Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation because it adopts a number of extremely important tax provisions, expensing of brownfields remediation costs, mental health parity benefits, deduction of higher education expenses, the work opportunity tax credits, incentives for renewable and alternative sources of energy, and the R&D tax credit with its new forward-looking option; but it also helps to ensure that our senior citizens will be able to choose the physician of their choice by preventing the scheduled 5 percent cut in physician Medicare reimbursements.

In addition, it extends the 508 hospital payments and requires a study of how to reform the wage index system, laying the foundation for needed reform in that area.

The Medicare home demonstration project it adopts will reward small physician offices for managing patients with chronic or severe illness more holistically, both to reduce the cost of medical care and to improve the quality of the care those seniors receive.

But while I support this bill, I believe the 1-year doctor payment policy it adopts is deeply flawed and urge my colleagues to develop a more thoughtful and fair approach to reflecting the quality of physician performance in our Medicare payment system.

First, in any pay-for-performance system, clinical criteria for quality must emanate from the physician community. Bureaucrats must never be allowed to dictate medical practice.

Second, any pay-for-performance system must not penalize doctors who care for difficult, noncomplying patients, or patients for whom criteria has not been established.

Consequently, all doctors should receive some increase to recognize the increased cost of delivering care to our seniors, increased cost of malpractice insurance, health benefits for their employees and so on. And above that, a fair, balanced pay-for-performance system must be adopted.

I urge support of the bill.

I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of S. 435,

the Lower Farmington River and Salmon Brook Wild and Scenic River Study Act of 2005. Once passed, the bill will designate a segment of the Farmington River and Salmon Brook in the State of Connecticut for study for potential addition to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. I would like to thank the chairman of the Resources Committee, Mr. Pombo, for bringing this legislation to the floor and for working with me to ensure that this important study can commence promptly.

The bill commissions a feasibility study to evaluate whether the Lower Farmington River and the Salmon Brook qualify as a Wild and Scenic Partnership River within the National Park Service's Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The Lower Farmington River is defined as the 40- mile stretch between the end of the west branch of the Farmington River in Canton, Connecticut, and the Rainbow Dam in Windsor, and the Salmon Brook, an additional 32-mile stretch in the top 12 in the State of Connecticut for diversity of aquatic insects it hosts. The study area crosses both the Fifth and First Congressional Districts. The Farmington River and Salmon Brook's recreational and environmental contributions to our State are well-known and a valuable resource for future generations.

The 14 miles of the Farmington River's west branch, designated as a Wild and Scenic Partnership River in 1994, is a resounding environmental and economic success story. Partnership designation for the west branch has fostered public-private partnerships to preserve the area's environment and heritage while yielding economic benefits to river towns. Its designation has preserved it as a home to trout, river otter, and bald eagle populations; and historic structures still grace its banks. Fishermen, hikers, canoeists, and kayakers enjoy the river year-round.

I hope to see the rest of the Farmington River, as well as Salmon Brook, enjoy similar success. This new initiative is a an ideal way to showcase the whole river's unique cultural and recreational resources. The direct economic impact of the final designation is estimated at $3 million and an additional $9 million in total economic impact from recreational users.

This legislation has broad bipartisan support at the local, State, and Federal level, and I urge my colleagues' support for the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the Town of Middlebury, Connecticut, on the occasion of its bicentennial.

Once a Revolutionary War camp for French General Rochambeau and his troops on their march to Yorktown, West Farms and adjoining portions of Woodbury and Southbury first formed a distinct ecclesiastical society in 1790. The society took up the name Middlebury, derived from the central position its meetinghouse occupied six miles from its three older neighbors, Waterbury, Southbury, and Woodbury. After repeated petitions to the Connecticut General Assembly for independence from Waterbury, the Town of Middlebury was formally incorporated in 1807.

Today, recreational facilities and year-round cultural events are close by; Quassy Amusement Park, a local ski trail, and a town lake are some of the more popular amusements. Teikyo Post University is a short drive away, offering a variety of courses for students in pursuit of undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to represent the Town of Middlebury in the United States House of Representatives, and extend my best wishes to the city and its citizens for another 200 years of prosperity.

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

I rise in enthusiastic support of H.R. 5574, legislation that reauthorizes the Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education program.

It is a little recognized fact that we support medical education through Medicare payments. And since there are not a lot of Medicare patients in Children's Hospitals, we found that we were providing inadequate support for the training of pediatricians, and especially as pediatrics became a specialty with the same spectrum of subspecialties as are common in the rest of medicine.

So in 1998 Congresswoman Pryce from Ohio and I authored this program, and I really appreciate the good work of Chairman Nathan Deal from Georgia in bringing it to the floor with bipartisan support to reauthorize it for another 5 years.

When we first started this program, Federal GME support for Children's Hospitals was at .5 percent of what Medicare was providing for other teaching hospitals. Thanks to the legislation and the support over the years that Congress has given it, today Federal GME supports 80 percent of the cost of residencies in Children's Hospitals.

That is a wonderful thing, because as a result of that, Children's Hospitals have been able to increase the number of residents they train, including both general pediatricians and pediatric specialists, increase the number of training programs, improve the quality of the training programs, and strengthen the caliber of the residents they train.

The program works. It is improving the care available to our children across the country. The Children's GME Hospitals accounted for more than 80 percent of the growth in pediatric subspecialty training programs in the country, and more than 65 percent of the growth in the number of pediatric subspecialists trained. That has been critical at the time when many regions of the country, including major metropolitan areas, have experienced shortages of pediatric subspecialists: pediatric cardiologists, pediatric oncologists, and so it goes.

In Connecticut, the pediatric residency program at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine is currently training 57 residents at Connecticut's Children's Medical Center. These residents provide care to children in all hospital settings, including primary care, emergency care, inpatient care, critical care and subspecialty clinics.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for authorizing this program for the full 5 years and recognize my colleague from Ohio, Congresswoman Pryce, for her leadership in this work over the last 7 years. It has been a huge success for children across America, and we salute those hospitals that specialize in the complex care of children with very serious illnesses as we pass this legislation today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this legislation that is so important to our Nation's security when a new type of warfare threatens our security. I appreciate the good work of my friend from New Mexico, my colleague Heather Wilson, to bring this bill to the floor, she and a number of her colleagues.

The bill will authorize the NSA's terrorist surveillance program, which is truly vital to our Nation's security. Remember back to 9/11? We in this House ran down the street away from this Capitol because we were scared, and all of America was scared. Nobody knew where the next strike was going

to hit. Nobody knew how much others had planned.

That was September 11. On October 25, the leadership of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, leadership and heads of the Intelligence Committee, met with the President and the Vice President to look at this program and agreed that it was necessary to our security, that we needed to be able to pick up the phone if there was a call from a terrorist number into America. We needed to know what was being said, and we couldn't wait.

Ever since that October 25 date, the leadership of both parties in the House and Senate have routinely overseen this program. At the end of every meeting they came to the conclusion that what we were learning to keep our Nation safe was worth the targeted program that intercepted calls to known terrorist numbers, to numbers in the United States of America.

Now, some have said here tonight we have the 72-hour application process under FISA to address the need to intercept such calls. FISA is paperwork heavy. The critical factor is not the time available to go to the FISA court after the emergency application, but the detailed requirements for information that must be definitively known before you can even start the emergency surveillance.

There are 11 separate items: the identity of the target, the description of the target, and so it goes, all down through the 11. I don't have time to read all 11.

There is paperwork filled out first by the analysts at NSA, and then looked at by the lawyers at NSA, and then looked at by the lawyers in the Department of Justice. Not only lots of paperwork, but layers of lawyers.

So when my colleague from New Mexico says that we need rules of the road for this program that has been so crucial to our security, frankly, I am proud to support her.

Let me conclude with a quote from CIA Director Michael Hayden: ``Had this program (the NSA surveillance) been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the al Qaeda operatives in the United States and we would have identified them as such. The NSA program allows faster movement than is possible under

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me. It is quite stunning that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle describe this as a broad, sweeping authority, and that under the NSA program, somehow the President can go on fishing expeditions.

The NSA program applies only to international calls and only when those calls involve the telephone number of a known al Qaeda operative. So if it is someone from Hezbollah or some other group, you cannot do it. It has to be al Qaeda.

Well, I will tell you, if a call is going from a known terrorist al Qaeda operative in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan to America, I want to know. I want to know what they are saying. If there is anything London taught us, it is that we need to know. And we need to know to be able to stop actions from happening that threaten and endanger our people.

The second thing is, the persistent, repeated claim on the other side of the

aisle that somehow a FISA court application is a snap of the fingers. Brian Cunningham, former CIA official and Clinton-appointed Federal prosecutor: NSA cannot lawfully under FISA listen to a single syllable until it can prove to the Attorney General, usually in writing, that it can jump through each and every one of FISA's procedural and substantive hoops.

And those procedural and substantive hoops mean that the operative at the National Security Agency has to decide there is an issue, has to put it in writing. The lawyers of NSA have to agree. They have to provide paperwork that goes to the lawyers of the Department of Justice.

I mean, there are lots of steps to this process. And to imagine that this can be done rapidly, it often takes weeks from what I have heard in briefings. It can take longer than that. To believe that this can be done in 72 hours and protect our people is to close your eyes to the reality of the terrible danger that terrorism possess to people in America and throughout the world.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support this legislation; and I am very pleased that it is a bipartisan approach to strengthening our Child and Family Services Improvement Act.

We have heard a great deal during our work on the Human Resources Subcommittee about the Federal Government spending a lot of money reimbursing States to remove children from their homes and place them in foster care. If the State does not remove the child under our Federal foster care program, the Federal Government keeps the funds. It is the only Federal program that actually pays States to remove children from their homes. That is why this legislation is so critical and so important.

Unlike the problematic Federal foster care system, the money in Safe and Stable Families goes to States to target at-risk families, helping States treat the child in their homes, prevent abuse and neglect, and adjust the entire family system to place child outcomes and family permanence above family breakups and foster care.

Pediatricians and teachers will tell you they know early on which families will struggle. We need more community based solutions focused on earlier intervention as well as treatment and care management, which is why I am pleased we are reauthorizing this important legislation and adding a number of provisions to it. One will add $40 million annually. Twenty million of this money will go to increase the number of home visits caseworkers make to at-risk families. This will certainly strengthen the preventative and care quality of our family support systems.

But the other $20 million will increase funding for substance abuse treatment, and I am particularly pleased about that $20 million. As the former Chair of a child guidance clinic many years ago, ever since that day right up to the present day, most experts in this field will tell you that where a family is having difficulty, there is substance abuse. Some member of that family is probably having trouble with alcohol or more serious drugs. So I am very pleased that we are putting some additional dollars behind making substance abuse treatment available to members of these families as we also move to a more holistic approach to strengthening families to prevent the outplacement of children in foster care.

I also want to mention the extension of the Court Improvement Program because this has made a very great difference at the local level in our ability to manage these families, to help these families, to put the appropriate services in place to support them, and has also revealed the great lack of community based services to the court in the service of these families. So that is a very important provision that was introduced by my colleague, Congresswoman Deb Pryce. As a former judge, she understood the great need for us to better educate the judiciary on the options for children and families, to strengthen those families rather than outplace their children.

I also want to commend the chairman and ranking member on their

strengthening of the Mentoring Children of Prisoners Program because this, too, helps prepare the ground for a prisoner to return to an active parenting role and strengthens thereby not only the prisoner but also the children.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi); and I thank the gentlewoman from Guam for her concurrence in moving this study forward; and I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), chairman of the Resources Committee, for allowing this matter to come to the floor of the House early in the week.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1344, the Lower Farmington River and Salmon Brook Wild and Scenic River Study Act. This important legislation builds on the designation of the west branch of the Farmington River which I initiated in 1994. The bill commissions a feasibility study to evaluate whether the lower Farmington River and Salmon Brook qualify as a Wild and Scenic Partnership River within the National Park Service's Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The lower Farmington is defined as a 40-mile stretch between the lower Collinsville Dam in Burlington and the Rainbow Dam in Windsor in the Fifth and First Congressional Districts.

The Farmington River and Salmon Brook's recreational and environmental contributions to our State are well-known and must be protected for future generations. The 14 miles of the Farmington River's West Branch, designated as a Wild and Scenic Partnership River in 1994, is a resounding environmental and economic success. Partnership designation for the West Branch has fostered public-private partnerships to preserve the area's environment and heritage, while yielding the economic benefits to river towns.

The West Branch of the river is home to trout, river otter and bald eagle populations; and historic structures still grace its banks. Fishermen, hikers, canoeists and kayakers enjoy the river and its banks year-round. In addition, a 2003 study by North Carolina State University found that partnership designation resulted in millions in economic activity and increased property values in the river towns of Barkhamsted, Canton, Colebrook, Hartland, and New Hartford.

I hope to see the rest of the Farmington River, as well as Salmon Brook, enjoy similar success. This new initiative is an ideal way to extend that protection and showcase the river's unique cultural and recreational resources, including native American archaeological sites and the Farmington River Canal remnants.

The Lower Farmington also offers recreational opportunities and has been the site of U.S. Olympic Team white water slalom trials. Additionally, the river is home to native brook trout and the slimy sculpin, two fish species only found in areas of high-quality water.

The study of the river is an essential step forward in the designation process. With its strong bipartisan support, I also would like to thank the Resources Committee for bringing this bill forward. I encourage my colleagues to support the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the leadership and congregates of the Plainville United Methodist Church on the occasion of its 125th anniversary.

Every day, the members of the Plainville United Methodist Church give testament to the church's mission to faithfully participate in the ministries of the church through their prayers, presence, gifts and service.

This mission began in the late 1870s when ``The People called Methodist'' began their witness in Plainville. A tent was used as their place of worship while the church was constructed. On December 26, 1881, the cornerstone was laid for the old building on Canal and Broad Streets, and the edifice was made ready for occupancy on November 15 of the following year.

For many families and communities, the beliefs held and shared in places of worship play an important role in their daily lives. The congregation of the United Methodist Church has proven through the years that its faith is as firm and unshakeable as the foundation of the building in which it worships today. I hope that the 125th anniversary celebration represents the beginning of many more years of worship and community for the Plainville United Methodist Church and the many individuals and families who comprise its congregation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Town of Burlington, Connecticut, on the occasion of its bicentennial.

The Town of Burlington emerged from its incorporation in 1806 as a dynamic community. Although the young town relied heavily on agriculture through its small farms, it was also home to several mills and factories, producing goods ranging from muskets to mantel clocks to cider brandy. Today, as many small businesses continue to grow and prosper in Burlington, I would like to commend the many generations of hard-working people who have helped to set such high standards of entrepreneurship and initiative throughout the town's history.

Many outstanding individuals have hailed from Burlington over the past two centuries. Among them were Samuel Monce, inventor of the glass cutter; Colonel Ralph L. Gezelman, who was responsible for organizing the supply shipments for the D-Day invasion; and Herman Humphrey; whose leadership at Amherst College helped transform that school into the fine institution that it is today.

Mr. Speaker, I commend this fine community for its innumerable accomplishments over the course of its first 200 years. As one of the fastest growing towns in Connecticut, Burlington not only has a rich history behind it, but a promising future as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this Pension Protection Act of 2006. Not only does it ensure that employers and unions will fund their plans, but it enables individuals to make a much greater effort toward providing for their retirement security as well.

Nothing is more important to Americans than the gut-wrenching issue of being secure in their old age. It is important to seniors, it is important to their families, it is important to young people to know that they can plan for the future. And it is a pity that only 50 percent of America's workers participate in pension plans. This bill makes a simple change that will result in 85 to 90 percent of working Americans who work for companies with pension plans participating in those plans, as opposed to 50 percent. That is big. That is important. It is a simple mechanism, but it will help many, many more young people get into those pension plans, take advantage of employer contributions, and prepare for their retirement.

It also does something else we don't know much about, we don't pay attention to it, we don't think about it: it makes permanent the saver's credit. If you don't make much money, putting money aside for retirement is really hard. We have a little plan by which the government gives you a dollar for every dollar you save for low- and middle-income earners. This makes that permanent, and that will enable us to grow that program appropriately. It also indexes it to inflation so those people can never be robbed of the power of this help in saving for their retirement.

This is not a perfect bill, but it does some really important things for working people and it helps us think ahead. We have a lot of people with 401(k) plans, and at 65, they are blowing them. One of the things this bill does is to encourage new products to plan for our future by changing the tax treatment of 401(k) money invested in an annuity that can provide a paycheck for life or cover long-term care if needed.

We need to be thinking anew about all the challenges of retirement, not just the income challenge.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation. I am proud, yes, for raising the minimum wage by 40 percent.

It is simple. Working families deserve a pay raise, and tonight we pass a 40 percent increase in the minimum wage. But this bill helps workers in many other ways.

A permanent estate tax protects American jobs. In my district, an old manufacturing part of the Nation, most of our manufacturers, high quality, high skilled, are small and family owned. But to compete as a supplier in a global economy, they have to be good, and that takes expensive equipment. Dad dies, you have to sell off. You have to sell that family-owned business because you cannot afford the taxes. A permanent estate tax will let that family business survive and those jobs survive because you know what happens? Those small manufacturers get bought and the jobs leave town. They go to a bigger plant. They get merged in. So if you want to protect jobs in your town, we need a permanent estate tax because that way small family-owned manufacturers can survive.

But we need this bill because it protects global jobs as well. If we do not extend the research and development tax credit in a world in which some countries write it off completely, we will not be at the cutting edge of product development. We will not be the leaders in communications technology, in clean-up technology, and in medical technology. We protect jobs and that helps the American workers. That is what this bill is all about.

We also protect the opportunity for American workers to get the education they need to compete. That $4,000 tax deduction for education expenses, that is building the future. And it is not just people who can go to college. It is the work opportunities tax credit. It is the welfare-to-work tax credit.

This is about working America. This is a tax bill about working America, about opportunity, about equity, about fairness, and about protecting our jobs. And, yes, it raises the minimum wage.

I am proud to vote for it. I urge Members on both sides of the aisle to vote for it because this is good policy by a strong Congress, and we need to get through the Senate and to the President's desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

I rise in strong support of the legislation and would submit my opening statement for the Record.

I would like to comment on some of the comments of my colleagues made earlier. Before I do that, let me just take a moment to thank Chairman Barton and Representative Nathan Deal and my own chairman, Chairman Bill Thomas, for their support and effort in the development of this bill. But instead of doing my opening statement, let me comment on some of the things that have been said to this point.

First of all, on the issue of privacy, this bill sets the groundwork to improve privacy by putting in place a study of State privacy laws and Federal privacy laws so we can see what is working, what is not working, how similar are the State laws, where might their differences inhibit the security of a nationwide system. In other words, it gives us the knowledge we need to upgrade our HIPAA system if, indeed, that is necessary. It may tell us that is not necessary. But it would be absolutely irresponsible to move ahead without the information that will be developed as a result of this legislation. HIPAA already provides absolute protection of our health information.

What we want to know is when you do what this bill envisions, that is, you create a nationwide interoperable health information system to put that in place and secure personal health data, are there changes you need to make in Federal law? Are there commonalities in State laws that need to be brought closer? Are there any changes, indeed, that need to be made to absolutely secure individual personal health data as we move to this system? That is the issue on privacy.

Secondly, this bill adopts a whole new coding system, the ICD-10 system. Under today's system, you cannot tell whether a hospital has made a great leap forward in quality because they are doing a better job or simply because they have changed an operative technique from an invasive operation to a noninvasive approach to that surgical procedure. So we have to know more about what we are doing so we can talk honestly to ourselves about quality, so we can upgrade quality, and so we can pay accurately. This bill does that.

This bill sets up an Office of Technology, and we need that office to assure that the public and private sectors work together to create an environment in which great companies in America compete to provide the best possible technology, all of which becomes interoperable.

So without a Federal office involved, without standards being set, we will not have that interoperable system that we know is going to be so important to improve the quality of our health care system.

Not only do we need to have standards; we need to accelerate dissemination because the power of health information technology is not in a single provider. It is in the system-wide impact of it. So this bill helps disseminate that technology in part through its grant provision. But, realistically, the government is not going to pay for this. The system is going to do it because it creates such system efficiencies that it pays the system back. However, in addition to grants we encourage the system to be able to dissiminate technology by allowing consortium to develop, by allowing a hospital in a small town to work with the big employers in that town, the big insurers in that town, to get together to get a good deal on technology or on several technologies so that technologies are appropriate to the providers but are interoperable.

So this not only deals with the development of standards, with the dissemination of technology, with building the knowledge base we need to ensure the privacy of personal health information. It moves to a more modern coding system, and it will deliver to us a dramatic revolutionary increase in the quality of health care available in America. It will not only reduce medical errors and eliminate adverse drug interactions, saving millions of dollars, reduce administrative costs by billions, but also allow us to do chronic disease management for our seniors, care management for the severely ill, and upgrade the quality of diagnosis and

treatment and return ourselves to a patient-centered affordable health care system.

So this is an important bill that sets the foundation for the future. And I am astounded at my colleagues on the other side of the aisle opposing it because it does not do things we are not yet prepared to do.

Today the House of Representatives has the opportunity to pass legislation that will lay the foundation for a new era in health care. Systemwide adoption of health information technology will dramatically improve the quality of care. It will reduce medical errors, reduce duplication and unnecessary care, and bring cutting edge information to the service of doctors as they diagnose and treat their patients. It will also eliminate many of the administrative inefficiencies that characterize the American health system and strengthen and protect the security and confidentiality of health information systems. In short it will fundamentally advance the practice of medicine and improve the quality of care all Americans will have access to.

Unfortunately, the adoption of health information technology has been frustratingly slow. Since the full potential of this technology can only be harnessed if it is widely disseminated amongst all types and sizes of providers, it is imperative to pass H.R. 4157 to speed the adoption and diffusion of health information technology.

This legislation is modest in scope. It lays the groundwork for fundamental change by removing the barriers to private sector adoption. It provides for a national framework for the development and widespread dissemination of interoperable health information technology by creating an office to coordinate the development of a national health information system. It promotes common-sense cooperation between doctors and hospitals and other providers by allowing entities to provide physicians and others with hardware, software, training or IT support services. It updates diagnosis coding systems for the digital age and provides an expedited process for ongoing updating of technology standards. It begins a process for creating greater commonality amongst state and federal security and confidentiality laws and regulations in order to better protect and strengthen the exchange and health information. Additionally, it provides grants for the adoption of health information technology to coordinate care among the uninsured and to implement technology in small physician practices. Finally, it includes studies and reports on the expansion of telehealth services in Medicare.

Health information technology touches every aspect of the health care system. It will enable us to provide disease management for all those with chronic illnesses, care management for those with severe, complex illnesses, and provide access to preventive and appropriate care for the uninsured. It will reduce medical errors, adverse drug interactions, and decisive support to improve the quality of diagnosing and treating patients.

The role technology can play in the systems of health care will be as revolutionary as the role technology has played in health care research and treatments. H.R. 4157 removes barriers to greater adoption of information technology in the health system so the long overdue potential of technology can be realized in health care.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. English).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 40 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are acting as if we had technology that, if we only had the money, we could implement. That just isn't so. Secretary Levitt and Dr. Brailer have led a phenomenal aggressive, strong effort and through their effort, working with the public and private sector, they have established standards for electronic health records and for E-prescribing.

But there are a lot more standards to be set. And in this bill, we do have a date certain, but it is way off in 2009. I think we will get there before then. But, as important, we put in this bill a very progressive, accelerated way of updating those standards, because this is going to be about continuous improvement.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle that talk about minority health are absolutely right. Unless we get health information technology implanted and we move to chronic disease management and health care management, we cannot meet the needs of care our minority population need. That is why this bill is so important.

Mr. Chairman, yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Hulshof).

(Mr. HULSHOF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I ask how much time is remaining.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy).

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of our time to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition to the amendment. I don't intend to oppose the amendment. I am just claiming the time.

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman's amendment points out why health information technology is so terribly important to making the next leap forward in quality that medical science has made available to us.

It will take a lot more teaching of patients. It will take a much different relationship between nurses and medical personnel and patients to make sure that they have the guidance and support they need to prevent their disease from getting worse or to follow a regimen that will prevent their chronic illness from compromising their lives.

So this issue of communication is going to be a bigger issue in the next round of the American health care system even than it is today.

But I would like to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania for some questions.

Mr. Chairman, we certainly are willing to accept the gentleman's amendment. It is a very thoughtful and important one.

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

I rise to support this amendment.

I claim time in opposition.

I claim time to say we accept the amendment. It is a very thoughtful amendment and an important one, and we thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns).

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

First of all, the gentleman from Illinois has brought a very thoughtful amendment to this bill. The information that he wants included in electronic health record is extremely important information, and I support your amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. I understand there are some technical adjustments that your staff and our staff talked about that we will work on.

With that understanding, I am pleased to support the gentleman's amendment.

Yes, I claim time in opposition to the amendment. Although I do not oppose the amendment, I would like to comment.

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

I would like to comment on the amendment. Mr. Price has been a very active and fine mind as we developed this bill, and I welcome his amendment.

I do think we need to evaluate new methodologies and procedures very carefully; and as a physician, he brings to this issue a lot of information and a lot of concern about both advances and also problems that could develop.

I will say one of the strengths of the bill that has not been talked about on the floor here today is that it does move us to the ICD 10 system from the ICD 9 system, and that will give us a great deal more ability to look at quality, to judge quality, to pay for quality, to analyze actually what series of symptoms responded best to precisely what treatment approach.

But there are also shoals in every water, and I think your study is very appropriate. The ICD 10 system is now not only more glandular, but we also think it will help us to reduce fraud and abuse. But no matter how many positive things we think it will contribute, it is also wise to know and watch for and evaluate whether or not it is creating problems that we did not anticipate.

So I welcome this study, and I thank Mr. Price for his contribution.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. First of all, of all the systems in America that really need this kind of attention, it is our Medicaid system because they deal mostly with elderly and poor whose health has long been neglected.

So I know this is going to give us a lot of very good insight and information into how we can both improve the quality and reduce the cost of care in our Medicaid system, and I congratulate the gentlewoman and her cosponsors for bringing this before us today.

Miss McMORRIS. Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, remember, adoption of HIPAA was a multi-year process, very controversial, very difficult, 50,000 comments just on the regulations.

My legislation explicitly does not change HIPAA.

The behavior described of hacking in and revealing what would be under HIPAA is a fine of $250,000 and 10 years in jail. So HIPAA is there. It protects our privacy.

What this bill does is to put in place a study to look at what has happened in the States, what has happened between State law and Federal law, to look and see if there are things that need to be done to create greater commonality amongst all these laws so that the nationwide interoperable health information system will protect health information to the current or a higher standard. So in the bill it has to be to a higher standard. But we maintain current law. There is absolute protection.

And, remember, this specific approach was rejected by Donna Shalala and President Clinton; so do not take this vote lightly, folks. What you are voting for is a radical change in a law that is terribly important to all of us and we maintain in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) for the opportunity to speak in support of this bill and particularly to thank him and to thank the chairman, Mr. Buyer, and the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Miller, for the work they have done to address the needs of our veterans and to accommodate the measures of myself and other colleagues' ideas we have brought to your attention in this bill.

I am particularly grateful that you have included my bill in this reauthorization and will extend a provision for government furnished grave markers, because this bill arises from the experience of my constituents and the distress of families I represent at the demise of an old benefit for at least a certain number of years.

The grave marker benefit enables all veterans to receive a headstone or grave marker commemorating their service to our country, at no cost to their families. There was a time when this benefit was available to all veterans, and then it was not available for a variety of reason, although it was uneven. It was available to some veterans and not others because of the regulatory complexity of the governing of a simple benefit.

In 2001, it was enacted and 7,500 families nationwide took advantage of this provision, and that number continues to grow each year.

One of the families that was enabled to benefit after 2001 was the family of Agostino Guzzo, a World War II veteran from my home State of Connecticut, who inspired the legislation in 2001 and who has inspired this legislation that we pass here today as part of this larger bill. It was his son that brought to my attention the quirk in the law and law procedures that was allowing some veterans, while denying other veterans an enduring recognition of their service to our country.

Like you, I remain committed to providing America's veterans with benefits that fully recognize the sacrifices these men and women made in defense of our Nation. Our gratitude should be expressed not only in the education and employment benefits we provide them in life, but also through permanent remembrance of their service that we provide upon their passing.

I thank the committee for including the grave marker provision in this bill, and I thank Secretary Nicholson and the VA for offering it their enthusiastic endorsement.

I urge all my colleagues to join me in passing this important benefit for America's veterans as part of this larger upgrading of other veterans benefits.

I thank you for allowing me this opportunity, and I thank the committee for its vigilance by Members on both sides of the aisle in regard to the interests of our veterans and the ever-changing needs of them as they age and as the shape of their lives change.

So I thank you, I thank the staff Members, and I appreciate this opportunity to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of overriding the President's veto of the embryonic stem cell research bill.

Every time I go to a classroom in my district, I tell those kids, knowledge is power, and one of the reasons America is such a great Nation is because knowledge and freedom couple to drive the frontiers of knowledge forward, as they have in science and medicine. And here is another frontier. Yes, we will push forward. The President cannot fence in knowledge, the pursuit of knowledge, in a free society.

But as we push forward, that research will not be covered and guided by the ethical code developed by NIH. As we push forward, millions of dollars will be wasted on building a parallel infrastructure of expensive equipment so the State and Federal dollars and the private and Federal dollars can be kept separate.

It is a tragedy that our President has vetoed this important bill, and I will vote to override.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding.

And I am delighted to be here on the floor with two of my colleagues who have been tremendous advocates of this free trade agreement and of the concept of free trade, the principle of free trade internationally and in our country.

I want to make two general points. I am sorry that I wasn't able to be here earlier, and I do not want to repeat what my colleagues have said. But there are two important overall points that I want to make that, even if you have made them, are worth thinking again about.

First is why free trade is important. Retirees simply do not, by definition, buy enough consumer goods to drive an economy our size. We are accustomed to a standard of living that is, frankly, the highest in the world. Our children expect to grow up and participate as adults in an economy that is thriving, in well-paying jobs that can provide them with a standard of living that my generation has enjoyed. Yet as the number of retirees explodes and the number of young people in the workforce contracts, our own Nation cannot provide the demand for goods that can produce the overall gross national product that will assure the standard of living we are accustomed to. So future generations are going to be more dependent on trade than we have been, and we must open markets for their goods.

The American population will not be able to buy the amount of stuff that would drive an economy that can produce the standard of living that we have enjoyed. So if we do not have consumers around the world, and, remember, the great majority of consumers are outside the United States, if we do not cultivate them, if they do not open their markets to our products, then we cannot sustain the level of economic well- being, the standard of living to which we have been accustomed, and we thereby disadvantage our children.

This small agreement with one small country will allow consumer and industrial goods to enter that country 100 percent duty free. One hundred percent duty free. And agricultural products will enter 87 percent duty free and over 10 years reach 100 percent duty free. This is a small market, but we are making these agreements with country after country after country. And most startling, our exports are growing most rapidly and the majority of our growth in export goods is with those countries that we have negotiated trade agreements with. Now, that stands to reason because if you sell your goods into a country where there is no duty, they are going to do better than if you sell them into a country where there is a 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent duty that pushes that price right up.

So in the big picture, our children, our grandchildren cannot do well unless we lay the foundation by opening markets for American products all across the world. So our economic well-being depends on free trade agreements. Those free trade agreements, and the gentlemen here on the floor with me tonight have been strong advocates of fair trade agreements, these free trade agreements address labor standards, environmental standards. We are the only Nation in the whole world that pushes those issues in the negotiation of trade agreements with other countries, and we are reaching new standards as we move forward and gain more experience.

Now we do not just require labor standards. We help nations build institutions to enforce those standards. So we look at do you have a department of labor. We look at does the department of labor have sufficient staff to enforce the law. We look at do the regulations take seriously the responsibility of enforcement. And we literally help nations not only understand how labor standards help them deliver the benefits of world trading to all in their society, but we help them understand that just having the standards to support all their people is not enough.

You do have to be able to enforce those standards. You do have to be able to take action against the exploitive employer. So these trade agreements are good for our kids. They are good for peoples of the world.

And that brings me to my second major point. Our security depends on agreements like that we have negotiated with Oman. The 9/11 Commission report cited our Middle Eastern free trade agreements and call for action on ``a comprehensive U.S. strategy that should include economic policies that encourage development, more open societies, and opportunities for people to improve the lives of their families and enhance the prospects of their children's future.'' In other words, the 9/11 report was saying if you do not address the causes that are creating terrorism and the willingness to be terrorists in other societies, you cannot solve the problem.

And I want to just conclude by saying how very impressed I was when Ways and Means Committee members a little less than 2 years ago made a trip to the Middle Eastern nations that were interested in trade agreements and whose other trading agreements were about to expire.

We knew that they would need to think about this in advance carefully.

We know that participating in trade agreements means other countries have to modernize their law to meet high international standards. We knew it would take time, and we wanted to be sure to alert these other countries to the challenges that lay ahead for them in negotiating these free trade agreements and to the enormous benefits that would accrue to their people

in not only the present but future generations.

I must say, I was extremely impressed with the Sultan of Oman. He understood exactly what this was going to mean to his people. He is one of the Middle East leaders who understands that oil is a limited resource and he must prepare a broader base for economic success for his people in his own country, and he is doing some of the work in the more advanced areas of desalinization, thinking about the importance of water to his people and the demand in the world economy, particularly in the Middle East, for potable water.

He is a very forward-looking man. He is very committed to participation in the political process by women as well as men. He has appointed successful women to his top council. They do things slightly differently because they are coming from a different path, but he was very proud to have started worker committees. That was his initiative, because he knows workers have to have a better voice. They have to be free to talk about the problems, to work with management, to work with owners for everyone's success.

In this agreement, he has moved light years ahead, looking at the labor laws of other countries, understanding what it is going to take to provide the kind of support and protection that working people need in order for the benefits of trade to affect the lives, the quality of lives, the hopes and dreams, the opportunities of all the people in each society.

So when you look at not only the way this agreement opens markets and what that means for our people, when you look at what this means for our security as this great friend of ours, for over 170 years, and a leader in the region in economic and governance reforms, what they accomplish by moving forward into new thinking and new institutions to modernize their economy, all embodied in this trade agreement, you know it means not only greater prosperity for his country and for our country, it means greater peace for the world.

Free trade is about peace and prosperity. It must be fair trade. It must help all take part in the benefits of the trade agreement.

This is a remarkable agreement, and I very much appreciate the two gentlemen on the floor here, Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin and Mr. English of Pennsylvania, for their diligent participation in all the consultative processes, because Congress is a part of developing these free trade agreements, that make these agreements possible. Your knowledge and expertise is truly a great service that you have given this country and that you have given our friend, Oman.