Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Committee on Rules for making this amendment in order. This is a very important issue because it involves the balancing of conflicting rights, the right of the fetus and the right of the mother; and it is because balancing rights is the very hardest thing a democracy has to do that this is a constitutional issue. It ought to matter to the proponents that every single State law has been found wanting and been overturned because it does not balance these rights fairly. It does not allow the mother, the woman, to consider her health; but the system can only consider her life and every court has overturned every single State law for this constitutional deficiency.

Some Members wonder why I am so passionate about this subject. I can tell Members it is not because I am pro-abortion. I oppose abortion. I do not like abortion. But my husband trained as an obstetrician and gynecologist in this country when abortion was illegal.

I do not know what song, Henry, you would like to have on your side, but I wonder what song you would sing to this family. My husband stood by the bedside of a woman, the mother of five children with her husband sitting there weeping as she died of an aseptic abortion because abortions were not legal and she could not get the care she desperately sought. But she and her husband, in accord with their beliefs and conscience, had sought a very early termination to preserve their ability to parent their five children.

And, yes, he saw a beautiful young woman, 22 years old, single, die of an aseptic abortion.

This bill, because it is so broad, will have such a chilling effect on the availability of abortions that there will be many forced to go back alley and will die as a consequence. I think that matters. I think there is a balance of competing rights here. That is why the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology said D&X may be the best and most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a mother. A particular circumstance. We do not know that circumstance. We will not be in the operating room when that circumstance comes up, and yet we are going to tell the physician you cannot do this.

Do Members know what the physician might do instead that would be perfectly legal? He can do a hysterectomy. He will have taken care of what he considers to be a life-threatening situation without running the risk of suit, which we are putting on him now; without running the risk of jail time, which we are putting on him now. This is not in the interest of the woman's life or her health.

In my substitute, we take a very evenhanded approach. We balance the rights, we allow the exception for life and serious adverse health consequences. This is not lighthearted, and I think it is a slap at all women that anyone would put out that out of fear of open space, that that would represent an adverse impact on your health. That is ridiculous and it is demeaning to women. But in certain situations you need to be able to consider health as well as life. Our amendment is evenhanded. It bans all forms of abortion after viability and all procedures equally.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to correct the record to some extent. It was said that the case examples that I gave would have been covered under the underlying bill. I want to make clear that they would not have been covered, because those women were dying of the infections caused by being forced to get back-alley abortions under unsterile circumstances. If they had been allowed to be in a hospital and get the legal treatments that are available under our law, they would not have gotten the infection and they would not have died. But this underlying bill denies them that right because its definition is so broad. It reaches way down to fairly early decisions to terminate. So I do not accept that those women's lives would be saved under the underlying bill.

I also regret that one of my colleagues, a very skilled colleague who himself has a lot of experience, maintained that there were no other techniques other than late-term abortions that could be used. There are other techniques that are just as harsh, they look just as bad on a poster, and the underlying bill does not ban them.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for giving me this opportunity to support what I think is a very strong tax bill that will stimulate the economy, provide the jobs we need in Connecticut, but most importantly address the crisis that manufacturing is facing in Connecticut. We have never on this floor passed such extraordinary bonuses for investment in capital equipment. As chairman of the oversight subcommittee my first term in the majority on the oversight subcommittee on the Committee on Ways and Means, I held a hearing and small businesses said, if you could just increase the amount we could expense, if you would increase it to $50,000, you would see us take off. If you could increase it to $100,000, you would see what would happen. This bill does that for small businesses. This bill allows the expensing of 50 percent of capital investment for all other companies. This bill goes to the heart of what it takes to create jobs. And that is why this bill is about restoring opportunity to people in Connecticut who are unemployed.

I am very proud of my Governor who just vetoed the second tax bill in 6 months passed by the Democrat-controlled House and Senate in Connecticut. You cannot tax your way out of recession. You have to help people change their lives.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Madam Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Sanchez amendment. This is not about abortion. I know people differ as to whether they would have an abortion or anyone in their family would have an abortion. This is not about that. There is no State in our entire Nation that bans the right for women in America to choose to have a termination of a pregnancy. Not one. It is a legal medical procedure that is available to women in America if they are stationed in America. The idea that we would deny our servicewomen this right because they are stationed abroad. Have you ever walked through a Chinese hospital? I have. Do you want a wife or a daughter to have to be hospitalized to have a procedure in a hospital whose sanitary conditions are scandalous and whose people are poorly trained? That is wrong. Our servicemen and women should have access to the same legal bundle of medical procedures abroad as they have here. This is not a matter of taxpayer dollars, either. They have to pay for it. And it is costly. Your daughter gets date-raped by a young soldier. You want her in that military hospital, high quality, if she needs that pregnancy terminated. This is cruel, it is wrong, it is unequal; and it is not about abortion. I support the Sanchez amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill and congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) on a very strong and timely proposal to help people and to get our economy moving.

In my district, manufacturing is struggling. Small manufacturers are at risk. Jobs from those industries, the machine tool industry, the electronic components industry, the aircraft industry are hemorrhaging, reaching 20 percent in the last 2 years. We have got to act.

This bill provides not only the right to go back for 5 years and, carry net operating losses back to recover taxes paid, but also some dramatic, incentives, the most generous expensing provisions enhanced depreciation bonuses, to help companies invest in the equipment they need to compete with China and the equipment they need to hire more people. You can go back and recapture. In my district a lot of small manufacturing companies are losing money this year. They lost money last year. But now they can go back and recapture tax dollars to keep themselves going, to keep employment up, to stay alive during this period or to invest in new machinery and equipment to make themselves more productive and more competitive in the future.

This is the best bill for manufacturing that has ever come to the floor of the House in my 21 years in this Congress, because it puts more money in the pockets of the people of America through accelerating the brackets and it strengthens small manufacturing. The capital gains and dividend provisions will also strengthen the economy and provide some real stimulus at a time when economic activity is all too flat and the number of unemployed is all too great.

So if you want a strong manufacturing and a vibrant economy to get moving, this is a good bill at the right time.

Mr. Speaker, today I introduced legislation to address a major obstacle our nation's veterans face in obtaining comprehensive health care and access to prescription drugs.

According to the Inspector General of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA pharmacy benefit is the primary reason that veterans without service-connected disabilities use VA healthcare services. Nearly 90 percent of these veterans have access to private health care and private physicians, yet they wait in lengthy lines at the VA in order to be re-examined and re-tested so they can receive their prescription drugs through the VA. This causes veterans with a prescription already in hand to wait weeks, even months before it is filled and creates a backlog of veterans waiting for doctor appointments.

My legislation would ease the process by which veterans with private health insurance or Medicare coverage obtain prescription drugs through the VA healthcare system. Specifically, it would allow an eligible veteran, with a prescription written by a private physician, to fill that prescription at a VA pharmacy from the current VA formulary. My legislation differs from other prescription drug access proposals because it specifically limits the prescriptions to drugs listed under the VA formulary in order to limit the cost of implementation. Under current law, the VA does not have the authority to dispense prescriptions written by private sector physicians.

As chairman of the Ways & Means health subcommittee, I recognize the unique challenge that the VA faces in its mission to provide comprehensive quality health care service to veterans. However, strict adherence to that same mission has resulted in lengthy delays in the delivery of quality care to both veterans with private health coverage and those veterans that are entirely dependent on the VA as their healthcare provider.

In order to ensure timely delivery of health care, the VA must focus on the barriers veterans face in receiving care including streamlining access to prescription drugs.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to the outstanding accomplishments of the University of Connecticut Women's Basketball Team, who defeated the University of Tennessee Volunteers 73-68 to win the NCAA tournament on April 8, 2003.

I would like to offer special congratulations to Head Coach Geno Auriemma who won his second consecutive national title. After losing four senior starters last year, junior Diana Taurasi took control of the team and led them to victory, scoring 28 points.

Mr. Speaker, these extraordinary young women do not need me to tell them that they are champions, or that their accomplishments are appreciated. This year was supposed to be a year of rebuilding, but the Huskies were not going to rest on their laurels. Over the past 2 years they have only lost one game.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to point out that although they are young adults themselves the outstanding achievements of the this team offers a fine example to our nation's young people. I applaud them for all of their achievements both on and off the court.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the outstanding accomplishments of the University of Connecticut women's basketball team, who defeated the University of Tennessee Volunteers 73 to 68 to win the NCAA tournament on April 8, 2030.

These young women demonstrated throughout their season an ability to focus, to maintain effort even when losing, to work as a team and to hone their individual skills that was truly inspiring, month after month.

That much said, the Lady Vols did a fantastic job as well, and Connecticut admires and respects their skill and ability each year.

I would note that without title IX, none of these young women would have had the opportunity to develop into world class athletes.

I would like to offer, as well, special congratulations to head coach Geno Auriemma, who won his second consecutive national title. After losing four senior starters last year, junior Diana Taurasi took control of the team and led them to victory, scoring 28 points herself.

Mr. Speaker, these extraordinary young women do not need me to tell them they are champions or that their accomplishments are appreciated. This year was supposed to be a year of rebuilding, but the Huskies were not going to rest on their laurels. Over the past years, they have only lost one game.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to point out that the outstanding achievements of this team offer a fine example to our Nation's young people. We can rise to incredible heights if we are able to combine individual excellence of skill and dedication with the communication and overarching commitment to shared goals that the small word ``teamwork'' denotes.

I applaud the UCONN Huskies for their remarkable achievements, both on and off the court, individually and as a team. We are proud of each one of you, and of our UCONN Huskies.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. The National Academy of Sciences identified 13 readily-available technologies, each one of which would improve fuel economy from .5 percent to 12 percent. Three major automakers, GM, Ford and Toyota, have already announced plans to introduce vehicles that would get 35 to 40 miles per gallon within the next 2 years.

New technologies can improve fuel economy without reducing weight and size. It is irresponsible to pass a national energy policy that does not reduce the use of gasoline because 70 percent of the oil we use is to power our cars.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, and I rise in strong opposition to the amendment.

We are talking here about a very small area, the coastal plain area; and as we can see, there is a lot of area, a huge area already available for leasing for oil and gas drilling. Most of that has not been explored.

I oppose the amendment because I believe this coastal plain ought to be preserved and protected against oil and gas drilling. The Reagan administration called that little coastal plain the biological heart of the refuge. Indeed, the best ecosystem at this temperature in this whole hemisphere exists on coastal plain. It is a remarkable area. But look what 2,000 acres of drilling does because that is what this amendment does; it restricts drilling to 2,000 acres.

Two thousand acres would allow eight Alpine-type fields, 19 satellite fields, 26 satellite fields of another type, two docks, so on and so forth. My colleagues, you can see how once we site those various fields and the roads and waterways and pipelines that have to connect them and the support system for all the people, we do make a huge impact on the coastal plain, and it will no longer be the pristine coastal plain it is today. That kind of impact will change the environment quite dramatically.

Second point, this is not an area rich in water. In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife study describes this whole ANWR as a technically dry area, with less than 5 inches of precipitation each year. In addition, the coastal plain has few lakes. They are shallow and unevenly distributed.

One has to get water to build ice roads, and because the lakes are unevenly distributed and shallow, drilling pads would have to be sited all across the region due to the distribution of the water resources. Because the lakes are shallow, if the necessary amount of liquid is taken out from under the ice cap during the winter, and with five inches of precipitation annually, the lakes will not be able to refill to a health level.

So one of the reasons drilling will be so environmentally devastating to this coastal plain is because it will destroy the water resources of the region and make them unable to support the ecosystem, that system so unique to this area, so valuable to our hemisphere, and such a remarkable natural resource that it deserves continued preservation.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/4\ minutes.

Mr. Chairman, today's vote really is about our values, the ability to balance the value we place on critical environmental resources, unique ecosystems supporting literally hundreds of thousands of species of animals, birds and fishes, and the value we place on a little more oil. Choices must be made and there are good alternatives to the small amount of economically recoverable oil in the refuge. But there are no alternatives for those who depend on its ecosystem, nor for the refuge as a unique national natural resource.

Alternatives? You bet there are alternatives. In the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve area, there are over 50 million undeveloped acres available for oil drilling. There is a proposed notice of sale for 9.8 million acres in the Beaufort Sea. The State of Alaska is planning to hold annual lease sales covering 14.1 million acres of land. I could go on with a long list, but I do not have time.

In addition to all these undeveloped lands available for drilling in Alaska and that region, there are also alternative sources of energy. Fuel cells. There are new technologies that would give us more miles per gallon. That are excellent alternatives to drilling in this pristine area. There are no alternatives to preserving the ecological vitality and integrity of this region.

In that area, can you imagine what it will take, the roads it will take, the drilling pads it will take to support drilling rigs weighing 2.2 million pounds? You cannot just build a little old road across a grass field. You have got to get tons and tons of gravel in there. You have got to get support for that level of equipment. These are big outfits. They take a lot of people to support. They take a lot of pipelines to deliver the oil. And, ironically, there is not enough available water in this area to feed the kind of road building that would be necessary.

So there is not even the infrastructure to make good on the promise of oil that those who would develop this area promise. Yet, taking that water will destroy the ecosystems dramatically across the board throughout the region.

So there can be no compromise. Oppose drilling in the ANWR.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the remainder of my time, 45 seconds, to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) for purposes of control.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1104, the Child Abduction Prevention Act. Last Congress the House of Representatives passed parts of this bill, unfortunately these reforms were never taken up by the other body.

Mr. Chairman, the longer I work with this issue of the vulnerability of children to sexual molestation and exploitation, the starker the picture becomes. According to the United States Department of Justice, the number of missing persons reported to law enforcement increased 468 percent in the past 20 years. And every year 3,000 to 5,000 children are kidnapped by sexual predators.

Mr. Chairman, right now while we debate this bill sexual predators are trolling the internet looking for potential victims. They manipulate children, convince them they are a friend, and force the child to not trust anyone else. These predators are serial offenders who often travel to conduct multiple sexual offenses against multiple children.

We need to stop these sexual predators before they can lay a hand on a child, because once a child comes into contact with a predator it is often too late. 3 out of 4 children who are kidnapped and murdered are killed within three hours of their abduction.

Mr. Chairman, the average victim is an 11-year-old-girl with a stable family relationship who has initial contact with the abductor within a quarter mile of her home. Our law enforcement officers are fighting a difficult battle, and this legislation acknowledges that technological advances have fundamentally changed the method through which a sex predator lures a child into an exploitive relationship.

When Detective James Wardwell, from my hometown of New Britain, Connecticut, testified before the Crime Subcommittee on this very issue he told us that as a matter of

course, sex predators want to know who they are communicating with. Invariable, sex predators move their conversations off-line and onto the telephone, especially when they are preparing to meet the child. The authorities need the ability to track these conversations, if we are to effectively protect our children.

In addition to fighting the sexual exploitation of children in the United States, this bill also helps the FBI and the Customs service fight the growing sex tourism industry. More and more Americans are traveling overseas to nations that have limited child prostitution laws or enforcement. Travel agencies have sprung up that cater to these pedophiles, and so called ``situation abusers.'' Just because their intended victims are not American citizens does not absolve us of the need to capture dangerous criminals. These people do not only act on their predatory impulses overseas. They return to the United States emboldened by their experiences. They are often people who commit multiple offenses, with multiple victims. Capturing these dangerous criminals at the earliest opportunity can prevent the needless destruction of the life of any number of children. This bill focuses on the reprehensible agencies which facilitate this travel and makes it easier for law enforcement to track them and their rogue clientele.

We must modernize our laws because sex predators no longer lurk at the school yard. Today they lurk in Internet chatrooms. Today our children are under attack on the Internet, and under siege in chat rooms. Sex predators seek out children on-line, manipulate, meet, molest and murder them. We must act to give our law enforcement agencies all the tools necessary to stop sexual predators before they can strike.

Wiretapping is an effective tool that will prove especially useful in dealing with sex predators and persons involved in the sex tourism industry. Law enforcement officers will still have to present their case to a judge to authorize the use of the wiretap. Wiretapping provides the best physical evidence to secure a conviction and get pedophiles off the street, especially when the child victims are unable to cooperate with authorities. Also, it is worth noting that wiretap transcripts can be used in lieu of a child's testimony when prosecuting these sexual predators.

I urge my colleagues to support the Child Abduction Prevention Act.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise in strong support of this legislation.

Yesterday, on this House floor, we passed legislation that will reduce medical errors by enabling hospitals and other providers to develop systems that identify and present errors. In addition, it will enable us to build an interoperable system of technology that will, for example, eliminate mistakes in filling prescriptions. So yesterday we took a giant step forward toward reforming the very systems that will improve the quality of care we deliver to the people of America and, at the same time, reduce costs of health care.

Today, we need to pass this malpractice reform bill because, again, it will reduce costs by eliminating millions of defensive practices that have developed in our system simply for the purpose of enabling a physician to defend himself in court. By eliminating those defensive actions, we not only reduce costs but we will improve the quality of care patients have available to them.

It is ironic that when we are in a period of rapid change in medicine, where medical science is moving us toward ever-more sophisticated ways of diagnosing and treating illness, we are also reducing access to care through a liability system that cannot distinguish between error in a complex era and malpractice. So we are at the same time improving the quality of health people can get and denying them access to that care.

Ask any woman who has a high-risk pregnancy how hard it is to find an obstetrician who will take a woman with a high-risk pregnancy because of the cost of malpractice insurance. Talk to those doctors who are leaving practice or who are choosing to no longer do certain high-risk operations and procedures in order to keep their malpractice costs within some kind of reasonable bounds. Talk to those people out there in the real world who cannot see enough new patients to pay their gigantic malpractice preimum increases, and you cannot help but conclude that malpractice costs have gotten so out of control, they are now denying access to people in America to advanced health care.

Mr. Chairman, I may not need the whole 3 minutes, but I want very much to talk about this issue of work requirements because, first of all, all the studies show that welfare reform was most successful in the States with the most stringent work requirements. The University of Michigan studied this, certainly no bastion of conservatism. The study by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation also shows that programs that emphasize rapid entry into the workplace leads to more employment and higher earnings.

Now what does this bill that the President has proposed and the committee has disposed of and brought to this floor do about work? It does a very simple thing. It raises the number of hours a person must work from 20 to 24. That is 3 full work days, 8, 16, 24, three full work days, but it raises the work requirement to 40 hours. That is 5 days, but the other 16 hours, Tuesday and Thursday for example, could be used to take classes. The States can count that as work. They can count, in fact, under the bill, mental health treatment as work, substance abuse treatment as work, all those things that are necessary for the person to be able to succeed in a full-time job and to move up the career ladder in that job.

So what this requires of people on welfare is to think about their whole week and how are they going to use the time in that week to create their own future.

Work experience is, without question, a part of that. You need the experience, you need the recommendations, you need to be on site in a workplace to decide whether this is the line of work you want. If you work at a lower-level job in the insurance industry, you get a pretty good idea of whether those career ladders are interesting to you. You start out in a hospital or a nursing home, you get a pretty good idea of whether those career ladders are worth the extra training to work up them.

If you do not work, you are isolated from the real world and from what it takes to advance, what it takes in skill, what it takes in being able to work with a team, what it takes in personal discipline. So work is important. It does help us move forward.

But education, training, money management, a better understanding of career tracks, mental health, substance abuse treatment, all those things, including caring for your own child, can be counted as work.

You know what communities can do with this bill? They can hire skilled child development people to head up after-school programs for children, and then count as work the time that women spend, or welfare recipients, women and men, spend as assistants in those programs so that we can explode the after-school program opportunities for our kids. And that person's children can be in that program. So not only are you with your own children, but you are learning the child development information you need to be a better parent. Every parent needs this.

So this bill creates extraordinary opportunity for human growth and for personal growth. And without creating that opportunity, the promise of freedom is a false promise.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote down this motion to recommit and pass the bill.

We are adding $2 billion in money for child care for the States. But beyond that, remember that we are giving the States exactly the amount of money we gave them 5 years ago, but the welfare rolls are half that amount. So the States have all that additional money that they can devote to child care or meeting the other needs of people working to get off welfare and into the job market.

Mr. Speaker, there is money there both in welfare, lots of money, more than there has ever been in the history of our country. Furthermore, we have added $2 billion in the child care block grant. We have made sure it has grown every year.

There is $170 billion available over the next 5 years from the State and Federal governments for TANF. We have a balanced, sound, strong bill that will support women and their families as they make the transition from welfare to work, and I urge rejection of the motion to recommit and passage of this landmark legislation.

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