it would remove the incentive to find a prompt and timely resolution to discrimination claims.

I thank the gentleman from California, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the concerns of many of our small businesses in the Seventh District of Tennessee. The ongoing debate over illegal immigration has brought many issues to light. While this issue is trudging its way through Congress, small businesses are stuck trying to figure out how to confront the problems of illegal immigration that are created at the local level.

For instance, these businesses should have the right to refuse to hire or fire a person who cannot speak English. An employer who signs the paycheck and pays payroll taxes, and their customers, should be able to communicate with an employee. But under current law that small businessman can be sued by the Federal Government for refusing to hire or in some cases firing a person who cannot communicate in English. As ridiculous as this sounds, it is true.

That is why today I will offer a commonsense amendment to the Commerce-Justice-State approps bill that will close the ridiculous loophole and offer some protection to the businesses that drive our economy and employ our citizens.

I urge all of my colleagues to join this effort to protect our mom- and-pop businesses, not because it is a hard line against illegal immigration, but because it is the right thing to do.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I do rise in support of the Stearns- Blackburn amendment to protest the actions of a rogue government agency that really is out of control, and I thank Mr. Stearns for his good work and his good efforts on this with us.

The EEOC, as we have heard, it is taxpayer funded, and it is tasked with eradicating discrimination in the workplace. Now, unfortunately, the organization's actions are speaking louder than their words, and certainly they are not in step with the mission that they are instructed to meet. What we see is an agency that is waging war against private employers who have English-speaking policies and English-only language policies in their workplace and with their workforce.

Now, as my colleague from Florida has said, the situation we have discussed is in 2004, we had two employees from a Massachusetts Salvation Army Thrift Store. They were instructed to learn English within 1 year to comply with that organization's English-only language policy on the job. The employees refused to comply or even to make a good-faith effort. I think that everyone would like to see them make a good-faith effort to learn the language. And they were summarily dismissed in December of 2005. So they had that full year.

Interestingly enough, the two employees were able to navigate their way through the bureaucratic system and get the EEOC to file a discrimination lawsuit against the Salvation Army in April 2007, despite their limited command of the English language. The turn of events would be laughable if it were not true, and if the consequences were not as grave as they are.

Yet, in 2006 alone, roughly 200 charges were filed alleging discrimination due to English-language-only policies in different workplaces. This explosion of claims against workplace English is a 612 percent increase since 1996.

Mr. Chairman, I think that is one of the things that is of concern to us; 612 percent. That is the increase in these claims against American small businesses, against the businesses that are employing our citizens. We have gone from 32 cases in 1996 to 228 in 2002, according to the EEOC alone, and what we see is those misplaced priorities of the

Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Musgrave amendment. I think it is the wise move to make. It shows good stewardship to come in and look at this budget and say, where do we slow the growth and how do we slow the growth?

As we all know and as we have learned from so many of our States that have balanced budget amendments that have to curtail the growth of the budget, across-the-board reductions work. They work. And the reason they work is because you get to go in and manage. The Departments get to manage where they want to make those reductions. We all know you can make those half percent reductions. Mr. Chairman, they have been proven to work.

The thing that is so very interesting to me is, even if this were to pass, making a half percent reduction and saving the taxpayers $268 million, which is what Mrs. Musgrave is seeking to do, you would still have an increase. You would still have an increase in Science, Commerce, Justice spending. That would be there.

But what we are seeking to do is rein in what the Federal Government spends. We can sit here and argue about the particulars of budgeting. We can talk about how baseline budgeting always sets us up for saying whatever is put on the table is a cut, and we can talk about how zero- based budgeting might be a better approach to how the Federal Government goes about setting its annual budget.

But one thing we know is this, that the liberal elites always want to come in and spend more. They never get enough of the taxpayers' dollar. We are seeing that this is proving to be the ``hold onto your wallet'' Congress. As I said last week when our friends across the aisle were calling us the ``fringe,'' FRINGE does mean ``fiscal responsibility includes no government excess.''

Madam Speaker, I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record, but the ``Hold on to Your Wallet Congress'' is at it again.

In today's latest episode, the liberal leadership has proposed another spending bill that will most likely be dead on arrival when it hits the President's desk because it shows disrespect for the taxpayers' dollar.

The Democrat Transportation-HUD spending bill provides for a whopping $104.4 billion in spending for the next fiscal year, which is more than $4 billion in new spending and more than $2.8 billion above what the President requested.

The legislation increases spending for earmarks. And it does fail to address the very real solvency issues of the highway trust fund, which will face a $4 billion shortfall in 2009.

The bill is irresponsible, sets the wrong priorities, and adds to the already staggering level of additional new spending in the 110th Congress.

The current Congress pledged to curb runaway spending, but instead they have moved it to the fast lane and they've set the pedal to the metal to see how fast they can spend your dollar.

Offered By: Mrs. Blackburn

Amendment No. 21: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Madam Chairman, you know, this is so interesting listening to this fiscal debate and talking about we are the fringe. Well, let me tell you, FRINGE is a great acronym, and let me tell you what FRINGE is a great acronym for.

And I think it is very appropriate for those of us on our side of the aisle because fringe means this: Fiscal responsibility includes no government excess. Fiscal responsibility includes no government excess. Now, Madam Chairman, that is what the people tell us they want. Get this fiscal house in order.

That is what they want. They don't want you to spend more. They want you to spend less. Government does not have a revenue problem. Government has a spending problem. All of this about across-the-board cuts don't work.

If I may tell you why across-the-board cuts do work, the reason is this. You have the opportunity within a department to decide where you would like to reduce. I would recommend, as with many of our States, you go in and you make those reductions out of the bureaucracy.

You don't have to take one single penny out of any program. You can take it out of the bureaucracy. That is where you go, and that is why across-the-board cuts work. That is why they use them in State after State after State because they have balanced budget amendments, because they cannot spend more than the rate of growth of the economy in that State.

They work. And, yes, fiscal responsibility includes no government excess. Now, yes, there is some real long fringe down there because, it is way down by great big, overblown, heavy bureaucratic programs that do not respond to the needs of the American people.

I think it is time that we say let's get this under control. It is the hold-on-to-your-wallet Congress. If we are not happy, they will leave you in tatters, not fringe.

Madam Chairman, I would remind one of the previous speakers that there are no title X cuts in this amendment.

What this amendment does is to state that Planned Parenthood cannot receive those funds. Planned Parenthood in 2005 did perform 260,000 abortions. That is something that we know. I think it is also important for us to note that it was Planned Parenthood who was the lead plaintiff in the legal challenge against the partial birth abortion ban legislation that is now the law of the land.

This is the right move. I commend the gentleman from Indiana for bringing the amendment forward and for bringing to our attention the need to make certain that taxpayer dollars are not used in abortion clinics around this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, today the liberal leadership of this House will call up H.R. 980, the Public Safety Employee-Employer Cooperation Act.

It sounds harmless. But let's not mince words. This bill is not concerned with public safety. It's a payoff from the left to the powerful labor unions that finance many of their campaigns.

The liberal leadership already bowed to union pressure by passing legislation to strip workers of the right to vote in a private ballot election. Now they are attempting to federalize collective bargaining for public safety professionals.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police opposes the legislation because it would effectively take power from State and local governments during labor-management relations. I oppose it because it will likely make our communities less safe.

Mr. Speaker, there is a time and there is a place for politics, but not when our lives and the safety of our communities is at stake.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

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

The motion to instruct would require the Secretary to deny a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, a TWIC, to any applicant who has been convicted of certain crimes.

This card is the access card to our Nation's critical and sensitive port and maritime facilities. We have over 750,000 workers who access our ports daily. TWIC was created to ensure that they are all screened and that they pose no threat of terrorism.

Now, our motion would specify that individuals convicted of certain crimes, such as treason, espionage, sedition or murder, would be permanently disqualified from receiving a TWIC card. This would further specify interim disqualifying crimes, such as smuggling, arson, kidnapping or robbery, that would disqualify an individual within a certain timeframe of conviction.

This provision provides the right balance between ensuring that our ports are safe while ensuring that we have the workers we need to get the job done in a timely manner.

We all agree that protecting our ports is one of the most critical duties that we have. All the guns, all the gates, all the guards in the world, every bit of that is useless if we give an individual a TWIC card to walk right past them.

This would ensure that the screening of these individuals is thorough, and that it is complete. While some may argue that this will unnecessarily disqualify too many individuals, we have already provided for an appeal and waiver process elsewhere to ensure that individuals can apply for a TWIC despite their past history.

This section that we are offering today in this motion to instruct passed the Senate 94-2. Our motion to instruct would accede to the language in the Senate provision.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to call to the body's attention, we had last week on July 10, a front page article in The Hill talking about this.

The concerns with this clause, I know that this program, TSA is going to roll this TWIC card program out on September 1. I would hope that our security is of such importance to us that we would not weaken this program.

We know that the security of our ports is important. We want to make certain that the workers that we are sending in to these ports have gone through the appropriate clearances. We know that these are critical and sensitive areas. Why would we want to give a card to someone who has been convicted of crimes such as treason, espionage, sedition or murder?

I do not think that the American people want to see those individuals inspecting the cargo that's coming into these ports. We hear so much about security and food security, the issues that surround that. We are hearing about the security of human trafficking that is going through our ports. For goodness sakes, we want to be certain that the people that are walking into those ports to work every day are not convicted of these serious crimes.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Mississippi spoke of the compromise language, and the compromise language does not give our TSA the tool in its toolbox that it needs. Indeed, the compromise language would weaken that tool that they need in that toolbox to be certain that they are giving Americans the certainty that they want to view our Nation's ports security with. They want to know that certainly the people that are coming into those ports have our Nation's best interests at heart. And I fully believe that they do not want individuals who are convicted of these crimes of treason, espionage, sedition, murder and, further, interim disqualifying crimes such as smuggling, arson, kidnapping or robbery to be in there watching the cargo and the transportation that comes into our ports and maritime facilities. Certainly, this is a regulation that TSA uses now with our truck drivers who are moving hazardous material. So the compromise language would take a tool out of that toolbox that TSA uses to give Americans the certainty that they are doing their best.

Now, with respect to the question from the gentlelady from Texas, and I appreciate the hard work that she does at the Homeland Security Committee, but this would provide only a 7-year lookback, and I think that that is important to note in that screening process. But at the same time, Mr. Speaker, we want to be certain that screening is thorough, that it is complete, and that there is certainty given to the American public.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman was just making his point, and in part of that he is right, but the important part of this is that what we have to do is be certain that a Secretary doesn't delete these provisions. And if you are going to give them that flexibility and if they delete it, then you have that hole that is there. So, because of that, we need it in statute to be sure that it is not altered.

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

Mr. Speaker, you know, the appeals and waivers process was put in place for a reason, and that is why it is there, and that's why you've got the look-back provision and why it is stated as such.

Again, I will reemphasize the point. We don't want to do something that is going to weaken a tool that is in the TSA toolbox for being certain that we have the necessary security at our ports; that we know who is there and we know the reasons they are there, that we know that they have the appropriate clearances for being there.

And with all due respect to the chairman and the chairwoman who have worked on this legislation, our wording here, acceding to the language that passed over in the Senate, 94-2, would be certain that we have in statute something that is going to give our citizens the security that we have done our job.

It is the responsibility of this body to be certain that we have this national security interest at heart for the people of this good Nation, and certainly this language is one step in so doing.

And at this time, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Mississippi has no further speakers and is ready to yield back, then I will do so. But I want to be certain I have the right to close on this.

Mr. Speaker, I will reserve at this point.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, today we will see another attempt by the liberal majority leadership to drive a stake between the American people and the brave men and women fighting in the global war on terror. Today's latest attempt is called a precipitous withdrawal. The American people would label it a cut and run. Our soldiers deserve the confidence of their leaders, not second-guessing arrogance by politicians half a world away.

The leadership thinks Iraq is lost, despite the fact that the new mission has shown signs of progress, including the fact that half of Baghdad has been secured, the Baghdad Security Plan. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are going to provide us a progress report in September, but that is not fast enough for the liberal leadership. They expected the new strategy to win overnight. Don't they know that you don't find instant gratification in war?

One thing is certain: surrender and failure in securing Iraq hold catastrophic consequences for freedom, the U.S., and the Iraqi people. Surrender would send the wrong message. It will say the U.S. is weak, that roving death squads in the streets of Baghdad and ethnic cleansing are acceptable to us. It may be fashionable to want to pull out of Iraq, but it sends the wrong message.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona.

And while I have the utmost respect for the chairman, I disagree with him on this resolution and I do rise to oppose the resolution today.

I guess I don't like the rhetoric of defeat. And I think that if we look at the situation in Iraq and if we look at the global war on terror, we have to ask ourselves: If we accept defeat at the hands of the terrorists, then what type message are we going to send? And I don't think that we would like that. Because if we pull out now, it is going to say that the U.S. is weak in the war on terror. It is going to say that we accept roving death squads in the streets of Baghdad, that we accept ethnic cleansing and a region engulfed in all-out chaos. That is the message we send. Just as when we were children, our actions carry a message with them.

Our soldiers deserve the confidence of their leaders, and not second- guessing by politicians that are a half world away. I think that they need to know that we are with them.

I had a message from a Marine parent. And they said, You know, we have our men out there fighting every day. They are using all the tools available to them. They are in combat. They are in patrols. They are using technology to stabilize, to train Iraqi troops. Then at night they come home, they come back to that post, that forward operating base, and they hammer out e-mails and blogs to those of us here to help combat the rhetoric coming out of Washington, DC.

General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker have a plan, the Baghdad Security Plan. We find out now much of Baghdad is more secure than it was. Most of the troops to carry out this plan just landed, just got there 2 weeks ago to start implementing the plan. I think that for us to second-guess is inappropriate. I think that it may be the fashionable thing to want to pull out.

Mr. Speaker, today the House will vote on the College Cost Reduction Act, which sounds good on the surface, but once you begin to peel back the layers of this onion, you find that it is just rotten to the core. It contains billions of dollars of new spending, and worse still, it will never even see the light of day. The President has vowed to veto the bill.

And it creates nine new entitlement government programs at a cost of $197 billion over 5 years. That's nine new programs. And this is just the tip of the iceberg with the leadership spending this year. $20 billion more than expected on the President's budget. They had $6 billion more in new spending on January's omnibus, $17 billion they added to troops spending. It goes on and on, and it is enough to make a taxpayer cry.

And if there's one thing that we all know, once you've got a government program, you've got a government program. Ronald Reagan said it best. There is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program.

The leadership knows this bill will not fly with the American people. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no.''