Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this motion to instruct conferees.

President Kennedy once said, ``To govern is to choose,'' and this Congress made a choice. They cut child health care, 6 million children. They cut college tuition, the largest cut in the history of the country, $12 billion. They cut child nutrition programs, child support collection, child care, all to provide a tax cut for the wealthy.

The Republican Congress gives a whole new meaning to women and children first. They cut all those investments in our children, all to give a tax cut to the very few who are being very fortunate. And I believe those very few are as patriotic as every other American; they know we have critical needs and investments we have to make here in America.

Six million children losing their health care and a few getting a capital gains tax cut is not the choice President Kennedy thought about when he

said, ``To govern is to choose.'' Cutting child support collection by $9 billion for a single mom, all the while giving a tax cut to the very wealthy, was not the choice President Kennedy imagined when he thought about investing in America's future.

President Kennedy also said, ``Leadership is a question of priorities.''

I want to demystify all these numbers flying around for you. Nineteen million American families will get a tax increase if the Republican Congress has its way, straight. That is simple. It is not more complicated than that, 19 million families.

Just a few years ago, only 1 million middle-class families were hit by the AMT. Today, 19 million. In 4 or 5 years, that number will go up to 30 million American families making $100,000 who will be hit by the

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Salme Harju Steinberg, President of Northeastern Illinois University. President Steinberg recently announced that she will retire from the University in 2007, ending over thirty years of distinguished service to the university.

President Steinberg began at Northeastern Illinois University as a professor of history in 1975. She went on to serve as both Department Chair and Administrator. For the past eleven years, she served as President of NEIU.

Under President Steinberg's leadership, NEIU experienced an increase in enrollment and marked improvements in the academic and cultural opportunities available to its students. President Steinberg's intelligent stewardship and forward thinking have resulted in increased funding for academic programs and improved financial assistance for students.

President Steinberg has also demonstrated a commitment to assist first generation college students. Today, Northeastern University can boast a minority enrollment of over 60 percent, with as many as forty- seven languages spoken across the campus.

In addition to the breadth of diversity President Steinberg has worked to introduce, she also developed heritage programming to deepen the cultural education and appreciation of NEIU students, including an innovative study abroad program.

Mr. Speaker, President Salme Harju Steinberg's many contributions to Northeastern Illinois University will always be remembered, and her dedication will continue to benefit NEIU students long after her retirement. I wish her the best in all of her future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with sadness to offer my condolences to the family and friends of Ray Meyer, who passed away recently at the age of 92. Ray Meyer was a loving husband and father, as well as the face of college basketball in Chicago since 1942.

Best known as the legendary head coach of the DePaul University Blue Demons basketball team from 1942 until his retirement in 1984, Coach Meyer's success while roaming the sidelines rates him among the greatest coaches college basketball has ever seen.

Meyer led the Blue Demons to 37 winning seasons and 724 overall victories, and his teams played in postseason tournaments 21 times. He mentored legendary players like George Mikan, Mark Aguirre and Terry Cummings. The entire country was captivated by Coach Meyer's team and his personality as the Blue Demons made a historic run to the Final Four in 1979. He subsequently led a series of number one ranked teams in the early 1980s and was enshrined in basketball's Hall of Fame before he even finished his coaching career.

Although these feats are impressive, he made an even bigger impact on the hearts and minds of his players, colleagues and fans. His grin and compassionate personality were among his most memorable traits. He taught his players important lessons about life as well as basketball.

In addition to being a dedicated coach, Ray Meyer was also a loving family man. His late wife had such a large impact on his life and DePaul University that the Blue Demons now play on Ray & Marge Meyer Court. His sons Tom and Bob played under his tutelage, and he groomed his son Joey to be his successor in 1984, where he would remain head coach until 1997. In the 55 years from Ray Meyer's first game as coach through the last Blue Demons game with Joey Meyer at the helm, Ray Meyer attended each of the 1,467 games they played.

Mr. Speaker, Coach Meyer left an indelible mark on everyone he touched. His oversized personality captivated generations of Chicagoans. The DePaul community, the city of Chicago, and all of basketball will always remember him.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the long and distinguished career of my friend, Mr. Dick Kay, political editor, and host of the news show ``City Desk.'' Mr. Kay wil retire in June, 2006, with the honor of having been the longest-serving reporter in the history of Chicago's WMAQ-Channel 5 TV.

With 46 years in the business, Dick Kay has unparalleled political experience, knowledge and perspective. He arrived at WMAQ-Channel 5 in 1968, initially working as a writer/producer but soon switching to reporting. He later became their political editor as well as the host of ``City Desk,'' the Sunday morning public service program.

Over the years, Dick Kay has interviewed mayors, governors, Congressmen, Senators, and countless other public leaders. Viewers have come to rely on his thoughtful yet fearless approach to covering politics and public policy.

Dick Kay's hard work and insightful reporting have been recognized by numerous awards over the years. Among others, Dick has received a Peabody Award--the highest honor in TV broadcasting--as well as 11 Emmys, a National Headliner award, and a Jacob Scher award for investigative reporting. In 2001, he was inducted into the Television Academy's Silver Circle Hall of Fame, which honors those who have made major contributions to Chicago broadcasting for 25 years or more.

In addition to his work as a reporter and editor, Dick was the long- time president of the local unit of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. In this capacity, Dick successfully persuaded Illinois legislators to ensure that on-air employees had the freedom to move to competing stations.

I am sure Dick's wife, children and grandchildren will be glad to enjoy more time with him. The rest of us will miss his hard-hitting investigative work, insightful commentary, and engaging Sunday morning discussions.

Mr. Speaker, I wish Dick and his family the best of luck during his retirement and throughout his future endeavors. Political reporting in Chicago will not be the same without Dick Kay, dean of Chicago political reporters.

Mr. Speaker, in order to solve the problem, you have to recognize that you have a problem in the first place.

For 3 years, the President and his administration contended that everything was going fine in Iraq, that we were winning, and they openly questioned the motivations and the patriotism of anyone who questioned or disagreed with them.

Now we are finally getting some straight talk from people who have been in the administration since the very beginning. The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq says the country is nearing a civil war and we have opened ``Pandora's box'' by toppling Saddam Hussein.

Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte said, ``Even if a broad, inclusive national government emerges, there will almost certainly be a lag time before we see a dampening effect on the insurgency.''

And today, General Peter Pace, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, ``The Iraqi people themselves are standing at a crossroads, and they are making critical decisions for their country right now about which road they want to take,'' whether it is going to be a civil war or the road to democracy.

These are sobering assessments, but they were a welcome change from the standard White House line of everything is fine, everything is hunky-dory, we are winning in Iraq, the road to victory is in Iraq. In fact, we are at the precipice of a civil war. We are on the doorstep of a civil war.

Now that we have this honest talk finally, we are finding from people who are telling us what the beginnings were because we did not get here by accident. We got here by people not listening to the people on the ground. Our first ambassador, Paul Bremer, writes in a recent book, even on page 10, you don't even have to finish the book, he had asked for more troops. The President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense for years maintained nobody had asked for more troops. We had enough troops, if the generals needed more troops, they would have told us. Now the lead ambassador, the point man for the President of the United States, in fact, asked for more troops.

One of the big problems we had, we had 500,000 troops to get Iraq out of Kuwait, but somehow some genius over at the Department of Defense, that is the Secretary of Defense, thought you could do it for less than 100,000, both occupy Iraq, win a war in Iraq, and do it for less than 100,000 when we needed 500,000 just to get them out of Kuwait. In fact, somebody did ask for more troops, and the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense refused to listen to the ambassador, their point person.

That is not the only mistake they made. In fact, today, going back to one of the early days of the insurgency, we now realize from the last 2 days of The New York Times, generals were saying we had to not try to topple Iraq, we had to deal with the Feyhadeen. Otherwise, we are going to have the beginnings of an insurgency. The generals on the ground were overruled.

Again, contrary to the line, which is, we are going to listen to the generals and whatever they need, we did not listen to the generals. When we finally get to Baghdad and did finally topple the government, and there was all this chaos going on, the Secretary of Defense once again used his famous line

which is ``Freedom is messy. Sometimes it is followed by chaos,'' after a country has been headed by an authoritarian dictatorship for so long.

Every problem we are facing today, too few troops, not listening to the generals to literally suppress and put down the insurgency early on, not having a plan for the occupation, is what has gotten us to this point today, where we are on the precipice of a civil war. And all is not hindsight, Monday morning quarterbacking. At the very time these problems were emerging, people said you are doing the wrong thing. And the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States and others around his administration refused to listen.

And this Congress has acted like the ``hear no evil, see no evil'' Congress. We have $10 billion on Iraq reconstruction that nobody can account for, and there have been no hearings and no accountability by the administration. Paul Bremer has not asked to come up and tell us what happened when he said he needed more troops. What happened to the generals when they said we have to put down the insurrection?

Yet, this Republican Congress refuses to hold anybody's feet to the fire, refuses to ask any question, ask the questions and get the answers for the people that we represent want to know.

On page 10 of ``My Year in Iraq,'' Bremer writes that he was alarmed by a RAND Corporation report stating we did not have enough troops on the ground to stabilize the country. Bremer continues, ``I found the conclusions persuasive. And troubling. That afternoon, I had a summary of the draft copied and sent down the corridor to Don Rumsfeld. `I think you should consider this,' I said in my cover memo. I never heard back from him about the report.''

Troop levels were not increased. The Feyhadeen were never put down. We have lost $10 billion, never to be accounted for, and we never had a plan for the occupation we have today. And now we are the precipice of a civil war.

Mr. Speaker, we can do better than this. These problems that are repeating in Iraq where nobody is held accountable and nobody is asked questions are not isolated to the problems of Iraq. Look at Hurricane Katrina and all of the trailers down there and the money wasted. Again, nobody was in charge. Nobody listened, and American taxpayers' hard- earned dollars are seen wasted away.

Mr. Speaker, while Republicans are doing their best to distance themselves from their lobbying scandal, they just cannot seem to shake off Jack Abramoff.

Jack Abramoff recently told Vanity Fair: ``Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn't know me is certainly lying.''

While President Bush denies knowing him, Jack Abramoff says he knew President Bush well enough to joke with him about weight lifting. Former Speaker Gingrich said he didn't know Jack Abramoff well; yet Jack Abramoff said, ``I have more pictures of Newt Gingrich than I do of my wife.''

Senator Conrad Burns, Jack Abramoff says: ``Every appropriation we wanted we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures as their cafeteria.''

And to add insult to injury, in January, Senator Santorum, the architect of the K Street Project and a Republican point person on lobbying reform, vowed to stop his weekly lobbyist meetings; yet we now find he continues to do them.

It is just business as usual here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans may be lip-syncing reform, but clearly the ``for sale'' sign is still up on the West Lawn.

It is time for a change. It is time to change the culture of corruption in Washington, a culture that has real costs for the American people. We can do better. We need to do better.

Madam Speaker, since last month's bombing of the holiest Shiite shrine, the sectarian violence we all feared has begun to engulf Iraq. But while Iraq is on the brink of civil war, all the administration gives us are mixed messages and finger-pointing.

The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq says the country is nearing civil war and that we have opened a Pandora's box by toppling Saddam Hussein. Yet General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has a totally different view. Over the weekend he said, ``I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say that things are going very, very well from everything you look at.''

Meanwhile, Secretary Rumsfeld puts the blame squarely on the press: ``From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation.''

Which is it? A Pandora's box? The brink of war? Or an exaggerated news story only to sell papers and boost ratings? Yet instead of demanding answers from the administration, this Congress has turned a blind eye.

It is time for this hear-no-evil, see-no-evil Congress to open its eyes and ears. Americans want more than mixed metaphors and finger pointing. They want a policy. They deserve real answers, and it is our job to find them. We need new priorities for America rather than the same old policies that have gotten us here.

Mr. Speaker, last week, a number of Americans were able to see the President on the videotape on Katrina and see also what has happened down in New Orleans since that time, or the lack of action there. We also witness every day the civil war that is engulfing Iraq and a policy of failure to bring stability to Iraq, the chaos that has engulfed our Medicare prescription drug plan, and also the flare-up over our port security and selling major assets of America's infrastructure to foreign countries.

In 2000, President Bush ran as a compassionate conservative. At this point, I would settle for a competent conservative. From Iraq to Medicare to port security to the deficit to Katrina, this administration has mismanaged the situation to the point where even diehard supporters are acknowledging their incompetence. And this Congress has been a rubber stamp to the administration's policies and has refused to do its job, which is oversight, on every one of these issues.

On Iraq, we have $10 billion out of $480 billion totally missing. Not one hearing about what happened to the $10 billion. Nobody has asked a single question. Nobody can account for it. We have soldiers over there without KEVLAR vests, where parents are left to literally do bake sales to raise the money for their children so they can have the protection that their government and their taxpayers expect and are responsible for, yet nothing. We have literally members of the armed services running around like scrap metal collectors trying to solder their Humvees, yet nobody has asked a single question as to how that happened; why is that happening.

We have Paul Bremer, the President's ambassador, who now writes a book and says that he had asked for 500,000, or doubling the size of the troop level; yet for 3 years the President of the United States said nobody ever asked for more troops. If they want more troops, we will send more troops. General Abizaid and Paul Bremer, the President's ambassador, have said that he had asked for more troops, and neither the Secretary of Defense nor the President of the United States acknowledged that memo. Yet what do we have? Nobody is holding them accountable. Nobody is holding anyone accountable in the administration.

We have a great deal of incompetence. We are at $480 billion in Iraq, with 2,300 Americans, our fellow citizens, having lost their lives. Well over 15,000 are wounded, permanently many of them, yet not a single question of what happened here. What is the competency here?

Now, take a look at this on Medicare. It is not just isolated to Iraq. We have now had that policy, and that policy has run its course. We now have a civil war that the American people find themselves in the middle of, between the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds all fighting each other, and nobody has

asked the questions of what happened to the troops, the amount of troops, what happened to the KEVLAR vests, the Humvees; how come there are not enough men and women that the ambassador and the general had asked for.

Not a question. Nobody is responsible. Nobody ever got fired, let alone the questions about the intelligence going into it.

Take Medicare. We debated here on this floor, and I voted against that bill and said it was going to lead to great confusion to seniors. Rather than a simple plan, letting negotiations happen, letting reimportation happen, and letting generics hit the market, which all would drive the price down of prescription drugs and save money, Members here said and the administration said it will only cost $390 billion over 10 years. Before the ink was dry, it rose to $790 billion. So all the taxpayers are going to have to pay double what they were told and everybody in the administration knew.

One person who said, here is what the report said, was under threat of being fired if they let that information out. Yet now, with 2 years to prepare, 2 years to get ready, the Web site, run by HHS, had the information wrong. The catalogue they sent out to every senior had it wrong. It has led to massive confusion where seniors now are sometimes double enrolled, cannot get enrolled, and where States are having to step in for the poorest of the poor because they cannot get their plan. It is run like, as some people say, they couldn't run a one-car parade if they tried.

Again, that massive incompetency and the inability of this Congress to have oversight and keep people's feet to the fire and hold them accountable, to ask the questions and get the answers the American people want are not being done today.

And the incompetency is not isolated to Medicare or Iraq. Take the response to Hurricane Katrina: when we saw that tape, we now learn that, in fact, Mr. Brown, or known to the rest of us as Brownie, was doing a heck of a job, and he gets fired, and yet it is Chertoff who is still head of the Homeland Security Department, had no idea what was going on, no line authority, never involved himself, and we had a massive disaster.

When you run through the economy, Iraq and the deficit, what this President has done, I would settle, and I think the rest of the country would be quite happy if we had a competent conservative rather than the compassionate conservative that we were promised. The American people are not looking for a compassionate conservative, a fiscal conservative, or a social conservative. A competent conservative would do America well.

Mr. Speaker, by now we have all seen the Katrina tape of the President being briefed on the magnitude of the upcoming hurricane disaster. The tape clearly shows that the President and his administration knew about Katrina's magnitude, regardless of their after-action denial.

All I can say is forget the compassionate conservative that we were promised in 2000. At this point I would settle for a competent conservative.

Remember, this administration repeatedly maintained that if American leaders in Iraq needed more troops all they needed to do was ask. But now we know that the President's top man in Iraq, Paul Bremer, asked for more troops right after the invasion and the President and the Secretary of Defense failed to respond.

This administration said that the intelligence it used as a case for the war was flawed. But Paul Pillar, a high-ranking CIA official, recently revealed that the administration intentionally distorted and cherry-picked the intelligence in order to justify the prescribed decision.

Today, we are seeing the failure of those decisions. This administration said that the Medicare prescription drug benefit would cost no more than $400 billion. The real cost of the benefit, nearly $800 billion, and the administration knew all along the true cost.

The President's people say people do not need to worry about security, and then we found out that neither the President nor the Secretary of Defense knew that the United Arab Emirates was about to take over the six major American ports. We do not need a compassionate conservative, a fiscal conservative. We need a competent conservative.

Mr. Speaker, March 18 will mark the 3-year anniversary of America's involvement in Iraq. Two thousand two hundred ninety-six American military personnel have now given their lives fighting in Iraq. Two hundred seventy-seven Americans have also fallen in the line of duty in Afghanistan.

We owe these great men and women and their families a debt of gratitude that can never be fully repaid.

Last year I led a bipartisan group of 21 Members of Congress in reading the names of the fallen into the Congressional Record. We made a commitment to continue to read the names of our fellow citizens as long as the fighting continues.

In the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, each of those heroes stands on the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom might live and grow and increase in its blessings.

God bless and keep each of the brave Americans whose memory we honor today:

1st Lieutenant Robert C. Oneto-Sikorski

Private 1st Class David J. Martin

Sergeant 1st Class Jonathan Tessar

Petty Officer 2nd Class Allan M. Espiritu

Sergeant Daniel A. Tsue

Private 1st Class Tyler R. MacKenzie

Specialist Benjamin A. Smith

Specialist Joshua J. Munger

2nd Lieutenant Mark J. Procopio

Specialist Dennis J. Ferderer Jr.

Captain Michael D. Martino

Major Gerald M. Bloomfield II

Major Jeffrey P. Toczylowski

Specialist Darren D. Howe

Sergeant 1st Class Daniel J. Pratt

Staff Sergeant Kyle B. Wehrly

Gunnery Sergeant Darrell W. Boatman

Private 1st Class Dustin A. Yancey

Captain James M. Gurbisz

Specialist Timothy D. Brown

Staff Sergeant Jason A. Fegler

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas A. Wren

Sergeant 1st Class James F. Hayes

Captain Joel E. Cahill

Lance Corporal Ryan J. Sorensen

Private 1st Class Mario A. Reyes

Specialist Robert C. Pope II

Staff Sergeant Brian L. Freeman

1st Lieutenant Justin S. Smith

Sergeant 1st Class Alwyn C. ``Al'' Cashe

Lance Corporal Jeremy P. Tamburello

Lance Corporal Daniel Freeman Swaim

Sergeant Joshua A. Terando

Staff Sergeant Michael C. Parrott

Sergeant Tyrone L. Chisholm

Private 1st Class Antonio Mendez Sanchez

Corporal Donald E. Fisher II

Staff Sergeant Stephen J. Sutherland

Lance Corporal David A. Mendez Ruiz

Lance Corporal Scott A. Zubowski

Corporal John M. Longoria

Lance Corporal Christopher M. McCrackin

Major Ramon J. Mendoza Jr.

Lance Corporal Nickolas David Schiavoni

Private 1st Class Travis J. Grigg

Specialist Matthew J. Holley

Staff Sergeant James E. Estep

Private Dylan R. Paytas

Sergeant Jeremy E. Murray

Specialist Alexis Roman-Cruz

Corporal Joshua J. Ware

Corporal Jeffry A. Rogers

Lance Corporal Roger W. Deeds

Lance Corporal John A. ``JT'' Lucente

2nd Lieutenant Donald R. McGlothin

Specialist Vernon R. Widner

Staff Sergeant Ivan Vargas Alarcon

Sergeant Luis R. Reyes

Private 1st Class Anthony Gaunky

Private Christopher M. Alcozer

Lance Corporal Tyler J. Troyer

Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas

Specialist Michael J. Idanan

Specialist Dominic Joseph Hinton

Corporal Jonathan F. Blair

Staff Sergeant Edward Karolasz

1st Lieutenant Dennis W. Zilinski

Master Sergeant Anthony R. C. Yost

Sergeant Dominic J. Sacco

Private 1st Class John Wilson Dearing

Sergeant Denis J. Gallardo

Specialist Allen J. Knop

Sergeant William B. Meeuwsen

Staff Sergeant Aram J. Bass

Private 1st Class Ryan D. Christensen.

Mr. Speaker, President Abraham Lincoln once wrote to the mother of five fallen soldiers, ``I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.''

I would also like to thank the brave men and women who continue to serve our Nation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the world and serve with distinction.

Our thoughts, prayers and gratitude are with you and your families at this time until they return home.

Mr. Speaker, today marks the 2-month anniversary of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that, so far, the Part D, D stands for disaster.

The benefit is so complicated and convoluted that even beneficiaries with Ph.D.s have said they could not figure it out.

Why is this program so flawed? Because it was designed, or we like to say in the private sector, the first operation is take care of the customer first. I have yet to find a single pharmaceutical executive or an HMO executive who is complaining about this program, but I have found a heck of a lot of senior citizens who are complaining about this program. This program was never designed with our senior citizens in mind. If it was, you would not have the complexities that are happening for our senior citizens.

The executives of the drug companies will earn $139 billion of additional profits that they would not have earned any other way; insurance companies, $130 billion of additional profits over the next 10 years.

The complexity of the benefit shows, in my view, what was wrong and what we should have done right. Three simple steps:

One, with the May 15 penalty that will kick in, the tax, the senior Medicare tax, postpone that until HHS and CMS figure out what they should be doing, rather than what they should not be doing. No senior should be forced into a program where even the people running it do not know what they are doing.

Second, directly negotiate for prices. That is what the Veterans' Administration does. That is what Sam's Club does. That is what Target does. That is what Costco does. Anybody in the private sector, literally, bulk purchases get a better price than anybody buying individually.

And third, allow people competitive choices by reimportation, allowing them to buy drugs in Canada, England, France, where they can get competitive pricing which is 50 percent cheaper.

I have a Costco in Chicago. There is also a Costco in Toronto. We have up on our Web site the two Costcos, one in Toronto, one in Chicago. Same 10 drugs, same milligram, same dosage; and the Costco in Toronto is constantly $1,000 cheaper for the same drugs over the same period of time than the one in Chicago. And yet both of them are stores that are supposed to be discount.

And lastly, allow generics to market quicker. If you had direct negotiations, reimportation, generics to market quicker, three free market principles where competition and choice rule, we would actually have cheaper pharmaceutical prices, things that seniors can afford, and save money for taxpayers as well.

And yet what we do not have are those programs. And we are forcing in the middle of May, May 15, senior citizens will literally pay a Medicare privatization tax.

On April 15, all Americans will pay a tax. On May 15, because of the complexity of this program, seniors will begin to pay a tax for the complexities.

Seniors that do not want to join this program, that are confused because of the way that they have been forced into plans, had plans drop their drugs, not offer all the drugs they need at a better price than they can get otherwise, will literally start to be taxed by the Federal Government.

Tens of thousands of beneficiaries, today in the New York Times an article highlighted that the beneficiaries are automatically assigned to plans and deciding to switch plans are finding that they are actively enrolled in two drug plans at the same time.

When you read a report on what is going on, you would think you were reading an after-action report on Katrina. What has happened over at HHS and Health and Human Services on Medicare is literally one more example of the disaster the Federal Government has had in running this plan. The situation leaves patients at risk, being charged two premiums or incorrect copayments.

In my hometown of Chicago, seniors have 62 separate drug plans to pick from. And I hear constantly from my constituents every day that the choices are causing confusion and problems. Pharmacists are not sure what is happening. The people administering the plans are not sure what is happening, and it is leaving seniors absolutely in total confusion.

Seniors need clearly more time to figure this out. They should not be penalized with a complexity tax, a privatization tax for taking the time to get the facts. Facts, I remind you, that even HHS and Medicare are not sure of what the facts are as it relates to what is the best plan.

Just to give you an idea of the tax we are talking about, if a senior decided to wait for 2 years before enrolling, there will be a 24 percent higher premium to pay. That is an additional $7.73 per month on top of the monthly premium. If a senior waits longer, it can go as high as $456 a year. For seniors on a fixed income, this is a tremendous financial burden.

Even before the drug benefit went into effect on January 1, there were problems. And the Republican colleagues who wrote the plan know what the problems are.

In fact, the drug manufacturers, again, I would like to repeat and I will be done: $139 billion in profits over the next 8 years and insurers, $130 million.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of my dear friend Eli Segal. I offer my sincerest condolences to his wife of 40 years, Phyllis, his brother, Alan, and his children, Mora and Jonathan. We have lost a tremendous political mind, tireless social advocate, a loving husband and father, and a selfless friend who, as President and Senator Clinton said, ``lived his life as a man for others.''

Eli was born in Brooklyn in 1942, headed to Massachusetts for undergraduate work at Brandeis University, and graduated from the University of Michigan's law school in 1967, making an impact at each stop along the way. Washington, DC, though, is where Eli's footprint is most clearly visible.

Eli's work as a campaign strategist is well documented, from his time on the late Eugene McCarthy's staff in 1968 through his work for General Wesley Clark during the 2004 election. It was during George McGovern's campaign, though, that Eli hired a young man named William Clinton to run the campaign's Texas operations, and I am extraordinarily thankful that Eli made that decision. If not for that particular hire, I probably would not have had the chance to work so closely with Eli during the Clinton administration, and I would not be fortunate enough to count myself as one of the thousands of people whose lives were touched by Eli. Then again, if President Clinton had not hired Eli to help run his campaign

in 1992, it is entirely possible that none of us would have worked in the White House anyway.

Following his work on the campaign trail for President Clinton, Eli became an incredible asset to the administration, creating the AmeriCorps program and heading the Welfare to Work Partnership. These and other accomplishments are why he received the Presidential Citizens Medal for service to the Nation in 2000 and the respect of his peers long before then.

It was during this time that I came to know Eli well. The common bond of working together in the White House was obviously a contributing factor, but Eli and I became friends not because of circumstances, but because of character. He truly was an incredible person, and I consider myself to be privileged to have worked with him in the Clinton Administration. I consider it to be an even greater honor that we continued to be friends after our time in the White House.

Mr. Speaker, all of us who knew Eli Segal will always remember his warmth, compassion, and insight. Eli was taken from us too early, and we surely will miss him, but we were fortunate to have him in our lives while we did. Neither he nor his impact will be forgotten.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the exceptional craftsmanship of R.S. Owens & Company, the manufacturers of the Academy Awards for over 20 years. I am proud to have ``Oscar'' as a constituent, and I hope my colleagues will join me in watching the work of R.S. Owens & Company arrive in Hollywood from Chicago.

With the Oscars soon approaching, television sets around the Nation will be tuned in to watch movie stars as they stroll down the red carpet, hoping to receive the Academy Award, an internationally recognized symbol of excellence in film. While the main attraction of the night may be the directors, actors, and film makers receiving the awards, the 13\1/2\ inch, gold-plated statuettes hold an important place in the night's event and traditions.

R.S. Owens is the Chicago-based award-manufacturing company responsible for producing the world-renowned Academy Award. Since they were recommended for the manufacturing of the award in 1983, the academy has selected R.S. Owens to produce the statuettes year after year, in recognition of their fine work in the field of award design and production and of their exemplary dedication to the craft.

R.S. Owens has been involved in awards manufacturing since 1938. It began, as many great things do, as a small idea from an enterprising man, Owen Siegel. His idea has grown from a small dream into one of the most successful award manufacturing companies in the United States.

While so many companies in the manufacturing field have turned to automated machine work, R.S. Owens has remained grounded primarily in handwork. The company employs workers who are masters in their craft, and take great pride in their work--pride that is evident in the quality of award they continually produce in a field where the product is so closely scrutinized as to allow no errors in workmanship.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I recognize the excellent craftsmanship of R.S. Owens & Company in their production of the Academy Award. The company's fine work and dedication make it an excellent example of flourishing businesses throughout Chicago. It is an honor to know that such an innovative and responsible company calls Chicago its home. On behalf of the Fifth District of Illinois and the city of Chicago, I congratulate R.S. Owens on their continued excellence in their field, and look forward to the showcase of this year's batch of awards at the ceremony this March.

Mr Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order.

Mr. Speaker, March 19 will mark the 3-year anniversary of the Iraq war. For 3 years, we have heard the President respond to questions about his handling of the war in Iraq with, ``Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?'' Kind of like what Groucho Marx used to say.

For 3 years, we have seen the President and his supporters celebrate milestones in Iraq as an indication that the insurgency was ``in its last throes,'' while the insurgency actually continues to grow and persist.

While the administration keeps trying to spin its way out of Iraq, we keep witnessing the truth. Today, for instance, John Negroponte told the Senate Armed Services Committee, ``Even if a broad and inclusive national government emerges, there will almost certainly be a lag time before we see any dampening effect on the insurgency.'' In other words, even if we establish a functioning government and democracy, the insurgency in Iraq will persist, just the opposite of what the administration has been telling us.

Mr. Speaker, it is time that the President acknowledge what we can all see with our own eyes every night, that the administration's failure to secure the peace early in Iraq has led Iraq to the brink it is in today. Had we secured not just the war, but the first days of the occupation with a plan for that occupation and actually secured the country and had not allowed the first levels of insurgency to grow, to metastasize to what we have today, we would never have what we have now. But we went in with a plan for the war with not a single idea, not an iota of anything to do on the occupation.

Three years ago, brave men and women of the American Armed Forces fought brilliantly until defeating Saddam Hussein and his army. But the President failed to plan for the peace, and he failed to work quickly to establish order in Iraq and left it leaderless. In fact, many of our troops were on the sidelines as looting went rampant throughout Iraq, leading in that stage every way sequentially to what we have today. And why did it fail? Because he didn't listen to what we knew we had to do.

For the past 3 years, the President has maintained that if the American leaders in Iraq needed more troops, all they had to do was ask. Just last week the President said, ``I will determine the troop levels in Iraq based on the recommendations of our commanders, not based only the politics of Washington, D.C.''

Paul Bremer, the Ambassador to Iraq, the President's top man in Iraq, called for more boots on the ground in the days following the invasion and was ignored. On page 10 of Paul Bremer's book, ``My Year in Iraq,'' Paul Bremer writes that he was alarmed by a report stating that we did not have enough troops on the ground to stabilize the country.

The report said: ``The population of Iraq today is nearly 25 million. The population would require 500,000 troops

on the ground to meet a standard of 20 troops per 1,000. This number is more than three times the number of foreign troops now deployed in Iraq.''

Paul Bremer writes: ``I found the conclusions persuasive and troubling. That afternoon, I had a summary of the draft copied and sent down the corridor to Don Rumsfeld. `I think you should consider this,' I said in my cover memo. I have never heard back from him about the report.''

Now, I am not here to help sell books for Paul Bremer, but the President's top man asked for more troops to succeed in Iraq and never got an answer from either the President of the United States or from the Secretary of Defense. When Secretary Don Rumsfeld completely ignores the man who is in charge of America's most important policy mission, we have a problem.

A few days later, Paul Bremer got a chance to air his concerns to the President: ``There is one other important issue, Mr. President. Troop levels.''

Troop levels never increased. The troop level never got up. In Iraq, Bremer's worst fears were realized, and he writes: ``According to CENTCOM briefings in Qatar, we didn't yet have enough troops in Baghdad to secure key tactical objectives, traffic circles, bridges, power plants, banks and munition dumps, and also patrol the streets.''

We will never know for sure if more troops would have secured Baghdad in time to prevent the insurgency we see today, but we do know that the President's top man had asked for help and the President failed to respond, and the Secretary of Defense failed to respond; and today we are seeing the results of that failure. And we do know that 136,000 men and women who are there now do not have the support that they need.

If you look today in the New York Times in a poll done by Mr. Zogby, the American troops don't think we have enough troops. They also don't think we should continue to stay there at the level that we are there.

Retired Army Lieutenant General Bill Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, said that the invasion of Iraq ``will turn out to be the greatest single strategic disaster in U.S. foreign policy.''

Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, said President Bush's foreign policy was ``ruinous'' and said that ``we have courted disaster in Iraq, North Korea, and in Iran.''

Mr. Speaker, it is time for a change in policy.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor the Chicago area athletes competing this month in the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

The Olympic Games bring the world together in celebration of the best that every nation has to offer. I am proud that five Chicagoans are joining the world's best at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Chris Chelios is serving as the captain of the men's hockey team for the third consecutive Olympics. At 44 years old, Chelios is the oldest Olympic hockey player since 1928, but is still expected to be a driving force for the Americans. After attending Mount Carmel High School, Chelios represented his hometown as a blueliner for the Blackhawks throughout most of the 1990s.

Nineteen-year-old Northwestern University student Margaret Crowley has several opportunities to represent her country in speed skating, competing in the 3,000 meter and Team Pursuit events. She was the U.S. junior champion in 2004 and the runner-up in 2005. In addition to her extensive training schedule, Crowley has found the time to study economics, French and literature.

Shani Davis is the first African-American to qualify for the U.S. Olympic speed skating team. Shani grew up on Chicago's South Side and was inspired by fellow Illinois native Bonnie Blair. Davis also competed in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and was the 2005 World All- Around Speedskating Champion.

Ben Agosto is a native Chicagoan who has paired with Tanith Belbin to compete in ice dancing in Turin. They are favored to win a medal, which would be only the second ever for an American team, and the first in 30 years. The pair combines salsa, rhumba and cha cha as part of their original dance routines on the ice.

Chicago native Evan Lysacek is competing in his first Games as a figure skater. After graduating from Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, he overcame a serious hip injury to land a spot on the U.S. team headed to Turin.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I honor these five Olympians that are representing the U.S. in Turin. On behalf of my fellow Chicagoans and Americans, I wish these elite athletes and all of their teammates the best of luck in their respective events, and I thank them for representing the United States at the 2006 Winter Olympics.