Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to raise awareness of a problem that is plaguing our health care system, and that is the number of uninsured Americans. It has been estimated that more than 45 million lack health insurance. However, it is important for understand for us to understand better who the individuals are that make up that 45 million.

A census taken in 2003 reveals that almost one-third of the uninsured, 15 million, live in households with annual incomes above $50,000. 7.6 million of these individuals live in households with incomes of more than $75,000.

Moreover, Mr. Speaker, 18 million of the uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 34.

Obviously, many of these are uninsured as a matter of choice. They choose not to have coverage, because health insurance in this country is prohibitively expensive and it is not a purchase they wish to make, either because they are young and healthy or because they are willing to roll the dice and take their chances, or, if their employer cannot afford to offer insurance, the regulations on the individual insurance market make purchasing a policy on their own prohibitively expensive.

Fortunately, Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership of this House has shown the American people how health care can be made more affordable in this country. There are three fundamental avenues that take significant steps toward allowing all Americans to be able to afford health insurance.

The first is Association Health Plans, or AHPs. The House of Representatives last year passed H.R. 525, the Small Business Health Fairness Act. This bill will reduce the cost of health benefits for small businesses and the self-employed by establishing new national Association Health Plans. AHPs currently exist, but they are severely hampered by the administrative burden and high costs of having to comply with 50 different sets of State insurance mandates and regulations. These barriers have made it virtually impossible to start new plans and have forced many of these plans to close, thus greatly limiting the availability of affordable health insurance to our small businessmen and women.

H.R. 525 will strengthen health insurance markets by creating greater competition and more choices of health plans for small businesses. Greater competition will benefit consumers by bringing premiums down and expanding access to coverage. The bill provides AHPs with the opportunity to offer fully insured health plan options under a uniform set of rules across State lines so it will actually expand opportunities for insurance companies to serve these small businesses.

Mr. Speaker, the second avenue that will allow more Americans to purchase health insurance are through health savings accounts.

They were established by the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Health savings accounts allow Americans to put aside tax-free dollars with a maximum annual contribution to pay for their health care needs.

These accounts are combined with high-deductible health insurance policies that cover both preventative services as well as catastrophic coverage; and these accounts, Mr. Speaker, grow with the miracle of compound interest.

In 2 years, over 3 million individuals have enrolled in HSAs; and the number of Americans projected to enroll by the year 2010 increases to, get this, 29 million. In addition, more than one-third of HSA purchasers last year actually had incomes under $50,000; and one-third of individual HSA purchasers last year were previously in the rolls of the uninsured.

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush announced his plans to build and expand upon those early successes by giving Americans who purchase HSAs the same tax advantage given to employer-sponsored health insurance plans. This is a huge boost for those Americans who are self- employed, unemployed, or they work for companies that do not offer health insurance. It levels the playing field and increases the number of individuals and families with coverage.

Mr. Speaker, the last solution of reducing the number of uninsured Americans is called community health centers. They are vital to enhance medical care in poor communities, where access to regular care is often hardest to come by and where basic primary and preventative services can do an enormous amount to raise standards of living and well-being.

With the support given by the Federal Government over the last several years, our community health centers now have capacity to serve more than 3.5 million additional Americans, with nearly 2 million more served in the next 2 years.

So, Mr. Speaker, it is not national health insurance that we need; and I think I heard one of my colleagues on the other side at the start of these 5 minutes describe that and recommend it. But, as can you see, the leadership in the House of Representatives, we take seriously our responsibility to allow all Americans to purchase health insurance. But our job is not done until all Americans enjoy the comfort and the security of health care insurance.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share yet another Medicare part D success story. My colleagues might have noticed that I am sharing a different success story each week, which is pretty easy to do because the stories just keep rolling in. This week I would like to tell you about Mae Thacker of Bartow County, Georgia.

Mae and her husband came into my office unhappy. They had heard some disparaging things about Medicare part D and weren't sure if the program would even save them any money. Fortunately, the more the Thackers learned about part D, the more they wanted to enroll, another case of reality trumping rhetoric. I am happy to report that Mae Thacker is now signed up for a prescription drug plan, and her monthly medicine bill has dropped from $780 to $180.

Mr. Speaker, the May 15 enrollment deadline is less than 2 weeks away. Enrolled seniors are saving an average of $1,100 a year with Medicare part D, $3,700 a year for low-income seniors.

So my message to seniors is this: Sign up now and start saving.

Madam Speaker, thank you so much. It is great to be here again tonight talking to my colleagues as part of the Republican health care public affairs team, and I am pleased that a number of my colleagues will be joining me, hopefully, during the hour, and we will be hearing from them later.

Madam Speaker, I ask this question. If there was a way to save more than $1,000 a year on your heating bill or your food costs or car payments, you would want to know about it, right? I know that my colleagues, I think on both sides of the aisle, would definitely want to know. Well, seniors are saving an average of $1,100 a year on prescription drug costs with the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, $3,700 a year for those low-income seniors who qualify for supplemental help. For many seniors, Medicare Part D marks the first time that they have been able to afford the medications that they need to stay well. For many more, Medicare Part D means they will not have to choose between their medications and other necessities like food and housing costs.

Madam Speaker, I wanted to start out by going through a couple of these slides and pointing out some of the statistics that really just literally jump off the page at you. More than 30 million seniors now have coverage under Medicare Part D. These are our latest statistics. More than 30 million. There are about 43 million Medicare beneficiaries, mostly because of age 65, and maybe 6 million of those because of a disability at a young age.

But when you look at here, and we have not even reached at that magic date yet in this first year, that more than 30 million now have coverage, it is an amazing success story.

And continuing that success story, pharmacists in this country are filling 3 million Medicare part D prescriptions a day. That is 3 million times a day that seniors are saving with prescription drug coverage. And many of these seniors were paying sticker price until they finally had the opportunity to save under this great addition to the Medicare program.

Seniors, as I said, are saving an average of $1,100 a month. And $1,100 a month is a great number and a great benefit in itself, and this is on average, but low-income seniors, of course, are paying now, under this program, $1 for a generic drug and up to $5 for brand name as a copay, and that is it. That is it. Let's say you are on 5 prescription drugs, and they are filled on a monthly basis, usually a 30-day supply. That is $5 a month, or $60 a year.

And I don't want you to just take Congressman Dr. Gingrey's word for that, my colleagues. We have some stories, some anecdotes, to share with you, some actual patients that want to tell you more about that in these following charts. In fact, some of those very seniors are going to be up here on the Hill tomorrow for a press conference, and we will hear it directly from them. I look forward to that, and I hope many of my colleagues will have an opportunity to attend that press conference.

Well, the newspapers, sometimes we wonder if they give the facts as we know them. I want to share with you on this next slide some of the newspapers and what they are finally saying now that we are about 3 weeks away from May 15. And of course we all know that this bill was passed by this Congress, actually the 108th Congress, in November of 2003, and we have gone through the transition program with the Medicare prescription discount cards, where seniors were definitely saving money. Indeed, the low-income seniors got a $600 credit each of the 2 years. It wasn't quite 2 years, but for each of the 12-month increments they got a $600 credit, and then as we rolled into the actual insurance program January 1 of this year.

But listen to what the Washington Times is saying now. ``Even with the myriad prescription drug plans open to beneficiaries, seniors are not overburdened by choice, two recent surveys demonstrate. The surveys, sponsored by America's health insurance plans, show that of seniors who signed up for the Medicare drug benefit, the vast majority, 84 percent, had no difficulty, no difficulty, enrolling. And finding the right plan is worth the effort of shopping around, two-thirds said. For those who were automatically enrolled, 90 percent had little difficulty receiving their prescription drugs.''

The ones that were automatically enrolled, of course, were those seniors that we refer to as either dual-eligible, in other words, they are on Medicare and the State Medicaid because of their low-income situation, or their income is maybe not low enough to qualify for the Medicaid, but the State helps them pay their deductibles and copay under Medicare. All of those seniors, if they didn't sign up, they were automatically enrolled.

Now, listen to what The New York Times says, and this New York Times is not the bastion of conservatism, of course, as we know. ``Many seniors are clearly saving money on drug purchases. Complaints and call waiting times are diminishing, and many previously uninsured patients are clearly saving money on drug purchases.'' That was in an editorial in The New York Times on April 3, so just a couple or 3 weeks ago.

Well, I said at the outset, Madam Speaker, that I would be joined by some of my colleagues on the Republican health care public affairs team. We have a great group of Members who have expertise not only on this issue, but a lot of issues that we are taking the leadership on in regard to health care in this country, whether we are talking about leveling the playing field in regard to civil justice, so-called medical tort system; or whether we are talking about passing, as we have done so many times under this Republican leadership in this body, something that is referred to as association health plans, which allow small companies who really cannot afford to purchase health insurance for their employees when their numbers are small, 5, 10, 15 employees, to come together in a group and enjoy that benefit of purchasing a policy that is affordable to their employees, health savings accounts; or

our initiative on electronic medical recordkeeping and reduction of medical errors, Madam Speaker.

All of these things this Republican leadership is leading the way on, leading the charge on, and I am very proud to have some of my colleagues with me tonight. And especially am I proud to yield time to my colleague from the great State of Georgia, who just happens also to be a physician Member, and I am proud of that as well. And at this point I would like to turn over the mike to my good friend and colleague, Dr. Representative Tom Price.

Dr. Price, thank you so much for those comments. They are very accurate and very timely.

I know one thing that Representative Price mentioned about this deadline, and of course it is approaching. We are 3 weeks away. Of course, a 6-month window of opportunity that started November 15, and we have been doing town hall meetings, of course, since long before that and letting people know. I think there has been a tremendous amount of information both from the Committee on Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS we call it, the Social Security department, and senior organizations in each community, in every county, in every State in this Nation have been making sure that this information gets out there.

But, still, as we get down to the wire, we have some seniors, unfortunately there may be as many as 8 million, that could still sign up for this benefit. And while some of them clearly will choose not to, because it is an optional plan, we don't want to miss the opportunity of those in that group who are a part of that low-income portion, Madam Speaker, because, as I have said many times from the well of this House floor, for them it is not only a no-brainer, it is a godsend.

So that is why we continue to have these Special Orders. That is why the leadership, our Speaker, our majority leader, our conference chairwoman Representative Deborah Pryce, wants us to come down and spend this hour, and allows us to do this, and as Congressman Price was just saying, to talk to Members on both sides of the aisle, because this is not the time to politic over this. This is the time to get the policy right.

So that is really what we are about.

Again as I predicted at the outset, I would be joined by my colleagues on the health care public affairs team, not the least of which is my cochair. And I would like to call on him. I would like to say a word or two about Representative and Dr. Tim Murphy from the great State of Pennsylvania. He is a clinical psychologist, a teacher and an

author of several books. He has taken a leadership role not only in the overall committee that we cochair, but also especially on the issue of electronic medical recordkeeping and reduction of medical errors and saving lives and saving money. That is something that both Dr. Murphy and former Speaker Newt Gingrich have written a book on. We can talk about that later as we get beyond May 15, but at this time I yield to Mr. Murphy.

I thank Dr. Murphy, and really among the many important points that you made, there is one that I would like to elaborate on before turning to our next speaker, and that was this issue that Dr. Murphy mentioned in regard to seniors buying their drugs from Canada, and in some instances not knowing if they were actually coming from Canada.

But I think all of our colleagues understand why they found the need to do that; and our colleague, well, three on our side of the aisle in particular, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), spent many hours in this Chamber during Special Orders, talking about the fact that seniors were having to pay so much more in this country for prescription drugs than they could get from north of our border. And in many instances, most instances, the exact same product safely packaged. And who could blame them because what has been happening, until we finally came forward and delivered on this promise after so many years of prior administrations and other leadership on the other side of the aisle and other Presidents, we finally delivered.

This is what has happened. Let me just give a quick summary of some of this before we turn to my good friend from Texas.

In Minnesota, while enrollment in the Medicare drug benefit rose by 9 percent last month, sales of low-cost Canadian drugs fell by 52 percent. Listen to what a State health official says in Minnesota. State officials say that it is impossible to say for sure why sales of Canadian mail order drugs fell to $39,000 this March, the least since that State's program's first month in February 2004. The State actually had a program to help seniors buy from Canada. There could be lots of reasons, they say, but the Medicare drug program probably is one of them. That was by a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services in Minnesota which operates Rx Connects.

I just want to say to my colleagues that we are pushing so hard for what we refer to as reimportation, making that legal, and while certainly no one has ever been prosecuted for purchasing in that fashion, my feeling all along was when we passed this bill, as we did in November of 2003, Medicare modernization with a prescription drug benefit, the seniors are going to see those prices fall to the point that they will not have to literally take that chance on breaking the law, but, more importantly, risking the possibility that they will be getting some knock-off drug or something that is lower quality or not the right dosage. This is what has happened.

I think the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) and others may not completely agree with me and I understand that, but hopefully we will be able to take that argument off the table as this program matures, and I feel confident that is going to happen.

At this time, I call on the gentleman from Texas, who is not only my physician colleague and part of this health care team, but he is also an OB-GYN specialist, as I am. I do not think he has delivered quite as many babies as I have, but he constantly reminds me he is not as old as I am either.

At this time, I yield to Doctor and Congressman Mike Burgess from Dallas, Texas.

I thank the gentleman from Ft. Worth. I guess I have run my Dallas-Ft. Worth together. But the gentleman has done a great job in working with us on this time, and I appreciate his comments tonight as well.

Madam Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion about extending the deadline to say, well, you know, we don't need to be penalizing seniors if they don't sign up in time, and that is something that hopefully we will have an opportunity tonight to talk a little bit about.

At this point I am going to call on my good friend and teammate on the Republican baseball team, hopefully again this year, and I am talking about the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, who is also a member of the Ways and Means Committee. And I will tell you, my colleagues, you know, that is so important because the Health Subcommittee on Ways and Means is where these issues relating to Medicare are ironed out before they come to the general membership, to the floor. And the expertise in that committee level is so strong, and so it is wonderful to have Melissa Hart with us tonight. And I would like to turn the mike over to her at this time.

I thank the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania. And I want to comment, too, that I said at the outset that the work that she does on the Ways and Means Committee with Health Subcommittee Chairwoman Nancy Johnson from Connecticut and Chairman Thomas and other members of that committee where all this great work is done.

One of the concerns, Madam Speaker, was that the pharmaceutical companies that had these prescription discount programs that they offered not only to needy seniors, but to people of low income at any age, low-income adults.

And a lot of concern had been expressed. In fact, the Inspector General had some concerns initially and let the pharmaceutical companies know that maybe they needed to look very carefully at these discount programs because of some antitrust violation or whatever. But the members of the Committee on Ways and Means continued to work through this and to make sure that the pharmaceutical companies understood that they could continue these programs and there would be no violation, there would be no penalties or anything of that nature. And I think this is great because, as Representative Hart was just talking about in regard to that gap in coverage, that does not exist, of course, for our lowest-income seniors who qualify, as she said, for the low-income supplement. No matter how much money they would incur before this program for prescription drugs, they are only going to pay $1 a month for each prescription as a copay for generic. Maybe a little bit more if it is a brand name.

But most people in the program do face that gap in coverage where, after the first $2,250, then all of the payment is out of their own pocket until, Madam Speaker, the point when they have actually spent in any one year $3,600, and then after that the benefit is outstanding. In fact, 95 percent of any cost above that amount is paid for by the insurance program and only a 5 percent burden on the patient. So that is a tremendous benefit.

But in that gap in coverage, where all of a sudden if somebody reaches that, $2,250 is not the average amount that an individual senior would spend each year on drugs. It is considerably lower than that. It may be closer to $1,400, and they would never get to that point. But some do, and now we know, because of the good work of the Ways and Means Committee, of which Representative Hart is a member, we have worked this out so that the pharmaceutical companies can continue to offer those discount programs and to provide at a very low cost these prescription drugs for those seniors who are getting to that point where it is really going to be difficult for them to stay on their medications. And I commend her for that and I think that was something that was very important.

The pharmaceutical industry, the companies, have been attacked so much by the other side of the aisle, and we have heard that over and over and over again, that this is nothing but a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry, and they wrote the bill and the Republicans passed it in the dark of night. We have all heard that to a fare-thee- well. Hopefully, our colleagues will now get on board with us and realize that this is a good bill that is saving money, as Melissa Hart indicated. It is not averaging $40 a month; it is averaging $25 a month, or, in some cases, even less. And there are options, of course, the first option being you do not have to sign up for it if you do not want to or if you have something better. But it has been a godsend for so many.

And I thank you so much for being with us tonight, Representative Hart.

And as I said, premiums, Madam Speaker, a third lower than expected. Even the cost, the overall cost, we got some conflicting numbers back towards the end of 2003 when we were debating and finally passing this bill. The first number, of course, was it was going to cost $450 billion over 10 years extra Medicare spending. Then the number went up to $750 billion. We now know that the cost is going to be lower than those numbers, and probably a lot lower because as we crunch these numbers, the Congressional Budget Office or the Office of Management and Budget, they do what we call static scoring. And as my colleagues earlier were talking about, and I think Dr. Burgess in particular, Madam Speaker, no credit is given for the fact that when our seniors, my mom and others, can afford to take these prescription drugs and lower that blood pressure, lower that cholesterol, lower that blood sugar, then they are not going to need the expensive benefits of Part A and Part B, whether it is a long stay in the hospital or in the intensive care unit, even more expensive; or on the operating table, having a leg amputated; coronaries; bypass; or maybe even in a worse situation of high blood pressure, having a stroke and spending the rest of their lives in a nursing home covered by Medicare or maybe Medicaid. Who wants that if they can avoid it by spending less money on Part D and preventing this from happening in the first place?

So we shift costs, and we do not get any credit for that in this so- called static scoring that goes on around here, but we should be getting a lot of credit for it.

And I know that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle understand this. But despite it, there are Democrats in this Congress and liberal groups like Families USA and MoveOn.org who are continuing to play politics with our seniors' health, holding town hall meetings to encourage seniors not to enroll. Not to enroll. I thought they would get over the fact that somebody licked the red off their candy or they lost their marbles in a playground game and all of a sudden wanted to pick up and go home.

I remember 1 year ago or 1\1/2\ years ago seeing Members, particularly on the other side of the aisle, coming down and literally making a big show out of tearing up their AARP card because this wonderful senior organization of 35 million, of which I am a proud member, had the audacity, audacity, to endorse something that the Republicans, Madam Speaker, had put forward for our seniors. And I guess the frustration of the other side when they had control of this place for 40 years and never could deliver on this promise, I guess it does grate at you a little bit. But I want them to get over it, I really do, and get on board, because we need to let seniors know, more than a few who have not yet signed up, that let us get this done in the next 3 weeks. And there is a deadline, and, yes, there is a penalty if you do not sign up by the deadline.

All we hear by the other side is to extend the deadline. You just need to give them 6 more months or 6 more years. I do not know what they want. But I know this: This Member has a bad habit of procrastinating, and if I did not have a deadline, if there was not a final deadline of getting your income tax return in every year, I would not do it. And that is just human nature. We have to realize that there is a time certain, and if you sign up late and expect to come into the program and pay the same premium, it is not fair, particularly if during that interim

you went from being on no medications and would cost the program very little, and all of a sudden when you have that angina, as we call it, chest pain, and you realize you are now on five medications and you want to hurry up and sign up for the program, that is not fair to the others because, after all, this is an insurance program and it is pooled and that is the way we keep costs down. So I think it absolutely makes sense to get everybody signed up by the deadline, which is fast approaching.

Madam Speaker, it has, as always, been a pleasure to have the opportunity to be given by our leadership, by Speaker Hastert and Mr. Leader Boehner and our conference chairman, Deborah Pryce, to spend this hour with my colleagues talking about something that is so important. And if we can ever in this body, and I know we can, put policy ahead of politics and realize that we can work together in a bipartisan way when we have got something that clearly is a tremendous benefit to our seniors, let us all pull together.

When we go home tomorrow, if we have got some time on Friday, or Monday before we come back to Washington, let us all have town hall meetings and workshops and computers and pharmacists there and vendors and maybe some health screening kiosk as well, and help our seniors take advantage of this great benefit.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to share yet another success story from a senior who is saving money with Medicare prescription drug coverage. These stories are plentiful, and it is important we share them with the American people so seniors will know the truth. They could be saving thousands of dollars a year with Medicare part D.

Mrs. Cornelia Kinnebrew lives in Rome, Georgia, in my district. Like many seniors, Ms. Kinnebrew's medication costs were astronomical. She was paying more than $700 a month for her drugs, a huge portion of her monthly budget.

Well, after contacting my office, Ms. Kinnebrew is signed up for a Medicare prescription drug plan. We discovered that she qualified for the additional help available to our low-income seniors, and I am incredibly pleased to report that now, with Medicare part D, Cornelia Kinnebrew pays only $37 a month for her prescription drugs. That is a savings of nearly $700 every month.

Madam Speaker, the initial enrollment deadline for Medicare part D is May 15. With 3 weeks left to sign up, it is extremely important we put people over politics and help ensure all seniors have the opportunity to enroll.

My message to seniors is this: with Medicare part D, the D stands for delivers. The President and this Republican-led Congress have done just that. Take advantage of it.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the Special Order time of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate a friend and a fellow Georgian Larry Nelson, who, after years of hard work and success, has been elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame this year.

Mr. Speaker, I want to call my colleagues' attention to this picture of Larry at my left. Look at that picture-perfect swing. I can only dream about that.

Larry Nelson, indeed, is an inspired golfer and an inspirational athlete. Throughout his successful 36-year career, Larry has risen to the top of his game, and he has remained there while racking up victory after victory. In the last 32 years on the PGA and the Champions tours, Larry has won 10 events, including 3 majors. His career is highlighted by his PGA championships in 1981, 1987, and his 1983 win at the United States Open. He is also a three-time member of the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

Larry's place among golf's greatest is well deserved. During the earlier part of his career in the 1980s, there were only three other golfers besides Larry who managed to win three major tournaments: Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, and Seve Ballesteros.

Larry Nelson undoubtedly belongs with these legends of golf.

We often hear of self-made men, and Larry is certainly one of them. Mr. Speaker, as a sergeant in the United States Army during the Vietnam conflict, golf was not even a blip on his

radar screen. In fact, he said he thought it was a game for sissies. Indeed. But upon his return to the States from Vietnam, Larry found himself drawn to golf. One day he noticed a golf center across the street from the Lockheed Martin plant in my hometown where he worked. Thus, the Sam Snead Golf Center in Marietta, Georgia, became the first training ground for his new passion.

For Larry, golf came naturally. He broke 100 on his first round. That is a little discouraging to me, Mr. Speaker. In this recent time in the district, I found one day to go out on the golf course, and I don't think I broke 150. But Larry broke 100 on that very first round, and enjoyed it. He said this many times, he enjoyed dedicating himself to the techniques and strategy of the game. Indeed, the qualities that it takes for victory and success, that determination and the hard work, that has to be put in every day. As Larry told the Atlanta Journal- Constitution, ``I fell in love with it, and I got better every day.''

His humbleness aside, Larry was dedicated to his game, and he worked hard to achieve those goals. He graduated from qualifying school in 1973; and by 1979, just 6 years later, he had already won his first PGA tour victory, capturing the Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic.

Larry Nelson's career saw some amazing highlights. In 2000, he finished number one on the tour. I repeat, Mr. Speaker, he finished number one on the tour, and he was named the Champions Tour Player of the Year. Larry won a total of 19 tournaments; and, listen to this, he finished second 24 times. Just think about how difficult that is, to finish second in a major tournament.

He was never one to brag about his accomplishments, but anyone who looks at Larry Nelson's career knows that it has been outstanding.

Mr. Speaker, when Larry is inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine this October, he will assume his place among golf's greatest. This is the 11th year Larry has been on the Hall of Fame ballot, and I know many golf lovers join me in saying it is about time. I am so pleased Larry's accomplishments are receiving the distinction that they so much deserve.

Larry Nelson's life and career serve as an inspiration to all of us in any walk of life, an inspiration to pursue new interests and work to achieve the highest levels of success through faith in one's God-given talents, and Larry indeed has that gift.

When he was recently asked about how much longer he would be a golfer, Larry replied that he will keep playing as long as he enjoys it. Knowing Larry's love for the game, I predict we will get to see his successes for some time to come.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that you and all of my colleagues join me in congratulating Larry Nelson on his past accomplishments and his present induction into the Golf Hall of Fame.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a strong supporter of effective immigration reform and with a sense of urgency that Congress must act decisively to secure our borders and control illegal immigration.

Every day we put off sending the President border security legislation simply allows more opportunity for illegal immigrants to break our laws and cross our borders.

America must not continue to be a foster home for those who deliberately break the law. Rather, we must be a Nation that respects law and encourages safe and legal immigration.

The burden of illegal immigration is increasing daily for American citizens as hospitals and schools are filled with illegal immigrants who cannot pay for

their education or their medical expenses. Indeed, illegal immigration is not a victimless crime, and as long as our Nation continues to turn a blind eye, illegal immigrants have all the incentives in the world to risk their lives crossing our border.

As the Senate deliberates their approach to reform, I believe we in the House need to continue to emphasize border security first and foremost, our opposition to amnesty, and support for a national guest worker program that treats those seeking jobs here as exactly that, guests not citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy, of course, to be here tonight to take this leadership hour and talk about something that is really near and dear to my heart but, more importantly, near and dear to the hearts of 41, 42 million seniors in this country who finally, because of the leadership of this Congress, the Republican leadership and this President, have delivered on a promise that was made years ago. And that delivery, I know a lot about them because as an OB/GYN physician before coming to Congress, I delivered 5,200 babies, but this may be the best delivery that I have ever been a part of, Mr. Speaker, and that is delivering, as I say, on a promise made by former Congresses and other Presidents over the 45-year history of the Medicare program, which was introduced in 1965 with no prescription drug benefit. And what we have done here is add part D, the ``D'' for ``drugs'' or, if you want, the ``delivery'' that we have finally provided to our American seniors.

This prescription drug benefit is a wonderful thing, and, of course, we are going to talk about that tonight. I have a number of my colleagues that have joined me, and we will be getting information from them, from their districts. We will be engaging in colloquy as we go through the hour, Mr. Speaker, talking about the success stories because we do not want to stand up here for an hour and expect people to take our word for this. I think it is very important, Mr. Speaker, that we hear from our seniors, whether they are from the 11th District of Georgia that I represent or whether they are from the gentlewoman's Virginia District, Representative Thelma Drake, who is here with us, and others.

But when we passed this bill in November of 2003 and the President signed it into law shortly thereafter in December, we had so much criticism from the other side of the aisle, it was really amazing. Of course, maybe I could understand the politics of it back then because we had finally delivered on a promise that maybe they had made and not delivered on. But we are into the sign-up period, and, in fact, May 15, after that date there is a penalty for late signing up, and yet the other side is still discouraging the 8 million that have not yet signed up. And that is, Mr. Speaker, I think just so disappointing.

I have heard for the last 1\1/2\ years the criticism from the Democrats about this program being nothing but a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry, that the program was designed by them, that the government cannot negotiate price controls.

Well, I want to take a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, before yielding to my good friend from Virginia. Listen to this: on March 9, 2000, the Clinton

White House released the following ``united vision for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit.'' Many parts of this vision closely mirror the Republican-passed plan that the Democrats have been opposing and criticizing for a 1\1/2\ years. And I take this text that I am going to read directly from the Clinton White House Web site.

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary: ``President Clinton and Senate Democrats unified in vision for new Medicare prescription drug benefit for immediate release March the 9th, 2000. Senate Democrats agree on principles for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit. Today Senator Daschle and the Senate Democratic Caucus released a set of prescription drug principles that will guide the current congressional debate over the provision of a new Medicare prescription drug benefit to millions of seniors. These principles state that any new benefit should be: Number one, voluntary.'' Sound familiar? ``Medicare beneficiaries who now have dependable, affordable coverage should have the option of keeping that coverage.

``Accessible to all beneficiaries.'' Again, sound familiar? ``All seniors and individuals with disabilities, including those in traditional Medicare, should have access to a reliable benefit designed to give beneficiaries meaningful protection and bargaining power. A Medicare drug benefit should help seniors and the disabled with the high cost of prescription drugs and protect against excessive out-of- pocket costs.'' The catastrophic coverage in our plan. ``It should give beneficiaries bargaining power that they lack today and include a defined benefit, assuring access to medically necessary drugs.'' Exactly what this Republican Medicare modernization part D bill does.

``Affordable to all beneficiaries and the program, Medicare should contribute enough towards a prescription drug premium to make it affordable for all beneficiaries. While subsidies should be provided to all to assure the benefit is affordable, low-income beneficiaries should receive extra help with the cost of premium and cost sharing.''

Again, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, does that sound familiar? That is exactly what this bill does.

Let me continue because this is just so instructive. Again, this is the Bill Clinton Presidency and Democratic Congress plan back in 2000.

``Administered using private sector entities and competitive purchasing techniques. Discounts should be achieved through competition, not regulation or price controls.''

They have been griping about this for 1\1/2\ years, and their plan calls for private competition and no price controls.

It should mirror practices employed by private insurers in delivering prescription drugs. Private organizations should negotiate prices with drug manufacturers and handle the day-to-day administrative responsibilities of the benefit.'' That is exactly what this plan does and what they have been railing about, again, for the past year-and-a- half. So hypocritical, it is unbelievable.

So I just wanted to bring this press release, this Clinton press release, and show you that the Democrats really wanted to do this, but they couldn't deliver. They could not deliver on the goods, and they can't stand it. They literally cannot stand the fact that this President, who they despise, who they detest, and this Republican leadership, who has been in control of this Congress for the last 12 years and is delivering, is getting things done, is not just simply sitting back and throwing bricks and screaming and hollering. And as we get closer and closer to the deadline, the rhetoric will continue to increase.

Well, I just wanted to start the hour, Mr. Speaker, certainly not on a negative tone, because we are very positive about this. I personally as a physician Member am extremely excited that we are leaving tomorrow, most of us will be leaving tomorrow, to go back to our districts for a 2-week work period.

I am told by our Conference chairperson, the gentlelady from Ohio, Deborah Pryce, that the Republicans, the 231 of us in this body, have scheduled over 200 town hall meetings over this 10-day period while we go back home and work for our seniors, not against our seniors.

I am excited about it, because I have four of those 200 scheduled in my district, and I am really looking forward to it and looking forward to help get those few, I think I said at the outset that some 27 million of 41 million eligible have now signed up, probably 5 or 6 million of those who have not already have a drug plan. We understand that. They have a plan, whether it is TRICARE, if they happen to be a veteran, or the widow or widower of a veteran, or they are signed up under a company that they worked many years for and retired with not only health insurance benefits, but a prescription drug coverage. They don't need it. But there are still 6 or 8 million that do, and that is why I am excited to get home and bring the good news to them.

At this point I want to yield to my colleagues. We have several with us here on the floor tonight, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman from Pennsylvania is the first to stand, and I want to recognize him.

I want to say a little bit about him before I turn the microphone over to Dr. Murphy.

Dr. Tim Murphy is a classmate of mine. We came in the 108th Congress. We have served together now for about 3\1/2\ years. He and I actually cochair the Republican Health Care Public Relations Committee. We could probably spend this hour talking about any number of issues regarding health care that the Republicans have done.

But we are going to concentrate, as I said at the outset, and talk about this Medicare modernization. We don't want to forget that part, because that is almost as important as the prescription drug part.

At this time, I am very proud to yield to my friend from Pennsylvania, Dr. Representative Tim Murphy.

Mr. Murphy, thank you so much for that and for your insights.

As I was standing here listening to Mr. Murphy, I cannot help but, Mr. Speaker, wanting to go back just for a moment to this press release of March 9, 2000, from the Bill Clinton White House. There were a couple of things that I did not mention that I want to read to you before we yield to Representative Drake.

In this press release it says, and this is one of the bullet points, ``Consistent with broader reform. The addition of a Medicare drug benefit should be considered as part of an overall plan to strengthen and modernize Medicare. Medicare will face the same demographic strain as Social Security when the baby boom generation retires. Improving benefits is only one step in preparing Medicare for this new century's challenges.''

I will say one thing about the Democrats, they are pretty consistent because they opposed any changes to Social Security as well. In fact, this is exactly what they called for but, once again, as I said at the outset, they could not deliver and it is killing them. But unfortunately, their continuing rhetoric runs the risk of killing some of our seniors, the six or so million of them, who need this benefit. And it is just shameful. Shameless, as Garth Brooks sings the title of one of my favorite songs. But they keep on. But hopefully maybe over the next couple of weeks, maybe during this 2-week recess they will get religion. It is certainly a time for religion. And they will understand that it is time to stop playing footsie with our seniors and misleading them and trying to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure at this time to introduce my colleague for her remarks, the gentlewoman from the Second District of Virginia (Mrs. Drake). She is a freshman but you would not know that. Her experience and the things that she has done in a short period of time in this body, on our side of the aisle, has just been amazing. She is a member of the House Armed Service Committee. She is passionate about veterans health care and health care for our military. So it is indeed an honor to have Representative Drake with us tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman so much for being with us tonight and I want to maybe expand just a little bit on her comments in regard to the penalty, as she explained it very carefully as to why that is necessary part of an insurance program.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, that is the exact same situation that exists with Medicare part B. Medicare part B was there in 1965 but it was the optional part. I think former President Truman was the first person to actually voluntarily sign up for part B, the doctor part where it is premium based, and the individual Medicare beneficiary pays 25 percent of the costs and the taxpayer and Medicare, if you will, pays 75 percent.

I will bet you, Mr. Speaker, I will bet you that 98, 99 percent of seniors voluntarily sign up for part B and they do it within the 6- month window of opportunity because if they go beyond that then just like in this part D, because a person on part D is an example, as Representative Drake pointed out. If they do not sign up for it and they go beyond the sign-up period, and then all of the sudden they get sick and they go from taking that one drug a month at $78 that she talked about to taking five at $5,000 a month, then they should pay more for their premium. So it is very important and it is not a punitive thing, but it is there to make the program work.

Mr. Speaker, we are again honored by one of our colleagues who has served in this House. I think this is his fourth term, and I am talking about the gentleman from Minnesota who I think very soon after November will be the United States Senator from Minnesota, and I am speaking none other than Representative Mark Kennedy.

Representative Kennedy, thank you for being with us tonight. I yield to you at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say I thank the gentleman, and I think the seniors are very fortunate, whether Mark Kennedy is serving in this United States House of Representatives or representing them in the other body soon as a senator in the United States Senate. They are indeed fortunate to have his compassion and caring attitude, and I commend him for that.

Mr. Speaker, I think what I would like to do here for a minute is sort of frame this problem, before we delivered on this prescription drug benefit, to make sure that our colleagues and anybody within shouting or listening distance might possibly be watching our proceedings tonight, did they understand the situation that existed before we delivered on this promise of a prescription drug benefit part D under the Medicare program. Where were the seniors getting their prescription drug coverage before this plan?

Well, this first slide, Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that my colleagues can see this. There were a number of people. This is about 26 percent, an estimate of seniors that had employment-based plans. We talked about that. We have talked about the fact that people worked 25, 30 years for a company, and part of their retirement benefit may be a little pension hopefully and a little health care benefit, in many cases to include a prescription drug coverage.

Now, there has been concern among these 26 percent because even before we brought forward this well-conceived, well-thought-out plan, in fact it was thought out pretty well, as I pointed out earlier on March 9, 2000, by President Clinton and the Democratic leadership in the Senate. They just did not deliver on it, but the 26 percent were concerned because employers were dropping these plans or changing the guidelines. All of a sudden a senior gets a letter in the mail, and it says, oh, by the way, first of the year, you are going to have to pay, instead of 20 percent of the premium, you are going to

have to pay 30, and oh, by the way, it is no longer going to cover prescription drugs or we have got a very limited formulary; it is not going to cover your hearing aid or your eyeglasses or whatever or even worse than that, Mr. Speaker, would be the ultimate dear John letter. That is a letter, that pink slip, that says, guess what, we are dropping your coverage; we are going to completely drop your prescription coverage or may, in fact, drop the whole health insurance coverage, and this has happened.

It was happening, and under this plan, though, to prevent that, to try to stop that, we, in designing this plan, this Republican majority, this President, under our leadership, we said, look, we will help you, John Q. Employer, if you will continue these plans and you will not renege on these promises. We will reimburse you, really, for some of the cost of those plans so that you do not drop them.

Again, I go back to my Clinton press release. One of the things that they called for in 2000, optional of course for all beneficiaries as we said earlier, but also provides financial incentives for employers to develop and retain their retiree health coverage. That is what Clinton and the Democrats called for. This is another thing that they have been railing against, the fact that we have incentivized these employers not to drop these plans.

Well, okay, 26 percent have employment-based plans. Three percent individually purchase policies. That would be like my mom, Helen Gingrey, my precious mom who has a medigap policy, but now, unfortunately, the prescription part of that was so expensive that she had to drop it. Of course, the Department of Veterans Affairs and TRICARE, we talked about that. That is about 3 percent. About 12 percent are covered by the State Medicaid program. Some are more generous than others, I think very generous in my State of Georgia, and then some other State-based programs and other sources, 6 percent.

But the real eye-opener on this chart, on this pie graph, is that 40 percent before this plan, 40 percent were getting prescription drug coverage out of their own pocket. In other words, they had no coverage, and they had no bargaining power, Mr. Speaker. They simply went to the drugstore and they paid sticker price, you know, like buying an automobile and not getting any discount because you did not know to ask for one. They had no clout, one individual and elderly, frail senior, and so they were paying sticker price, and that was the problem. That is why we knew that we had to do something, especially for the neediest, especially for those who literally were breaking pills, running out of medication, not going to the drugstore because they are embarrassed that they could not pay.

It is an act of compassion on our part, really, for the neediest seniors especially, and of course, now, the good news is that, and this next slide shows, a total of 27 million seniors now have coverage under Medicare Part D.

I see that the gentlewoman from Virginia has been kind enough to stay with us, despite the lateness of the hour, and I want to yield a little time to her and maybe we can get engaged in a little bit of a colloquy in talking about the some of the things that we both notice in our district.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and my mother thanks the gentlewoman, but you have made such a great point about the option, and Representative Drake talked about the number of plans in Virginia. It is kind of similar in Georgia. There may be almost 50 plans, but there are only 18 companies.

But what that means is companies, good companies, offer more than one plan, so that seniors have the option, as she described, to say, well, if somebody says well I do not need that, I have got the Methuselah gene, that means you live a long, healthy life. A person like that might say, well, I do not take anything, I buy a few over-the-counter drugs a year and I bet I do not spend $200 a year. Well, God bless them. They are lucky. They are fortunate, but what Representative Drake is talking about is that very next week may be the time that the chest pain strikes and all of the sudden you have a coronary bypass or stints put in and you are on five or six medications. That happened to yours truly a couple or 3 years ago, and then all of the sudden you are kind of stuck.

So what the gentlewoman from Virginia was saying is look, seniors, if you are in that fortunate situation, do not roll the dice on this because you could come up snake eyes. Go ahead and take one of these plans where the monthly premium is 20 bucks a month. There is no deductible. There is a donut hole, but you are not worried about that donut hole because you are blessed with that Methuselah gene. Then later on, as she so correctly pointed out, if something does happen, then you can switch, and you do not have to pay a penalty because you did not sign up; you did not roll the dice and come up snake eyes.

Then the corollary to that is say someone who has a lot of prescription drug costs, they are already on six or eight drugs and they are spending $10,000 a year, and they look at that and they say hey, look, give me one, I will pay a higher monthly premium, I may pay 60 bucks a month premium, but that plan gives me coverage in that so- called donut hole. That is important because they are already spending a lot of money, and so you tailor these. The companies are actually doing that. I think it is a great thing.

Well, I thank the gentlewoman, and I know she is looking forward to going back into the 2nd District of Virginia tomorrow, and I am sure she is one of the many Republican Members who have got those town hall meetings scheduled to get those remaining 6 or 8 million signed up, and I thank her.

At the outset, I said do not just take our word for it, and I have been expounding a little bit for the last 50 minutes, but I did want to give some anecdotal stories, and let us do that for a moment, Mr. Speaker.

Barbara W. From El Mirage, Arizona, had no prescription drug coverage. She spent more than $2,600 a year on medication just this past year. She wanted an inexpensive plan with a low premium, so she did enroll in the part D plan, and it only had a $6.14 monthly premium. In 2006, she will save $1,800, nearly $200 a month, the lady from Arizona. God bless her.

Here is another, Mr. Speaker. Sandra S. from Woodland Hills, California. In 2005, she spent $4,600 per year on prescription drugs. She read about Medicare part D in the Los Angeles Times. I am sure they weren't praising it, but thank goodness she read about it. She called 1-800-MEDICARE for help. She wanted a plan with no donut hole. We just talked about that a minute ago. Her plan has a $50 monthly premium, no deductible, no gap in coverage and, of course as all those plans, it has that catastrophic coverage. So that if you really get into a year where you have out-of-pocket expenses of $3,600, out of your own pocket, then after that, the insurance pays 95 percent and you only pay 5 percent. What a godsend. Total savings for Sandra, $2,400 a year.

I think we have a couple more that I wanted to show. Barbara L. from Kemp, Texas. In 2005, spent $2,100 on prescription drugs. She enrolled in an AARP part D plan. They have a very good plan. So in 2006 she expects to pay $360. Barbara saved $1,740.

Well, I could go on and on, but let me just say one other thing, because I mentioned AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons. I am proudly one of them. I am not retired, but I was eligible and got my card at age 50, so I have had it a while. Thirty-seven million seniors are members. And AARP is not typically a conservative organization, supportive of Republican ideas. More typically, they are supportive of the Democrat line of thought, and yet they have supported this program.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle came down to the well, Member after Member after Member, telling members of AARP to tear up their cards and throw them out the window. Thank God for AARP.

In fact, we had a press conference today, Mr. Speaker, talking about the plan and what the Republican Members are going to do when we go back to our districts, and we have 76, count them, 76 organizations that are supporting this program. The AIDS Institute, Alzheimer's Association, American Geriatric Society, American Pharmacists Association, Association of Black Cardiologists, National Hispanic Medical Association, National Alliance For the Mentally Ill, National Alliance for Hispanic Health, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, and Easter Seals. I could go on and on, but there are 76.

Let me talk briefly as we close about groups misleading seniors about Medicare part D. In fact, they were out there protesting our press conference on the terrace of the Cannon Building this afternoon. Guess who was there chanting against seniors? MoveOn.org and far left shadow groups.

So let's see. Doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, health care providers and AARP, versus MoveOn.org, Nancy Pelosi, and other far-left groups. Who do you trust with senior health? I think the answer is pretty obvious, Mr. Speaker, and I am proud to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Mr. Speaker, I want to yield very quickly to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, my chairman, and I am talking about the gentleman from California, Representative Duncan Hunter. I gladly yield to the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much in these closing seconds. And of course we know of the work of the esteemed chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Duncan Hunter. What a wonderful way to close this hour.

What is more important than the defense of this Nation, as this great patriot just described, and providing health care for our precious seniors?

Madam Speaker, I ask you and all my colleagues to join me in congratulating Brian Leonardi on his recent acceptance of a full football scholarship to Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina.

Brian is the 18-year-old son of my niece, Allyson Leonardi, and Ed Leonardi. He played linebacker for Aiken High School Hornets, and for 2 years he and his teammates advanced to the semifinals of the 4-A State playoffs. Brian was chosen this year to play for the North squad in an annual all-star game in Conway, South Carolina.

His parents, sister Megan and brother Danny are very proud of his accomplishments, as are his Uncle Doug and Aunt Cindy, but I think the happiest and most excited of all are my brother Bill Gingrey and sister-in-law Gail, who are the fortunate grandparents of this outstanding young man.

Brian's Congressman, Gresham Barrett, and I join our colleagues in the United States House of Representatives to say Godspeed, Brian. Study hard and play well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia, as well as my colleague, Representative Davis from Illinois, and I thank Representative Baird from Washington for bringing this bill up, H. Res. 556.

I am a physician Member of the body, and I see, and I did in my practice, of course this has been 4 years ago, a lot of drug addiction unfortunately, and this methamphetamine issue, Mr. Speaker, has reached exponential and unbelievable proportions.

When some of us were in college, Mr. Speaker, I do not know if you remember this or not, but I certainly do, to study and cram for a test at the last minute, there were always these little pills floating around the fraternity house that you could take. It would literally allow you to stay up all night, and you had an accelerated sense of awareness and could not sleep, and sometimes you literally could go through a whole calculus textbook and do a whole semester's worth of work in one night and think that you were going to go in and ace the test. That rarely happened. That sense of euphoria was there, Mr. Speaker, but when you got that final grade back, that A you thought you had made might more often was a C- or a D. But that was then and this is now.

Just listen to this little bit of background and why this idea of Representative Baird's of having a National Methamphetamine Prevention Awareness Week is so important.

Methamphetamine is a highly addictive, man-made drug that can be, and I remember you just swallowed a pill, but today can be injected, snorted, smoked and, of course, ingested orally. It causes these feelings, Mr. Speaker, of euphoria that last up to 24 hours, psychotic behavior, auditory hallucinations, mood disturbances, delusions, paranoia, potentially causing the user to experience homicidal or suicidal thoughts, as well as violent behavior, brain damage.

The scary part about this is it is so easily made, as the previous speakers have talked about, and these clandestine labs in these homes are a lot of times in rural areas.

Mr. Speaker, I represent a fairly rural area, northwest Georgia. I have one county in particular who are a great people. I will not mention the name of the county because they do not deserve, I do not think, to be overly criticized because they are working really hard to try to solve this problem in the northwest, but it is a huge problem, and I wanted to take an opportunity in particular, and in this instance I will name names.

One of my constituents, she is a real estate agent, works hard, single parent. Her name is Betty Brady. When I was in that county recently, Betty gave me a book that she had written, and it was just kind of a small paperback, almost a syllabus. It was the first time, Mr. Speaker, that she had ever made any attempt at authoring a book. That was not her profession. She is not a professional writer, but she wrote that book talking about her daughter Jennifer.

Jennifer's now, thank God, recovered fully from her methamphetamine addiction. She is 24 years old, young lady who is working very hard in the community now, with an outreach, working with law enforcement, talking in school, trying to bring awareness, just as this bill is going to do and why I am so much in favor of it. But it is a heartrending story of this perfect child. They have a son as well and this little perfect daughter, you know, the apple of their eye, and then all of the sudden she fell in with the wrong crowd and got into this methamphetamine addiction and just about destroyed her life. As Betty says in the book, so many of this young lady, her daughter Jennifer's friends did lose their lives, either by getting too much or main-lining something and then going into respiratory depression or whatever.

I am just shocked when I read some of the statistics, Mr. Speaker, the fact that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that more than 30 million people around the world use methamphetamine-type stimulants, a number that eclipsed the combined global use of cocaine and heroin.

That is the problem that Representative Baird is so aware of and why this H. Res. 556 is such an important thing to do, so that people like Betty Brady that are out there in the trenches struggling to make youngsters aware, this will be a week where they can really bring that focus and get into the schools and let people know that this is highly addictive. This is not just the speed that truck drivers used to take so they could drive to the west coast without stopping. This is something that is a very, very serious drug.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia, my colleague, Representative Westmoreland, for letting me take a few minutes and just talk about this, and I commend Representative Baird. We are fully supportive of it, and I am sure that an overwhelming majority, if not unanimous, vote on this is in order.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee. It is really an honor to be part of this hour discussion tonight with some of the most fiscally responsible Members of this body. My Republican colleagues on the Republican Study Committee, that you just heard from the gentleman from Texas, you will be hearing from others, the gentleman from New Jersey, the gentleman from North Carolina, the gentlewoman from Ohio. These are Members, Mr. Speaker, that get it. As Mr. Hensarling just said, this is really not green eye shade stuff; this is about people and values, as he so well pointed out. It is about real needs as distinct from just wanting more, more, more.

Mr. Speaker, my dad told me one time when I was just a teenager, he said, ``Somebody asked a very rich person one time, what would it take to make him happy?'' And the answer was, ``Just a little bit more.'' That is a problem that we have in trying to satisfy all of the wants and not necessarily just the real needs.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues here tonight and on this side of the aisle are committed to restoring some fiscal sanity to this place, and I commend Mr. Hensarling in particular. I have told him in private that he is our modern day William Proxmire of the 109th, and indeed, the 108th Congress as we came in together in regarding to ferreting out waste, fraud, and abuse in this Federal Government. In fact, that was our class project that the gentlewoman from Tennessee and myself and others in the 108th class were determined to do, and that is what we are doing.

Mr. Speaker, we have talked about the other side and what they want to do and their plans. The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 is an example of what they did not do. They voted no for those tax cuts. They said we cannot do that. That is going to, according to the Congressional Budget Office, when you do this static scoring, we are going to cut taxes, we are going to cut rates for everybody that pay taxes. We are going to lower capital gains, we are going to lower the tax on dividends, which indeed is a double taxation.

We are going to get rid of the marriage tax penalty. We are going to increase child tax credit from $600 to $1,000 per child. We are going to finally stomp dead the death tax. As Steve Forbes once said, there should be no taxation without respiration.

We did these things, and the opposition said, well, that is going to cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years. Mr. Speaker, you know, I know, my colleagues know, I hope the American people know that it did not cost us any money. We gained revenue, something like $250 billion over 10 years. That is what happened in 1960 under Democratic President Kennedy; it happened in 1980 under my colleague's favorite,

maybe all-time favorite President Reagan. We cut taxes, we raised revenue, and it works. The opposition, they not only oppose that, but they also opposed health care reform, Medicare modernization, Prescription Drug Act. They said that is going to cost $750 billion over 10 years. But of course, actually, their plan, if we had done what they wanted us to do, would have probably cost $3 trillion over 10 years.

Mr. Speaker, the fact is, it was only going to cost that money if it did not work. And what we are finding today, as we are getting closer and closer to that deadline of May 15, the 6-month opportunity for seniors to take that option and sign up for prescription drug benefit, we are reaching our goal. We are beyond our goal. Seniors are saying, members of my own family, my mom, my brother, constituents in my district saying, ``Thank you, Congressman. We are saving money.'' I have had people spending $900 a month who found out they qualified for the low income supplement and now are spending $27 a month, they are saving $900 a month.

We wanted to do Social Security reform to give individuals an opportunity to have an individual personal account. What does the other side do? They fight that. They are the party of no, of negative.

But these are the things that this majority and particularly the Members here tonight, Mr. Speaker, are determined to do for the American people: To reform government, to save money, to let people put that money back into the family budget, as Mr. Hensarling has pushed so hard for.

This budget that we are going to vote on, this 2007 budget is a very fiscally sound, responsible budget. It virtually freezes nondefense discretionary spending at the 2006 level. Again, the other side will say, well, you are taking money away from the school children, you are taking money away from Head Start, you are taking money away from social welfare programs. Not at all, Mr. Speaker. All we are doing is putting a cap on discretionary spending, and then we are saying to the appropriators: You decide where that money needs to be spent. You decide whether cuts really need to be made and whether plus-ups need to be made. And that is the responsible way to do it.

In conclusion I want to say, too, to the chairman of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) and the great job that he has done and his willingness to include in this 2007 budget a rainy day fund. This is something that all of the Members here tonight who are speaking during this hour have been calling for and for a number of years saying, look, we know every year that we are going to have a hurricane, we are going to have a natural disaster.

It may not be every year, but all of a sudden you go a couple of years and then you have a Katrina. So we need to fund this based on a 10-year average of how much we spend on a natural disaster and emergency. So this is in the budget, $4 billion for each of the next 5 years. I think that is absolutely responsible.

In addition to that, we are going to come forward with a line item veto. The President needs it, the Congress wants it, and we are going to get that done. We are also going to have the earmark reforms that Congressman Flake has called for shine the light of day on those earmarks, some of which are very good and should be included in the budget; and last but not least, of course, a sunset commission.

Mr. Speaker, as I say, it is an honor. I know we want to hear from our other colleagues on this issue. But I commend the gentlewoman from Tennessee for her continued work on fiscal responsibility and putting together this hour tonight and giving us a chance to weigh in on it.

Madam Speaker, I rise and share yet another story of success regarding the Medicare part D prescription drug benefit. Today I would like to tell you about Lola Squires of Cedartown, Georgia.

Lola is a widow and lives on a fixed income. As you can imagine, every dollar of her monthly budget is precious to her livelihood. Due to chronic illness, Lola was paying $1,000 a month for her prescription drugs, which used up almost all of her income.

Lola is now enrolled in a Medicare part D plan. As my office was assisting her, we learned that she did qualify for the extra help due to her limited resources, and I am happy to report, as of today, Lola is paying a mere $27 a month for her medication. $27 a month. That is a saving of more than $900 every month for Lola.

Madam Speaker, the Medicare part D success stories are pouring in. Seniors have until May 15 to enroll in a plan without penalty; so in the next few weeks, it is absolutely essential that Congress put real people over partisan politics and help our seniors get the medicine they need to stay well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of securing our borders and getting legislation to the President's desk that will stop the flow of illegal immigrants into our country.

This week, the Senate is debating immigration reform, and it is crucial that they pass legislation that puts enforcement first and says ``no'' to blanket amnesty.

As a physician, I know you have to stop a patient's bleeding before you can heal the wound. Likewise, we must stop the bleeding of our borders before we can address other areas of reform.

Our southern border is not just bleeding; it is hemorrhaging. Thousands of illegal immigrants cross it each month, and our incomplete border fence does little to tame the flow. Our border enforcement is woefully understaffed, and local law enforcement officials lack the jurisdiction to apprehend illegal immigrants within their own communities.

Mr. Speaker, the House passed legislation in December to address each of these concerns. Reforming our immigration system requires a commitment to security and lawfulness, and our Senate colleagues must pledge their resolve to these core principles as they move forward in this debate.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be here this evening doing this special hour of the Republican majority talking about a great success story, and that is the implementation, after a 40-year wait, literally, of a benefit under Medicare that our seniors have been promised by other administrations, by other Congresses. And finally this President, this administration and this Congress, this Republican majority, has delivered on the promise to bring a prescription drug benefit to our needy seniors.

I will be joined this evening during this hour by a few of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline) and the gentleman from the great State of Texas (Mr. Burgess), a fellow OB/GYN.

But I want to start out talking a little bit about this program and why I think it is so beneficial. My colleagues know that in my prior life, as recently as 4 years ago, in fact, before getting elected to the Congress, I practiced medicine for 30 years. I was there really at the infancy of the Medicare program. I was a freshman medical student in 1965 when an amendment to the Social Security Act that is the original Medicare was signed into law by Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Something that many people do not know about Medicare part A and part B, part B being the optional part, just as part D is, seniors were going to have to pay a monthly premium. The very person, the very first senior to exercise his option to sign up for part B was none other than President Harry S. Truman. If you go to my Web site, you can actually see the film clip in black and white.

I like black and white, which says something about my age and television and movies. It is very interesting.

When you look back at that program today, and we are talking about a 40-year history, I think most people would say Medicare has been a great, great benefit. I think all of my colleagues would agree with that, part A and part B, even the optional part B. And over the years, of course, that monthly premium has increased to $88.50 a month today, and I think it was something like $15 a month in 1965, but it is still a deal. It is a good deal because the seniors taking that money probably out of their Social Security check are only actually paying 25 percent of the true cost of part B; 75 percent of it is paid by the general taxpayer.

Again, it is an optional program, but I think today I am right in these statistics, 98 percent of seniors when they turn 65, on that other voluntary part, part B, the doctor part, the surgery part, the outpatient testing part and physical exams, have opted in and certainly not opted out.

So here we are now finally with a great addition to the Medicare benefit for our seniors. We passed it, we all remember. We have some complaints still from the other side of the aisle that we passed it in the middle of the night. Doing things in the middle of the night in my profession as an obstetrician is quite routine. You either admit patients in labor in the middle of the night and deliver them in the daytime; or your admit them in labor in the daytime and deliver them at night. I would like to feel as a Member of Congress that I am not immune to a 24-hour schedule.

But back in November of 2003 we did pass this. We had the transitional program, the Medicare prescription drug discount card that was so beneficial to our neediest seniors because it gave them a $600 credit per year for 2 years. It was actually a year and a half. They got $1,200 worth of credit for purchasing prescription drugs if they were low income, and many were.

Now that program has gone away and we are into the insurance program and getting very close to the end of the 6-month sign-up period, May 15 of this year, just a little less than 6 weeks from now.

I think my colleagues, I wish on both sides of the aisle, but certainly those of us on the majority, even though some of us for what we felt they felt were legitimate reasons to be in opposition to this, yes, somewhat expensive additional program, they are encouraging our seniors to take advantage of it.

I am, as I say, wanting to talk about this program tonight, and we will do that as we continue this hour. But I want to, at this time, yield the floor to my colleague from Minnesota who has a lot of interesting stories to tell about folks in Minnesota, his constituents and how they are saving money and eventually how we are saving lives.

At this time I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline).

Well, if the gentleman would yield.

Actually, just for a question. And I wanted to ask the question, if he has had an experience really similar to what I have. We have been working on this program, like I say, for a year and half during the transitional phase, and Representative Kline has held a lot of town hall meetings; I have certainly held a lot of town hall meetings. You sort of lose count after a while.

But what I wanted to ask Mr. Kline, Colonel Kline, is, in your experience, when you first started doing these programs, and there was so much angst and rhetoric and doom and gloom possibly from certain Members of the body, did you feel that what you heard then and what you are hearing now was a little bit different? Has that changed a little bit?

I thank the gentleman. And that really is an experience, Mr. Speaker and my fellow colleagues, that I have had as well. Early on, we, almost every town hall meeting on the subject it seemed like there was someone there that was reading the talking points from the opposition in regard to oh, you know, you have done nothing but let the pharmaceutical industry write a bill, or this is just a giant giveaway to the drug companies. And you heard that kind of rhetoric almost every time. But what I am hearing, and I think Representative Kline as well, that people now understand that in this process that we go through, nothing that we do, no bill, Mr. Speaker, is perfect. I wish that it were. But that the product that we delivered in November of 2003 is a very, very good product, and our seniors are beginning to understand that. They are seeing through a lot of this negative rhetoric, mostly from the other side of the aisle. And what is said is they are even in the last throes of the implementation of this program, we are down to the last 5 or 6 weeks, it is my understanding, and I know this because I have actually seen this, Members are holding town hall meetings and in some instances discouraging people, continuing to discourage them.

I will be happy to yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

If the gentleman would yield. And the gentleman said, you know, doing your job, and that is exactly what we should be doing. In fact, I think what we are hearing from the other side as they continue to oppose everything that this majority has tried to do in the 109th Congress, and of course the rhetoric gets worse and worse as we approach November, and we all know it is an election year. But it is not only, I think, not doing your job for your constituents, but it is kind of like one of my favorite Garth Brooks songs, it's shameless. It is absolutely shameless to think that someone would hold a town hall meeting and discourage, as the gentleman from Minnesota said, seniors from signing up for something that is going to save everybody some money, but it is an absolute Godsend to those of our seniors who are low income, low assets, the very neediest in our society. And I think most of the legislation that we try to pass, and I think the attitude should be the same whether we are Republicans or Democrats, is to try to help those in the greatest need who really can't help themselves through no fault of their own.

We need to put some wind beneath their wings to kind of uplift them.

And I know there may be a few in the gentleman from Minnesota's district and I know there are some in the 11th of Georgia who still need to get the message, and maybe they do not know and they do not realize. They have not gone to the Social Security Web site and found out that they qualify because their income is only $14,450, or if they are married, $19,250 a year; and they do not have assets worth more than $11,500 if they are single, or $23,000 if they are married.

We need to get them signed up, and I know the gentleman would agree with me on that.

I appreciate the gentleman's being with me tonight describing this program in greater detail.

I wanted to point out a couple of slides based on the information that he just gave us, and hopefully he can continue to be with us for a little while longer in this time. But Representative Kline was talking about the fact that it is certainly not just beneficial to the low- income seniors. We know that they get the greatest benefit. But certainly a lot of middle-income seniors have no coverage under Medicare. They have part A and part B, but they have no prescription drug coverage. They may even have a Medigap policy that fills in the deductibles and the copay for part A and part B, but does not have a prescription drug part.

And I wanted to point out in this slide to my colleagues, Medicare part D helps working Americans. In fact, half of women on Medicare without drug coverage are middle income. That is represented here on the right, and these people are above 150 percent of the Federal poverty level. They are not going to qualify for any low-income supplement.

But this program, my mom is in this category, and on average we are talking almost a 50 percent savings on the cost of their prescription drugs. And so that is why it is important for people to understand that while the benefit for the lowest-income seniors is the greatest, and Representative Kline mentioned that, in many of those instances the only payment is a little copay for a prescription drug, maybe $1 if it is generic or possibly up to $5 if it is a brand name.

If their doctor feels that they, for some particular reason, need to be on that brand name, or if there is no generic equivalent available, Medicare, the insurance program, the part D covers the deductible. It covers the monthly premium. It covers the copay of the first $22,050. And guess what. There is no doughnut hole. There is no lack of coverage at any point for those neediest seniors.

But it is important that our colleagues understand this and also understand that even the seniors who get no supplement because maybe their income is a little bit higher, as I say, my mom, Mr. Speaker, Helen Gannon Gingrey, 88 years old, she is going to be mad at me, Mr. Speaker, for telling her age, but if you could see her, you would never guess. She is young at heart and very energetic and yet was spending $4,000 or $5,000 a year out of pocket to purchase about five prescription drugs. And I was able to work with her and, as Congressman Kline says, together we were able to go through the www.medicare.gov Web site, and Mom today is saving about $1,100 a year, and that really means a lot to her.

I wanted to also point out, Mr. Speaker, in this slide, this kind of gives a breakdown of how our seniors paid for prescription drugs before part D. We are talking about 41 million, about 41 million, and maybe 6 million of those are people under 65 that are on Medicare because of a disability, but this is the population we are talking about, and I think this slide is so instructive to show, before this program, what was happening.

Now, my mom, Helen Gingrey, was in this group of something like 40 percent of these 41 million seniors who were paying for prescription drugs out of their own pocket, and that is really the population that we are trying to address. And I would say a third of this group, a third of this 40 percent, are

the low income, the ones for whom this program is an absolute Godsend.

Now, as we were talking earlier, some people in their Medigap policy also have prescription drug coverage, and that amounted to about 3 percent. Employment-based plans, 26 percent. Now, we are talking about retirees, people who have worked for a company, a big company, a small company, but a company that has not reneged on their promise, as a retirement benefit, to provide health care with prescription drug coverage. And as part of this program, we built in an incentive to those companies to encourage them to continue to provide health care for their retirees, in many cases who have worked for the company 30 or 40 years, who had earned this benefit, and to encourage them to continue it and continue the prescription drug coverage. So about 26 percent were in that category.

Medicaid, 12 percent; they will all now be covered under this Medicare part D.

State-based programs and other sources, 6 percent.

But this is pretty much how it breaks down. And as we get closer to that sign-up deadline without paying a penalty, Mr. Speaker, beyond May 15, we do not want that to happen, and I would hope our colleagues on the Democratic side would join us in the majority in the realization that to discourage is a dreadful thing, of course, for those who are going to literally get the benefit with minimal, if any, cost, but those who have to pay the monthly premium, which is quite a number, to discourage them and then have them get beyond that May 15 deadline, and then all of a sudden they realize that they have been fed a bill of goods and some bad information and then they hurriedly sign up, but they fall into that penalty phase. That is something that we do not want to happen. I do not think Members on either side of the aisle want that to happen, and I hope that we will work toward this goal.

I see, Mr. Speaker, that we have been joined by another of my colleagues. I mentioned him at the outset of the hour, and that is the gentleman from Texas, not only my colleague in this great body, the House of Representatives but also a fellow physician and a fellow OB/ GYN specialist, Dr. Mike Burgess.

I would like to yield to him at this time.

If the gentleman would yield.

Because I wanted to ask the gentleman on that point about the independent pharmacists, what we call the corner druggists back in Georgia and maybe also in Texas. I would love for the gentleman maybe to elaborate a little bit on some of the concerns that I know a lot of the Members have heard from the community. Independent pharmacists, not the big chain, but the moms and pops, if you will, God bless them, have some concerns and have had some concerns, and we have been talking about that.

In fact, as the gentleman knows, Mr. Speaker, just this morning, we had conversations with Secretary Leavitt and Dr. Mark McClellan, the director of CMS. They are aware of these concerns, and we may want to discuss that for a moment or two and how we plan to continue to work really closely with those corner druggists that a lot of our patients call, they call them ``doctor''----

Because of the work they do.

If the gentleman would yield.

I would point out that although a couple, for the reasons that you just so clearly explained, might have signed up for different prescription drug plans, they can get their medication filled at the same pharmacy.

I thank the gentleman. I hope he can stay. We may be able to engage in a little bit of a colloquy on some of these points. But in any regard, I thank the gentleman so much for his tireless insight and his understanding, of course, as a physician in making sure that our seniors get the right information so that they do get signed up.

He was talking a few minutes ago about the couple where the husband and the wife may have signed up, need to sign up, really, for a different prescription drug plan because they are on different drugs. But the fact that they can go to that same, same pharmacist, maybe it is a corner druggist in their neighborhood, right down the street, I mean, it could be Corley's Pharmacy in La Grange, Georgia. It could be Kim Curl's drugstore up in Hiram in Paulding County, or Steve Wilson's Carter drugstore in Smyrna, Georgia. All of these wonderful independent pharmacists are in my district, and I know the gentleman, Dr. Burgess from Texas, has a similar situation.

You know, I think it is so important, as we do approach this deadline for signing up without a penalty, that our colleagues understand that. There was a lot of effort, I think, almost as much effort on the side of resistance as has been on the side of encouragement. I think the encouragement has won out, is continuing to win out over resistance and negativity. But we need to work toward achieving a goal of a full implementation of this program.

But here are the encouraging statistics, while the program, as Dr. Burgess said, may have started out a little slow, as people were confused by all of the political rhetoric that was going on, as of last week, Mr. Speaker, as of last week 27 million seniors now have prescription drug coverage under Medicare.

Now, when you think about the fact that we are talking about a population of about 41 million, and 27 million now have this coverage under Medicare, and probably 8 million or so, 8 or 12 million, even of those that are not signed up, they already have something. They already have, if they are veterans, TRICARE, TRICARE For Life; if they are retired Federal employees, if they have a prescription drug coverage under the Federal health benefit plan; same thing with State retired teachers.

We are getting pretty darn close to 100 percent implementation. In fact, signing up 380,000 new beneficiaries each week, and 1.9 million additional beneficiaries have signed up for prescription drug coverage since mid-February. This represents a 25 percent increase over last month and the number of people who have selected a plan.

A lot of our opposition has said over and over, well, new people are not signing up, this is just automatic enrollment for the dual eligibles, the low-income seniors who have both Medicare and Medicaid. Well, that is absolutely not true.

Of the 27 million who have signed up, 7.2 million are folks that are not low income, and they had no prescription drug coverage so we are getting there. And as I say, we are going to continue to work right up until the last day, May 15, 2006.

Now, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, are trying to make political hay in saying that we ought to extend that deadline. We ought to push it out another 6 months, but in a way, that is just a cruel hoax because the longer we delay, the longer our needy seniors delay, the more they are either not going to get that supplemental help that they are eligible for, for if they are not eligible for supplemental help because of their income, they are going to continue to pay sticker price for their prescription drugs, more than anybody else in our population.

These younger people that are covered under an HMO or possibly an insurance company that has negotiated a low price, they get the discount; and that has been part of the problem, Mr. Speaker, why it is so important that we do this program. It is so unfair for our seniors to have to pay more than anybody else. So we want to encourage them, and I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will continue to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I thank him for bringing that up because it is so important. A lot of the concern over this Medicare part D addition was the cost. And some Members on our side of the aisle, fiscal conservatives, and I understand that, voted against the prescription drug part D because they did not think we could afford it. Some of our friends on the other side of the aisle voted against it because they did not think we were doing enough. And, of course, if we had done more and there was no doughnut hole, then it would have cost, who knows, $3 trillion maybe instead of the estimated $750 billion over 10 years.

But Dr. Burgess brought up an excellent point, Mr. Speaker, and I think we need to elaborate on it a bit. Even if it does cost $750 billion or $75 billion a year over the next ten, what Dr. Burgess is saying, Mr. Speaker, you are going to shift costs from part A and part B onto part D. So what we are saying is, let's pay for the prescription drugs so that we can keep people out of the emergency rooms, off the operating table, off of renal dialysis, out of the nursing homes, maybe in some instances because they have had a stroke. They did not have the medicine to treat the high blood pressure. Now we are paying, either on Medicare or Medicaid, 20 years of skilled nursing home care. What a false economy that is. It is a compassionate thing to do to shift some of that cost from part A to part B.

I know, Mr. Speaker, we are getting close to the end of the hour and I thought that what would be good maybe is to quote some stories. In fact, I have one patient from Texas and while the gentleman is still here I wanted to give this to our colleagues, this Medicare D success story.

Barbara L. from Kemp, Texas, and Kemp, Texas, is possibly in the gentleman's district, but in any regard, it is Texas. In 2005, Barbara spent $2,100 on prescription drugs. She enrolled in an AARP Part D plan. I know that the support of the AARP, that great senior organization, its 35 million members, gives a little angst and heartburn to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that they are used to having blanket support from the AARP and all of the sudden this great senior organization that is supporting this program and that causes them a little discomfort.

Barbara signed up for a plan that they offered, and in 2006, she expects to pay not $2,100 but $360, a total savings of $1,740.

Listen to what Barbara said: ``I found the drug plan confusing at first, but I called Medicare today.'' One of the organizations that is helping to explain on a contractual basis the plan. ``I called Medicare today, got the information I needed, then I signed up. It is glorifying,'' Barbara says. ``I'm beside myself with the drug cost savings.''

Mr. Speaker, Barbara W. from El Mirage, Arizona, I want to give these testimonials from across this great country because it is not just Texas. It is not just Georgia. It is not just Minnesota. Barbara W. from El Mirage, Arizona, had no prescription drug coverage, like my mom, spent more than $2,600 a year on medications, wanted an inexpensive plan with a low premium. She enrolled in a part D plan where the monthly premium was only $6.14 on a monthly basis. In 2006, she will save $1,800. Nearly $200 a month. And that is Barbara from the great State of Arizona.

Here is another, Mr. Speaker. Thomas P. from Providence, Rhode Island. Thomas is 77 years old, spending more than $3,000 a year on prescription drugs. He probably is not low income, didn't have a Medigap coverage or not a veteran, and out of his pocket spending $3,000 a year. He found out from Social Security that he did qualify for extra help with his monthly premium. He did not know it but realized that he qualified. Now he expects to spend not $3,000 a year, but $400 a year on prescriptions. Do the math. That is a total savings of $2,700 a year, and that is not peanuts as they say in Georgia.

Thomas says, ``It's worth the time to save all that money.'' Indeed.

I think we are getting close to the witching hour. I had one more that I wanted to point out, but, Mr. Speaker, we thank you for the opportunity to bring this hour from the majority to explain this program. I thank Dr. Burgess. I thank Mr. Kline. And I want to encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Let's support this program. Let's give our seniors what they really need. They deserve it, and they deserve our support.

Mr. Speaker, every day we are hearing success stories from seniors who are saving money with Medicare part D. Two of these seniors are Mary and Jerry O'Brien of Cobb County, Georgia.

I want to share with you a letter Jerry O'Brien wrote to my office. He said, ``I went to medicare.gov and I found a comparison of various programs. I chose one for my wife for $70 a month, which has no deductible. We had no prescription insurance before and find Medicare part D to be very effective. We saved enough, in fact, on the first prescriptions to pay for 2 months' worth of premiums. I realize the program got off to a shaky start, but as far as I am concerned, it is now working well.''

Mr. Speaker, Mary O'Brien saved enough money for 1 month of prescriptions to pay for 2 months of premiums. For the O'Briens, Medicare part D is literally paying for itself.

I hope seniors will hear the O'Brien story and go to www.medicare.gov and find out how much money they could save with a Medicare part D plan. The initial enrollment period ends May 15, so I want to encourage all seniors to sign up now and start their savings immediately.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Rome Area History Museum on their 10th anniversary of collecting, preserving, and presenting the history of northwest Georgia. In 1995, five men, C.J. Wyatt, Bobby McElwee, John Carruth, David Oswalt, and Ed Byars, recognized the need to create an institution dedicated to the history of Rome and the surrounding communities.

These founders gathered a group of dedicated volunteers and opened what has become one of the finest museums in the State of Georgia. The founders renovated a building on historic Broad Street to serve as their headquarters.

And after much labor, the Rome Area History Museum officially opened its doors on March 30, 1996. For the past 9 years, Bernard Neal has done a wonderful job as the museum's president.

Madam Speaker, as the museum celebrates a decade of educating teachers, researchers and visitors, I want to thank the volunteers and supporters for making the Rome Area History Museum all that it is today.

Museums like this add richness to our communities and preserve our Nation's history.