Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the landmark Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act that this body passed in 2003 was the subject of heated rhetoric and partisan attacks at that time. Most recently, we have heard the claim that the costs of this wonderful Medicare prescription drug benefit have skyrocketed far above the estimates relied upon when we passed the bill in 2003. Allow me to set the record straight.

The cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit that will guarantee every senior in America affordable prescription drug coverage has not changed. In November of 2003, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the costs of the drug benefit from 2004 to 2013 would be $408 billion. Today, they estimated it at $410 billion.

In December of 2003, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, using different assumptions, estimated that the cost of the bill over the same 10-year period would be $511 billion. Today, they are saying it will cost $518 billion. So, whatever estimates we use, whichever set of assumptions we wish to rely on, CBO's or CMS', the answer is the cost estimates have not changed. They varied about plus or minus 1 percent.

So what is the issue? What is the big uproar over? The answer is simple. New estimates just released by the administration are for a 10- year period that begin in 2006, not 2004. These estimates cite a cost of $724 billion. That is because they drop 2 years when there was no drug program and add 2 years when millions more Medicare beneficiaries are going to enjoy the benefits of our Medicare Modernization and Prescription Drug Act. It is just that simple. The 10-year estimating period changed. So, of course, the estimates went up.

But it is easy for the estimators to count the new number of people who benefit from the program in the 2 additional years and drop the 2 years when there was no program. It is more difficult for them, and so they do not do it, estimate the saving that the Medicare modernization and prescription drug bill will enable Medicare to enjoy while at the same time improving the quality of care we will be able to deliver to our seniors.

The Medicare Modernization Act fundamentally changed the way Medicare delivers care to our seniors. By offering welcome to Medicare physicals and disease management programs, we have transformed Medicare from simply an illness treatment program to a wellness and preventative health program.

Medicare has always been good at treating our seniors once they got sick, but did nothing to prevent them from getting sick. Worse, Medicare did nothing to help seniors with chronic illnesses to prevent that chronic illness from worsening.

America's seniors deserve the changes we made in the Medicare Modernization Act. That act modernized the delivery system of care to enable Medicare to deliver the most recent medical advances to our seniors, particularly to those with chronic diseases.

By moving from an illness model to a preventive care model, we can keep seniors out of high-cost care settings, like hospitals and emergency rooms. If you are looking for a sensible way to control costs, this is the way to do it. Disease management programs, like the ones the Medicare Modernization Act have introduced into Medicare, have proven they save health care dollars and they improve health care quality.

PacifiCare has already saved $244 million through existing disease management programs to their 720,000 Medicare beneficiaries. They have saved $75 million through medication management for patients with congestive heart failure and reduced hospitalizations by 50 percent. They have saved $185 million by improving blood sugar and cholesterol levels in diabetics. They have saved $72 annually through their congestive heart failure program, which has served 15,000 patients.

McKesson, which will bring Medicare seniors into the Medicare Modernization Chronic Care Improvement Program this year, currently saves $3,089 per patient each year in their disease management programs. They have reduced emergency department visits by 61 percent. They have reduced hospitalizations by 66 percent.

XLHealth, which operates a Medicare Chronic Care Improvement Program, has reduced medical costs in 2,500 Medicare patients since 2000. Their disease management program has reduced hospitalizations by 25 percent, amputations by more than 50 percent, and heart bypass surgery by 65 percent.

The bottom line: disease management programs save money and improve health care quality. And thanks to the Medicare Modernization Act, these programs will create a better quality of life for seniors with congestive heart failure, diabetes, chronic obstructive disease, and other chronic illnesses and bend the curve of Medicare's cost growth.

These recent estimates we have been hearing so much about simply do not include any consideration of the power of disease management programs to reduce the cost of chronic disease and to improve the quality of care in Medicare. Twenty percent of our seniors have five or more chronic conditions and account for two-thirds of Medicare spending. Twenty percent. Of course disease management will reduce the cost of Medicare.

MMA also initiated another new, though related, development in Medicare that will create significant savings while improving quality, but isn't reflected in cost estimates drawing attention today. For the first time, electronic prescribing will become routine in the Medicare program, with electronic medical trends coming along thereafter.

Electronic prescribing technology will save lives and money by eliminating adverse drug interactions, eliminating handwriting errors, and by notifying physicians when a lower cost generic alternative is available. As we all know, generic drugs often far cheaper than brand name drugs. Electronic prescribing will save money, and while this technology called for in the MMA, the cost savings are not reflected in the cost estimates.

Repealing the MMA would be the wrong medicine for America's seniors. Doing so would deprive them of prescription drugs and the high level of coordinated and preventive care that will keep our seniors healthier and control Medicare spending by improving the quality of our health delivery system.

Offered By: Mrs. Johnson of Connecticut

Amendment No. 1: Page 28, after line 4, insert the

following:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time and for this bill, and I rise in strong support of it.

Let us remember why we are here. We are here because punitive tariffs are making U.S.-made products high priced. We are here because that reduces sales and endangers American jobs.

Some say this bill will result in exporting jobs. Inaction will result in exporting jobs. This bill provides $77 billion in tax relief to every domestic manufacturer for work they do here at home. From the smallest S corporation or partnership to the largest C corporation, companies will be encouraged to produce more goods in the United States of America.

Furthermore, it provides a new source of funding for cleaning up brownfields in our cities and encourages the growth of manufacturing in the small, medium-sized cities of America, so important to their economic revitalization.

My colleagues, this is the best bill that has come on the floor of this House for American manufacturing in the 22 years I have been here, under Republicans or Democrats. Manufacturing is the foundation of our economy, and I consider this landmark legislation in laying the foundation for a competitive 21st century American economy.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his remarkable leadership in making passage of this legislation possible here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the American Jobs Act. Critics fail to remember why we are here. We are here because punitive tariffs on U.S. made products are increasing their price, reducing sales, and endangering U.S. jobs.

Every day we fail to comply with the WTO ruling American companies are losing market share in Europe. Tariff rates on some American goods stand at 12 percent and will rise to 17 percent. Our trade relationship with Europe includes $1 trillion worth of goods and services and we cannot compromise that many goods without forcing many Americans into unemployment. We have an obligation to protect the jobs of our constituents and strengthen our economy to meet the challenges of the 21st century global economy.

Our bill creates greater incentives for domestic manufacturing, helps small businesses by increasing the amount of money they can just write off for investing in equipment to improve their productivity or the quality of their product. It strengthens our competitiveness abroad by eliminating complex rules that hamper commerce.

Some critics complain that this bill will result in exporting jobs. They are wrong. The truth is we need to support American multinationals or we will fail to have a U.S. economy that produces good paying jobs here at home.

Literally millions of small firms depend on the successful performance of large companies abroad. The more business they win overseas, the more business they generate in the United States. It is that simple.

Important international reforms are matched by a firm commitment to domestic manufacturers. As we all know, the manufacturing sector has suffered disproportionately since 9/11. Our bill provides nearly $77 billion in tax relief to every domestic manufacturer for work they do here at home. From the smallest S corporation or partnership to the largest C corporation, companies will be encouraged to produce more in the United States.

It should also be noted that we accomplished all of this without adding a single penny to the federal deficit. We were able to craft a revenue neutral package that clamps down on abusive tax shelters and corporate inversions.

The dispute that brought us here has lingered for too long. We owe it to American businesses and consumers to complete our work and rid ourselves of punishing tariffs.

I want to commend the chairman for remaining steadfast in his desire to get a bill passed and to the president's desk before we adjourn. I congratulate the Chairman on a bill that will help American manufacturers more than any bill ever passed by this body under Republicans or Democrats. Since manufacturing is the foundation of our economy, I consider this landmark legislation as laying the foundation for 21st century prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding. As a representative from Georgia, not only has he been very effective here in this body of the House, but as a physician Member, he has been extremely effective. This is the first time we should have had a critical mass of physicians to participate in these debates, which are striking at the heart of the inadequacy of the public program in regard to our seniors.

Medicine found ways to stop our seniors from dying of heart attacks, but then it left them living with cardiac problems. Medicare as a payor could pay for heart transplants and all those

things that can deal with diagnosed heart illness, but we cannot pay for all those programs that we now know that medicine has now developed to prevent cardiac illness from getting worse and leading people to needing heart transplants and serious heart operations.

That just gives you some idea. When we say Medicare is no longer adequate to provide health care to our seniors, that is what we mean. The whole world has moved into the world of disease management to prevent diseases from getting worse, to identify them real early, prevent them from getting worse, and that is what this bill does.

It will welcome seniors into Medicare in 2006 with a Welcome to Medicare physical. At that physical, we will identify those early signs of diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and will start then to help seniors manage those illnesses and have the support in managing it and have the medications to manage it so that they do not end up in the emergency room, they do not end up in the hospital beds.

That is why, in the end, we were able to pass this bill, because Members who were concerned about the deficit came to understand that, if you do not modernize Medicare, it will go bankrupt. If you do modernize Medicare, you can move the money from the hospital emergency room treatment setting to the preventative setting and provide both with better quality health care and a financially secure system.

The point that the gentleman made earlier about employer-provided health care for retirees was absolutely right on target. We want our employers to stay in the business of providing retiree health care. We want the big union plans to stay in the business of providing retiree health care, but their fastest growing cost is pharmaceuticals, and it will drive them out of business. It will bankrupt their plans if we do not do something about it.

In this bill, we do do something about it. We share that cost with them, and for that reason, most employers and most unions, most public programs, State employer and municipal employers will be able to stay in the business of providing comprehensive health care for their retirees, including prescription drugs, in a way that they could not have if we had not passed this bill.

So this bill is not only terrific from the point of view of those who already have health care from their employers, it is terrific from the point of view of seniors who do not have good drug coverage. Some have very good, but most do not. They either have no drug coverage or inadequate drug coverage but under this bill, seniors will do very nicely.

If the gentleman has time, I would like to talk a little bit about the prescription drug benefit under this bill.

Mr. Speaker, a lot of seniors have, first of all, been misled to think that the discount card is the Medicare reform bill. The discount card is not the program. The discount card is only an intermediate step, and it is one that, in my district at least, seniors who were spending $1,000, $1,500 a year on drugs can save considerably through a discount card. They can save usually, at least we are finding, about a third of their costs.

We are also finding that seniors who do not have any drug costs are remembering that if they have a discount card, that if they go to the doctor and he prescribes an antibiotic, which is often over $100, they will be able to save about a third of the cost of that antibiotic when they go to the pharmacy to buy it. So even seniors without regular drug expenditures are recognizing that the discount card is a good thing for them, but it is only an interim step.

The real program that goes into effect a year from January is a very generous program to those who need it the most. For seniors who have incomes under 135 percent of the poverty income; and remember, 50 percent, just think about this, 50 percent of all the retired women all across our Nation are in this category; 50 percent of retired women will have no premium, no deductible. They will get their generic drugs for $1 to $3 and their brand name drugs for $3 to $5. What a giant step forward, for half of America's retired women, to get prescription drugs with no premium at all, no deductible, $1 to $3 for generics and $3 to $5 for brand name. That will mean that none of those seniors will have to make the choice between food on the table or taking the drugs that will keep them healthy.

Then 70 percent of all of our seniors in America, men and women, will have 75 percent of the cost of their drugs paid for under this program. Medicare is an 80/20 deal. We pay 80 percent; you pay 20 percent. Eventually, we will get this Medicare prescription drug benefit back up to that so there will be consistency, but at the beginning, it will be 75 percent government paid, that is, the taxpayers, that is, your children, and 25 percent you pay. There will be a premium, of course, and a deductible. Just like there is a premium and deductible for Medicare part B, there will be a premium and deductible for the prescription drug bill. Although the premium will be far lower than it is for part B. It will not be over $35. It might be a lot less if things continue to go the way they are going.

So Medicare will offer a prescription drug benefit that for 70 percent of America's retirees will cover 75 percent of the cost of all their drugs. Now, if you have very high costs, you will have to spend $3,600 before you get the catastrophic coverage, but that $3,600 can be paid by you, by your children. It can be paid by charitable organizations. It can be paid a number of different ways, and for anyone whose income is 150 percent of poverty, which is about $14,000 I think for a single and about $19,000 for a couple, I think that is about right, anyone under those amounts will not have to pay this $3,600.

Anyone that lives in a State like Connecticut that has a ConnPACE program or like Pennsylvania that has a PACE program, any State program that provides subsidies for seniors with prescription drugs, they will never be exposed to that $3,600, and over time, we will make sure that the $3,600 expenditure for catastrophic coverage is not required of anyone who cannot afford it. But if you can afford it, it is good for you to pay it rather than the taxpayers because it lowers the burden on our children of the enormous costs associated with Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid's payment for long-term care which, when the baby boomers retire, is going to be extraordinary.

So, as a retiree, I will want to pay my share if I need to get to that catastrophic level and if I can afford the $3,600. So this is a totally generous program to those who need it the most. It is a very generous program to 70 percent of seniors because it covers 75 percent of your drugs, and for everyone else, it is very generous up to that $2,250. Then it requires some effort before you reach the 95 percent coverage, but for that effort, you can have help.

We just want to make sure that everyone has the help they need to reach the catastrophic, but it is a very generous program. I am proud of it. I am proud of the way it modernizes the quality of care you will get by, helping you manage your disease so you will not end up on the operative table.

I am extremely proud of the way it revitalizes rural health care because, without this bill, rural doctors would be out of business in many parts of the country. The small rural hospitals would be quietly going under, and we would literally lose that provider system that provides health care in the rural areas.

Medicare is like the post office. We have to be able to deliver everywhere all across the country to every single senior, no matter how small a community they live in, and to do that, we have to make the changes we make in this bill to assure a healthy delivery system of doctors, of hospitals, of home health agencies and of all of those providers that are crucial to a high quality of health care for our seniors all across this America.

So this bill is a huge reform. It revitalizes the quality of care Medicare can deliver. It revitalizes the system so it will truly be a national delivery system, and it modernizes the benefit

package by providing prescription drugs to our seniors. They fought hard for it. They deserved it. Inaction would have been absolutely a travesty, and anyone who voted for inaction when there was an opportunity to advance Medicare in so many areas was really, in my personal opinion, misguided.

The seniors could not wait. They should not wait, and we will have this nationwide new program up and running in January of 2006, and the seniors will benefit for generations to come.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) very much for letting me join him for this Special Order on what is a very, very important new opportunity for seniors.

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

Let us look at this issue of outsourcing. Last year, foreign investment in America doubled. That means that other countries outsourced jobs to America at twice the rate they had the preceding year. We need them to keep doing that!

Next, in the 1980s, I worked hard with some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to force Japanese companies producing cars in America to buy American parts; not just hire American people, buy American parts. We forced them to do it because we did not want ``screwdriver'' plants.

Well, when we produce airplanes in other countries for those countries, when GE gets a contract to produce locomotives in Russia and rehabilitate all the Russian locomotives, do my colleagues not think Russia wants some of those jobs? Do my colleagues not think Russia wants some of those parts bought in Russia? Of course, they do, but expensive, high-value parts come from New York State and have kept our ability to produce locomotives as one of the foremost capabilities in the worldwide market.

So, yes, outsourcing is a worldwide phenomenon, and we are the beneficiaries far more often than we are the losers. In net, we are by far the winners.

Secondly, competitiveness, absolutely, top in communications, top in medical technologies. Take the Department of Commerce's list of the 18 top technologies, and we are the highest quality producer and the lowest cost producer in two-thirds of them. So, yes, we are driving the economic forces of America into the international market, but we must do more. We must help our companies compete.

We must pass this legislation to eliminate the retaliatory tariffs that have been put on American goods, thereby increasing their price abroad 10 percent and soon to be 15 percent.

We must reduce taxes on our manufacturers that compete internationally. We must do what we do in this bill, make it cheaper for them to invest in machinery and equipment and hire more people, and yes, we must go further.

We are going to have to do something to control and reduce health care costs so they can compete internationally. We are going to have to eliminate frivolous litigation and all the costs that that imposes on our industry and particularly on manufacturing, driven by pure greed.

So let us get with it. Let us pass this bill, and then let us go right down the agenda of the things we need to do to make American manufacturing more competitive in the international global market, but let us not pretend that outsourcing is the villain here. It is something we need to be able to do fairly and receive from other countries, and I urge opposition to this motion.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, the goal of TANF, that is, welfare reform, was always twofold: first, it was to help women who had children and no means of support and therefore were dependent on welfare to regain their economic independence by entering the workforce. That goal was for the woman, so she could realize her greatest potential, she could gain control of her life by being economically self-sufficient. And then the second goal was to lift her and her children out of poverty, occasionally he and his children out of poverty.

Those twin goals of helping women on welfare to realize their skills, their potential, their capabilities to gain economic self-sufficiency and to raise children out of poverty were goals that we all shared, both sides of the aisle; but they were goals that were achieved by the structure of the bill that the Republicans crafted and passed and which at the time was extremely controversial.

But it did work. Two million children have been lifted out of poverty. According to the census, the poverty rate for African American children and the poverty rate for children living with single mothers hit a record low in 2001 and 2002. So then the question becomes, What happened during the years of recession since 2001 and 2002? We all know that a recession was in progress when this President was sworn into office and then the economy was terribly jolted by 9/11 and unemployment rates soared and so on.

Yet when we look back, these are the facts. First of all, starting from the overall understanding that poverty in a recession and child poverty in a recession does rise. Two years after the 1990-1991 recession, 15.7 million children were in poverty in 1993, or 22.7 percent of the children were in poverty in 1993. That was after the 1990-1991 recession. Two years after the 2001 recession, 12.9 million children were in poverty, or 17.6 percent were in poverty in 2003.

In other words, in this more recent recession, after welfare reform, yes, more children were in poverty. But far fewer were in poverty than had been in poverty 10 years earlier after the 1990 recession. In fact, 17.6 percent were in poverty in 2003, 22.7 percent had been in poverty in 1993. So there are 2.8 million fewer children in poverty now than there were in the preceding economic cycle.

While it is tragic to see poverty numbers go up, we need to put them in the context of this economy and of welfare reform because, in fact, welfare reform has been so successful in reducing child poverty that even with the rise in child poverty during this recent recession, it is still well below what it was 10 years ago.

Let me just add one other point and that is, it is really a shame that this is not the reauthorization rather than a 6-month extension. In the reauthorization, we do provide far better opportunity for women to get the education they need, not just to get into the workforce but to get up the career ladder.

Furthermore, in the reauthorization we recognize what has become a very real problem and that is that many of the women who are really stuck on welfare now are women who need to have better access to either drug treatment programs of a longer term sort or to mental health programs. Both of those kinds of treatment programs we count as work in the extension bill.

The next round of TANF reform will enable us to meet the challenge of improving the educational support and being more realistic about the health services necessary to help women become self-sufficient and their children to do better and the whole family to rise out of poverty. So it is unfortunate that we are not moving on reauthorization rather than extension, but extension certainly beats letting the current law expire because it has done wonderful things for women in America, allowing them to realize their potential and think about their skills and abilities with the help of supportive programs, and it has certainly lifted many children out of poverty. I urge support of this legislation.

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

I rise in strong and enthusiastic support of H.R. 1308. We made a promise in 2001 to provide income tax relief to every working American. And indeed, extending the marriage penalty relief, extending the $1,000 tax credit per child, leaving families with more disposable income to meet the needs of their children, and extending the 10 percent bracket are important to the well-being of our families and working people in America.

But I particularly congratulate the chairman on extending crucial provisions in the Tax Code that have recently or are about to expire. Allowing the expensing of cleanup costs associated with brownfields, old, polluted, industrial sites, helps jobs to be created in our cities and is absolutely crucial to the future of economic opportunity to our city folks and to the tax base of our urban areas. Extending the work opportunities tax credit and the welfare-to-work tax credit means hard- to-employ people, people who have spent time in jail, people who have very little education, get the work opportunity that they deserve with the

training that they need. In addition, extending the R&D tax credit allows American companies to invest in risky innovations. R&D is a gamble, even for the largest companies, but it is a gamble that often results in tremendous economic reward, and it is a gamble that must be taken for any nation that hopes to have a strong economy.

Other nations have long recognized the benefits of subsidizing research and development. In a global economy where research and scientific experimentation can occur anywhere, the U.S. can ill afford to stand idle while France, Germany and other countries in Europe provide strong incentives for companies who do R&D on their soil. Indeed, other nations use tax dollars to subsidize their companies. Our European trading partners, for example, funnel billions of dollars, direct and generous loans, to their companies to develop products that compete directly with American goods. The R&D credit is about competitiveness. It is about jobs in every community across America, and it helps small and medium-sized companies as well.

According to a recent Ernst & Young report, more than 4,500 firms with assets of less than $1 million claim the credit. That is 25 percent of all firms. For the smallest firms in the study, the value of the credit, on average, was about 9.4 percent of their assets.

The R&D tax credit has a long history of bipartisan support, and while I am disappointed that the credit was not enhanced, and I will continue to press that issue to make it more accessible to start-up firms, I urge strong support for the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time, for this opportunity to speak in opposition to the Moran amendment.

It is important to know that nationwide, 49 percent of HSAs are being sold to families with children. That makes perfect sense. There are many years when young families do not have many medical expenses; but often during those years they have very expensive dental bills for braces. Does it not make absolute sense to let that family spend less money on premiums and have more money in their HSA so they can cover braces, which practically no employer plan covers?

That is why in this Nation we need to dedicate fewer dollars to the premium portion of health care and have more dollars in our consumer accounts because they can spend those dollars on anything under the Tax Code. That is broader than any employer-provided health plan in the Nation.

So of course families want HSAs. They can pay for braces. They can pay for glasses. If they have a child with a hearing deficit, and we know how many more children there are in America that need very significant and expensive health care in our special ed programs, they can pay for those kinds of costs out of their HSA.

Their HSA dollars can be employer-provided 100 percent. They can be employer-provided or pretax dollars from them. It is flexible. It is better health care coverage than any other employer-provided plan. And every Federal employee deserves the right, deserves the right, to dedicate fewer dollars to the insurance component of health and offer him or herself, frankly, the opportunity to buy with employer-provided or pretax dollars the full range of health and welfare benefits that those plans can afford. So I urge opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of my amendment to accelerate the adoption of health information technology and to improve health care quality for all Americans, significantly reduce preventable medical errors, and rein in rising health care costs. My amendment would add $25 million to the Department of Health and Human Services to advance health information technology. This meets the Secretary's budget request to fund State, regional or local grants to develop health systems that coordinate with each other. This funding will also help unleash our creativity through grants to foster innovative information technologies that improve health care.

Mr. Chairman, this President and this Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, have provided remarkable, aggressive, and visionary leadership to bring America's health care system into the 21st century, to improve the quality of care available to all Americans, and to dramatically reduce administrative costs, medical errors, duplicate testing, duplicate record keeping, and address all those aspects of our health care system that have already been identified by the Institute of Medicine as being the source of poor- quality care and an enormous health care cost.

At this moment, with health care costs rising at an extraordinary rate, pressing premiums up for everyone, including our seniors under part B, we must push forward to develop interoperable electronic health records, e-prescribing and all those other applications of modern information technology to our health sector. It is indeed bizarre that other sectors of the economy, manufacturing, banking, many other sectors, are far ahead of the health care sector in integrating, absorbing, using and exploiting information technology to both improve the quality of operations in those sectors and the quality of the product as an outcome. Information technology will dramatically improve the quality of health care available to all Americans and holds out the promise of reducing costs tremendously.

For example, health information technology will reduce medical errors which account for 44,000 to 98,000 deaths annually, more than motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. It will reduce known medical errors that cost $30 billion to $35 billion annually. Health IT will save $5.4 billion a year annually that is spent on unnecessary services because tests or second opinions cannot be located. It will also eliminate costly defensive medical practices which account for as much as $108 billion in unnecessary health care costs each year. Health IT will allow physicians to detect negative drug interactions which result in 7,000 deaths each year.

My friends in this body, we must do everything we possibly can to back Secretary Thompson and this President in moving health information technology into our health care sector as rapidly as possible. These innovative grants, the work that they are doing to establish standards, the pressure they are putting on the private sector to develop interoperable technologies is all exactly what needs to happen; and it is my hope that we will be able to accomplish the goal of this amendment, to provide the full $50 million that the new office, of which Dr. Brailer is now the head as the national coordinator of information technology, that their full budget allocation request can be fulfilled.

I have talked with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) about this. Rather than pursuing this amendment further, I am going to withdraw it. But I did want to stress how important it is that we back this office with its full dollar amount. I hope that in the course of the development of this bill, that that goal will be fulfilled.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the chairman very much for his comments.

Mr. Chairman, I also want to say both to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and also to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) that you have brought forward for this body a very fine, balanced bill in a difficult era. The money that you have put into critical health care activities that the Federal Government funds, like the children's hospitals and also into public education as well as job training and a number of other areas is really a tribute to the kind of thoughtful leadership that this body is capable of.

I do withdraw my amendment, recognizing the importance and value of OSHA, and I appreciate your willingness to look at this critical function as you move this bill toward its final conclusion.

Offered By: Mrs. Johnson of Connecticut

Amendment No. 7: In title I, in the item relating to

Occupational Health and Safety Administration, after the

aggregate dollar amount insert the following: ``(reduced by

$25,000,000)''.

In title II, in the item relating to Office of the

Secretary, after the aggregate dollar amount insert the

following: ``(increased by $25,000,000)''.

In title II, in the item relating to Office of the

Secretary, after the fourth dollar amount, insert the

following: ``(increased by $25,000,000)''.

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

One of the earlier speakers called for a moratorium on trade agreements. There is nothing that we could do that would hurt American workers more than a moratorium.

Over the last few years Europe has consummated about 36 bilateral trade agreements in this part of the world, and we have consummated about three. Now, when they create a trade agreement with a bilateral agreement with one of these countries, what they are doing is socking in product standards that advantage their products and disadvantage our products.

When we write a free trade agreement with one of these countries it is entirely different. That is why countries like to work with us. It is comprehensive. It includes all products and it is fair, transparent and modern, and I commend Morocco for not only its commitment to develop its economy in a way in which everyone benefits and everyone prospers, but to have evidenced that commitment by changing their labor law in preparation for this free trade agreement. I think that is very commendable.

They changed their labor law to raise the minimum employment age, to reduce the number of hours in a workweek, to call for periodic review of the Moroccan minimum wage, to improve health and safety regulations, and I am skipping over a lot of details, to guarantee the right of association and collective bargaining. They looked at the world standards of how you should treat your workforce and they changed their laws to make those standards their standards.

They are moving. They are developing. Europe is trading with them twice as many dollars worth of product as we are in America. This free trade agreement will change that and ensure American jobs, creating new ones as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, and I thank the gentleman for bringing this resolution to the House floor.

Direct and indirect subsidies are an extreme problem in creating not only a free trading community across the world but a fair trading community. And while we have struggled mightily to comply with the World Trade Organization's requirement that we repeal a good and significant piece of the tax law governing American companies' earnings abroad, we have found that very difficult to do because there are so many ways in which our competitors do help support their companies and effectively reduce their companies' costs in the world trading community through their tax structures.

So while this resolution focuses on tax issues between the United States of America and particularly the European Union in a way that I think is very productive and needed to set the stage for the next round of reform, I also want to mention just a few of the kinds of subsidies that the Europeans particularly are using and that for some reason are not being attacked by either our Trade Representative or seen as a problem under the World Trading Organization.

If you listen to the Europeans, they directly set out to increase their market share of the aerospace industry. They have done so by buying themselves a more competitive position. There are many, many little things they do that are together, powerful. For example, they provide very generous loans to their aerospace producers, that only have to be repaid as planes were sold; and if the right number of planes were not sold, then, of course, the loan was never repaid, and it was effectively a grant, which is illegal under the GATT arrangements.

So this effort to look at both direct and indirect subsidies and the complexity of the tax subsidies different parts of the world are providing to their manufacturers in a very competitive global economy is something I commend, and I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me the time, and I congratulate Ambassador Zoellick and our President for getting a very good trade agreement with Australia, one that will benefit workers, consumers, and companies alike.

We have had a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Australia. It has been a trusted, staunch ally in the Pacific and a progressive voice for expanding free trade around the globe.

Mr. Speaker, this is a pioneering trade agreement. It is the most significant reduction in industrial tariffs ever achieved in a free trade agreement. This is, at its heart, a manufacturers' trade agreement.

While Connecticut is a long way from Sydney, one would never know it based on the economic ties between my home State and Australia. Nearly $140 million worth of merchandise was exported from Connecticut to Australia in 2003. In 1999, the figure was $81 million. We have increased exports by $60 million without a trade agreement. Imagine what we will be able to do with this trade agreement, which reduces manufacturing tariffs from a full 5 percent. It literally wipes them out. That is equivalent to a 5 percent price reduction in product in the market.

So if we have been able to grow our trade with Australia, that is, between Connecticut and Australia, without this agreement, think what a boon this will be for nearly 99 percent of Connecticut's exports that will enter Australia with this agreement duty free.

I believe the Australian agreement is indicative of the bright future trade liberalization is creating. Australia is a democratic, well- developed nation with amongst the highest labor and environmental standards in the world and with a very capable enforcement system. It simply does not make sense for either nation to preserve antiquated tariffs in light of our strong economic and political ties.

I strongly support this U.S.-Australian trade agreement and urge the House to pass it.

Let me conclude, Mr. Speaker, by noting that 25 percent of our gross national product is the direct consequence of exports and trade, and not to expand that customer base would be to condemn our children and follow-on generations to a weak economy unable to provide the standard of living we have come to enjoy. And, therefore, I urge support of this trade agreement.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong and enthusiastic support of this bill and congratulate the gentleman from New York (Chairman Boehlert) and my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers), in the development of this legislation.

Indeed, small and medium-sized manufacturers are the unsung heroes of America's strong economy. All of our large multinational firms depend on the strong, vibrant, and productive domestic manufacturing sector. Their ability to compete in a global economy is tied to our home-grown, small and medium-sized manufacturing firms.

The Manufacturing Technology Competitiveness Act will reauthorize the MEP program, which is the most successful Federal program supporting manufacturing. When America was an agricultural economy, we built land grant universities explicitly to provide the knowledge base necessary to assure continuous product development, continuous improvements in quality, and continuous improvements in productivity in the agricultural sector. That partnership between government and the private sector is well developed in agriculture and is successful.

What this bill does is to broaden the partnership between manufacturing and government to assure the continual improvement of product and process to assure the competitiveness of manufacturing in a global economy.

Not only does this bill reauthorize the MEP program, the bill also ensures that all Federal programs dealing with manufacturing will coordinate their activities so we will get the most bang for the buck and the small manufacturer will be most able to take advantage of Federal support where appropriate. It will also fund a program that will improve collaboration with researchers and industry.

We need to foster stronger relationships between the research community and the business community to strengthen manufacturing in a period in which changes in technology, in process, and in management capability are occurring at a historic pace.

In my home State, the MEP program funds CONNSTEP, a public-private partnership that has created 1,300 jobs just in 2003. CONNSTEP provides a hand up for small manufacturers by giving them access to advances in technology and management techniques. Most importantly, it is a cost- effective partnership. For every one dollar in government investment, CONNSTEP creates $4 in tax revenue.

America's free market philosophy has allowed us to be leaders in the global economy. However, we can never forget that our competitors in Asia, Europe, and elsewhere have a long history of using the powers and resources of the state to bolster their companies.

Our companies, large and small, have demonstrated time and time again that they are the best because they are innovative and highly adaptable.

This bill, by my esteemed colleagues, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), modernize the public-private partnership that in our country strengthens our manufacturing sector, but does it in a way that respects their independence, their ingenuity, vitality, and responsibility to be competitive. This bill will help our companies live up to the lofty goals of our economy, and I urge its support.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I rise to strike the requisite number of words because I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for the funding that they put into the MEP program, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, and I was not able to be here earlier.

The Members of the House talk constantly about how important manufacturing is to a strong economy, that indeed we cannot have a strong economy if we do not have a strong manufacturing sector. Mr. Chairman, we cannot have a strong manufacturing sector if we do not have strong small manufacturers. The big global manufacturers simply cannot compete if they do not have U.S. small suppliers who are ISO 9000 certified, who are lean and mean, who are high quality, who are high productivity. And if you are one of those small manufacturers like I represent, and so many of the rest that my colleagues represent throughout the country, that have 25 to 60 employees who are struggling hard to meet payroll every single month and facing health care costs increases of 20 percent, who are out there finding customers and orders and dealing with delivery problems, those people just cannot mobilize the time, the focus, the expertise to improve productivity and quality at the pace that our modern economy demands it.

So these Manufacturing Extension Partnership programs are located throughout all 50 States. There are about 400 locations. In Connecticut they are called CONNSTEP. They are one third Federal, one third State, and one third fee based. Our program in Connecticut now is even more fee based. But nationally they have created 35,000 jobs over the year 2002, increased sales by $953 million, retained sales of almost $2 billion, realized cost savings of almost $700 million; and invested $940 million in plant equipment, workforce training, extremely important, and information management systems.

In fact, experts from these centers simply come into a plant, onto the floor with the owner, and help that owner understand, whether he needs to rearrange equipment or make other changes. Does he need to buy new equipment? Is it new manufacturing equipment? Is it new information technology? Is it new energy efficiency capability? Is it a different communications system? And, in fact, they analyze what that small plant can do to do one of two things: improve the quality of the product they are making, improve the productivity.

Without them, the infrastructure that our global manufacturers depend on in America would have disappeared a number of years ago. Without them, lean manufacturing would not have been able to permeate those small manufacturers who day in and day out are struggling to meet payroll in a way that none of us here have to take responsibility for.

So they are important to our very existence as a strong economy. They are important to our global competitiveness. In manufacturing we have developed this remarkable partnership capability to bring to the service of the small manufacturing the engineering expertise, the machinery and equipment expertise, the systems expertise, the ISO 9000 certification expertise, certain expertise in getting European certifications so the small guy can export.

All together, this partnership program has acted exactly like the partnership program we have through our great agricultural extension programs at our Land Grant colleges to help agricultural producers, that is, the farm community, have the expertise they need to develop conservation plans, deal with waste management issues and improve quality of product and productivity in the agricultural area.

We have done very well in agriculture, we have done very well in manufacturing, but we do not know it about ourselves. So this program is always under fire. That is why I have come to the floor to talk about it and to congratulate my friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) for standing up for it.

I see my friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers), who knows a lot about it and represents a manufacturing community in Grand Rapids, is here to speak also.

This is as important a program, it is as important a partnership, as any single partnership the Federal Government is a part of, bar none, because it not only does the things I have described, but it has helped train workers on more sophisticated machinery, it has helped train workers in language skills, on systems issues and all kinds of things.

I am very proud that our free Nation has understood there is a public-private partnership that strengthens the entrepreneurial manufacturing community and enables us to make good on that promise to our kids, that they will have an economic opportunity equal or better than that of my generation.

This, combined with the Department of Commerce's recent in-depth study on the problems of manufacturing and the issues they are addressing, are going to assure that we will be competitive and strong in the global economy, because we will have a strong manufacturing sector.