Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good colleague and friend, the gentleman from Minnesota, for his leadership on this issue, as he has shown time and again. The test of leadership is the ability of an individual, in the face of a great deal of opposition, to consistently stay whole and true to his principles; and the gentleman has done that, even in the face of not only political opposition but leadership opposition within his own party on this issue.

Others of both parties, a cross-section that cuts a big swathe within our Congress, members of what one would call the extreme right and members on the extreme left, have come together on this. I think it is because, one, I think this legislation speaks to our common set of values; and, two, it is because all of us cannot be hard to the fact that because we have heard stories repeatedly of busloads and carloads of individuals who have gone over the border to Canada to buy medications that are life-saving and necessary and have done that as the only means in which they can afford their medication and what has been prescribed. All of us have heard those stories and that is why all of us have come here.

Now, some may have talked about price controls. Others may have talked about just letting the system as is continue. This legislation, which we put together under the gentleman's leadership, uses market forces to bring prices

down. It says that if you can get the medication at a 12 or 15 percent reduction in Canada, and that is a better way for you to go, you would go there. If you can find it cheaper in England or in Ireland or in Germany or Italy, you could go there. That would force at the local pharmacy the prices to begin to reduce here at home for the American consumer and American seniors.

That competition will bring competitiveness to the type of medication you can buy and real reductions in the prices, so that no longer would the American consumer, through inflated prices here at home for prescription drugs, be supporting the price reductions and the affordable prices that Canadians, Brits, the French, Germans, Italians, and Dutch are paying there.

So it uses market forces to reduce prices and brings that competition to bear. I think once that happens, our local pharmacy and drugstore, because they will not want to lose market share, will reduce prices at their local pharmacy. It is the force of the market that will bring prices down.

The gentleman has shown many times I think the prices of drugs on this chart, and I know the gentleman will get to it soon, but that competition for me is not only important for our seniors, it is important to our private businesses. General Motors I think has a $1.2 billion health care package for prescription drugs for their retirees. This type of savings, on average, 20 percent, would save close to $240 million for GM.

But we will see that ripple throughout the entire economy. That would save, for families who are paying $60, $70 for a one-time medication, who can then buy it for $30 or $40, and that is a tremendous reduction.

Second, we are about to embark on the largest expansion of an entitlement in over 40 years. Medicare, we are thinking about adding $400 billion for a prescription drug benefit. Some think it may in the end go up to 5 or $600 billion. I think all of us owe the taxpayers a little bit of respect. And when I say respect, respect is understanding the value of their tax dollars should go the longest way possible. Therefore, if we can get the prices for a prescription drug or a specific drug, whether it is arthritic, heart, diabetic medication at 40 percent reduction or 30 percent reduction, we owe the taxpayers through Medicare the right to get them the best price.

Corporations and the pharmaceutical company will get their profits, but this legislation is not about their best profits. It is about the best price for the seniors and our taxpayers. And two myths I want to strike down, one myth that those on the other side say, and they constantly say, is that if you do this you are going to destroy our ability to develop new medications. I think that taxpayers have been tremendously generous to the pharmaceutical industry. Through the research and development tax credit, taxpayers have supported research at these corporations, and they have paid for that research through the tax credits' R&D.

Second, the taxpayers are being very generous because if you look at cancer drugs, you look at drugs for AIDS, every one of them was developed through the National Institutes of Health, which is a taxpayer-funded research institute. So in my view, R&D will never get hurt as long as the taxpayers maintain their generosity to the tax credit, the R&D, and through NIH. So that myth does not work.

Second, that we are somehow endangering the health and safety of the medications that we have at our local pharmacy and drug stores. The truth is every one of the medications we have talk about are FDA, Federal Drug Administration, approved. They are the drugs that were manufactured at the Food and Drug Administration FDA facility, and these facilities produce the drugs for the markets here in America, Canada, England and France, the same companies. They are name-brands drugs at 20, 30, 40, 50 percent reduction. So safety is not a concern. Development of new products is not a concern. We would do great work for our taxpayers and our elderly and our American consumers.

I know the gentleman has some examples to show to the people who are listening and watching the debate of this important issue.

Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, the pharmaceutical companies set up a front group, because if it was paid for by the pharmaceutical companies, it would totally be discredited; but they set up a front group to advertise and start to attack or pressure individual Members on this legislation. And they ran radio ads saying, call your Member, say you do not want unsafe drugs in the district, using scare tactics to frighten senior citizens and to frighten American consumers.

Well, in the Chicago area it has totally backfired so I want to thank them for spending their money to help us. But I decided to go on with my own radio ad to counter what the pharmaceutical industry was doing and to tell them the truth and the public the truth about what was going on, what we were trying to do, which is bring competition, bring the prices down, make medications more affordable, save the taxpayers money.

The gentleman and I have talked about it, others have talked about it; I believe that what the drug pharmaceutical companies were doing here was a sign of desperation.

Now, when I mentioned to the gentleman I was running radio ads, a colleague of ours from Indiana mentioned the direct mail he was getting in his district. A colleague of ours from Massachusetts was mentioning the phone calls where pharmaceutical companies were calling up telling the same message they were delivering on the radio, saying, talk to your Congressman, and then patching that through. Once the staff of the Member's office explained it, the seniors not only felt good, they were happy that he was on the legislation. But they are using the scare tactics in a sign of desperation. Their position is untenable.

We have competition for a car. You want to buy a Toyota, you can buy a Toyota. You want to buy General Motors, you can buy General Motors. You want to buy a Renault, you can buy a Renault, a Saab. You want to buy strawberries all year round, you can do that. You want to buy software from an American company, you can do that. You want to buy them from a German company, SAP, you can do that. The only area where you cannot buy other products from other markets in the same product line is in the pharmaceutical area. We can do it in cars, stereos, TV, electronics. And in all of those places, consumer prices have dropped dramatically. Competition has worked.

The pharmaceutical industry has gamed the political system. They have gamed the legal system, and they have kept competition out. We pay the highest prices in the world for pharmaceutical drugs. The gentleman's chart shows the 10 most-used drugs for seniors. There is a $700 spread where American seniors are paying $700 more than their counterparts in Germany, 20 percent more in Canada. Why? Because the political system has been gamed by

the pharmaceutical industry to keep competition out of the market.

Now, I have seen the marketplace work. It does it in every product. It brings efficiency to the marketplace. The reason we have this tremendous inefficiency in the pharmaceutical area is because we have a closed market. You open up the marketplace to competition, prices will drop.

One of the things I learned a long time ago, maybe this is because I am a middle child. I used to say about middle children, we wrote a book, ``War or Peace.'' We could do either one. If someone was going to go out and say something like that to scare and intimidate people, they needed to be pushed back and given some of their own medicine.

What they did in Chicago, what they are doing around the country, the gentleman can correct me if I am wrong, but I think it is about $20 million big pharmaceutical companies are spending to scare people. It is a sign of desperation. They are using desperate tactics. And I hope it is backfiring on our colleagues and realizing that type of pressure politics will not work, scaring people. The public is on to what they were doing.

That is what I decided to do. We have run it in the Chicago area. We have got a tremendous amount of attention and support by the public for speaking out and speaking up against the pharmaceutical industry scare tactics. If they wanted to have an honest debate, this is worth having a debate. I look forward to it. But what they are doing is exactly what the gentleman said, they are lying. They are scaring people when they need not scare them.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask my colleague, what you have as an ad in your area paper, where people can buy the same medications that they could get at their local pharmacies, if they went to Canada, the reductions, if you could read a few of those comparatives.

Our price being the one in Canada.

That is a 50 percent reduction, little more.

Mr. Speaker, if my colleague would yield, as a friend of ours once said, if they say it ain't about money, it is about money, and that is what this is about. It is not about abortion. It is not about safety. It is not about anything else but about money.

I respect the need for them to make a profit. They will make a profit, but it is clear what is going on here is that the American consumers, the American elderly and American taxpayers are subsidizing the rest of the world, and it is high time we stand up for those folks who are trying to make ends meet, whether they be taxpayers, sick patients, whether they be the elderly, get the prescriptions. It is clear because all those drugs are name brand drugs, same name brand drugs made in the same facility, they are just sold at a 50 or more percent reduction in Canada. In that type of competition your local pharmacist can compete if they had that same type of price, and that is what we are talking about.

I think that our other colleague from Michigan laid it out. What would happen is you would see a dramatic reduction in prices here in the United States. There would be some levelling off. Prices in other places would rise. We can call it reimportation. I like to refer to it as market access. We would go from a closed market to an open market. You have real competition. Once that occurred, what would happen at that point, prices would be reduced here at home.

More importantly, I will use the General Motors example. There are businesses all across the country, look at the steel industry, what was really depressing the steel industry was not the competition in prices. It was that our steel industry had all these legacy costs for retirees, health care costs. You get the reductions like this, and the costs for our steel industry would be dramatically reduced, but that is across big businesses and small businesses.

Small businesses, only one-third of them provide health care. Two- thirds do not. Why? Because it is too costly. One of the greatest causes of health care inflation is, which is now running at 20-25 percent a year, two factors, the uninsured and prescription medicines. Those are the factors behind health care inflation.

We have got to bring this under control. The way to do it is not mandate it. Let us use market forces to do it.

Again, I want to go back to what our opponents have done. I again believe that their desperation and desperate tactics, whether that is through the direct mail as you have shown, the radio commercials that are running in my district, the telephone campaign that is running in other folks' districts, what is interesting is, as I have said before and I will say again, they could have said anything. They can talk about their life-saving medications. They could have talked about their innovation, how many people they employ. They did not talk about something positive. They tried to scare people about what we are trying to do.

To me, their first argument, their first salvo, the first arrow they shot is indicative of the emptiness of their position. They did not say something positive about what they are trying to do. They are trying to run us down, helping seniors and consumers.

Again, I want to thank both of you. I do have to go. I thank both of you for your leadership. One of the things I am most impressed with is the huge bipartisanship that has been shown on this, the cross-sections of both caucuses, the Democrats and Republicans, who have come together, both in the House and in the Senate where 82 Members voted for similar legislation, although it is only specific to Canada.

We are talking about the European Union here, which I think would be real competitive because we have a common set of principles. We have heard too many stories of people missing medication, people, as my colleague has always said, and if I could steal this from him for a second, we have turned our elderly into drug runners, coyotes running over the border trying to get medication.

Both of you have districts obviously closer to Canada than mine, but in Illinois there are actually three or four storefronts opening up to do distributions from Canada. You see it on a real day-to-day basis what is going on, and you see the competitive market forces that if we brought them here people would not drive 120 miles, which they

do today. They would drive 12 minutes, and they would get the medication at their local pharmacy.

We need that type of competition here, and it is the right thing to do, and I think we are on the right course. The desperate tactics shown by our opponents reflect the success of our message, and I think we are scheduled to have a vote next week, which I think America needs to focus on and bring their attention to.

Again, I want to thank you for doing this again today, and I think we are going to have some other time this week to talk about this again.

Mr. Speaker, today along with Congressman Reynolds and a bipartisan coalition of members from the Great Lakes states, I am proud to introduce the Great Lakes Restoration Financing Act of 2003.

Holding one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water supply and nine- tenths of the U.S. supply, the Great Lakes and their connecting channels form the largest freshwater system on Earth. Thirty years after passage of the U.S. Clean Water Act, Great Lakes water quality has improved, but the Lakes remain unhealthy for wildlife and people and there is clear and convincing evidence that the ecosystem is deteriorating.

For example, bacteria from sewage overflows led to a record 897 beach closings in 2002 on Lake Michigan alone. Additionally, twenty percent of the Great Lakes shoreline contains polluted sediments. Further, state and local authorities have issued more than 1,500 fish consumption advisories in the Great Lakes.

Clearly in crisis, the Great Lakes are the source of drinking water for 28 million people. The Everglades, the source of freshwater for much of the state of Florida, faced a similar threat in the mid-1990's. Congress responded with the creation of a massive restoration effort. Building on that successful national model, the Great Lakes Restoration Fund would establish a funding source for Lakes restoration and revitalization based upon President Bush's Great Lakes plan.

Following the President's ``Great Lakes Strategy 2002'' as its guide, the Great Lakes Restoration Fund would provide states with significant funds for Lakes restoration. Specifically, the Fund would ensure the economic and ecologic sustainability of the Lakes, clean up toxic hot spots, combat invasive species, control pollution from urban and agricultural runoff, restore and conserve wetlands and critical coastal habitat, and increase public education of Great Lakes issues.

The United States is blessed with tremendous natural resources. The Great Lakes undoubtedly rank among the most treasured of these resources, but if this body allows them to deteriorate further--if we can no longer drink the water, and no longer swim at our beaches--we will have failed American families.

Mr. Speaker, we refuse to let this happen. This bill will begin to heal the damage done over the years. I strongly encourage my colleagues to support us in this important endeavor by cosponsoring the Great Lakes Restoration Financing Act of 2003.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) for organizing this. It is interesting that you noted we were militarily successful, and I think everybody takes pride in what our men and women in uniform did in pursuing the mission that they were on.

What I think is unfortunate is that they went into that mission without a plan for the occupation and without a sense of how to seek and secure that peace once the war was over. And that is something that the civilian leaders, that is the type of leadership that the civilian leaders needed to provide and did not.

Let me give you an example of that point. After the war and hostilities ceased in both Bosnia and Kosovo, not a single American soldier was killed in action after the hostility ceased. Why? Because in both cases we had a plan for the occupation, and we had allies, two things missing in this endeavor.

As recently as May, when the Defense Department said we could have won the war and secured peace with 50,000 troops, we now have 150,000 troops. Today there was an announcement that there would be postponement of any troops going home. So no family member knows an exact date as far as the eye can see on the horizon, and there may even be a further call-up for further troops.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that on the occupation, not only are our troops there, 150,000 U.S. troops now, permanently stationed there, and as my colleague noted that there are other countries who will not, like India, participate without the U.N. There is nothing that has occurred in the postwar Iraq that was not predictable or foreseen pre the war. And I think that although there is a great argument about 16 words that were legitimately said in the well of this Chamber, the people's House, and it is a legitimate question, I think one of the greatest travesties, and I would hope that we would have an inquiry in either the House or the other Chamber, any investigation, on how we went to war without an exit strategy.

There has been a bipartisan agreement for a long time that we never will send American troops, at least post-Vietnam, we would never send American troops into combat without knowing how to exit. We have no plan for the peace and we have no plan to secure the exit of our American men and women.

Mr. Speaker, if I may ask then, the gentleman sought pre the war, when there was still the debate in this country going on, if we are there, we win, how are we coming home. That question was attempted to seek an answer?

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield for a second, according to the Associated Press today, I think as well both killed and died in a humvee accident, there has been 84 deaths in 79 days since the President landed on the Lincoln aircraft carrier. Eighty-four Americans have died, 30 plus through assassination, others through humvees turning over, other accidents, but 84 Americans are not coming home to their loved ones, to see their children. There is no doubt.

I think that that, to me, one of the great travesties here is that there is not a plan for the occupation. There is not a plan for the exit strategy. And last week we learned now finally after, I do not know why we have to browbeat this answer, but we have spent and are planning on spending $1 billion a week.

That is right, a minimum of 4 years. That is $50 billion a year if my math works, and I still I think I am pretty good at it. That comes to $200 billion on the occupation side of Iraq. We spend $12 billion, $12 billion on just college assistance at the Federal level, $12 billion versus $200 billion. Two billion dollars would give health insurance to every uninsured American and guarantee a bare minimum for the other, not just the 42 million but those who are actually being cut from the rolls.

There is much that we can do here at home for that same cost, not that we are not for the reconstruction of Iraq. Now that we have won the war, I think we all believe that it is pretty essential to invest in Iraq's future, but, remember, this is the very time that we are going to invest. This is $50 billion we are going to spend now on Iraq this year for the occupation.

Our colleagues and a number of them have a rebuild America account for $50 billion to be roads, bridges, economic development, investment in infrastructure to move people and goods and services. We will not find the money for that. Yet we are going to do more deficit financing and burden our country with debt to build $50 billion worth of occupation resources for Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, as my colleague knows, as I think all my colleagues know, as they obviously tried to get answers to how we were going to secure the country, how many allies we are going to have, what was our exit strategy, and it was like pulling teeth to get that. We tried to get answers to the questions how much would it cost, how many troops. Anybody that spoke in the hundreds of thousands were forced out.

Now we are trying to get answers for who put a statement in the President's State of the Union, and we are now ended up blaming the Italians it looks like. First, it was the British. The British blamed the Italians. The Italians say they do not know where the document came from.

The director of the CIA, all the men and women in Virginia have done a wonderful job dedicating their lives to trying to assess information and give our civilian leaders the best intelligence and estimates they have, and

every time we try to get information it is pulling teeth.

Single-handedly.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I have written a few or participated in a few of the processes of writing a State of the Union.

In October, this line about gathering uranium from Niger was edited out of the President's speech. The way it works in the White House is that speech is sent around to the NSE team. So State looks at it, Defense looks at it, CIA looks at it, FBI I am sure gets a little clearance through Justice, probably not the FBI, and they check the assignment. There is an editing. The national security staff underneath Condoleeza Rice has to run that process. So the same people that were working on the October speech that dismissed this assessment of Niger was the same group working on the State of the Union. How one person is responsible, that what was a team effort in October but has become a single person failure in January, only 3 months later, when nothing changed, as we would say back in Chicago, that dog just will not hunt.

Periodically, on the northwest side, we have a couple of dogs that hunt.

Mr. Speaker, what I want to try to do is try to demystify this process. It was not like the CIA got the speech and itself edited it out. This is a coordinated process. National security does it, its team. There is a domestic team. There is an economic team. So when the CIA probably said, no, you cannot use this, everybody's eyes in State, Defense, NSE, everybody's eyes saw that it was not valid. That is the same team that edits and previews and reviews the President's speech in January. So everybody who was participatory in the October speech was the same body sitting in the room participating in the State of the Union speech.

I think again people this weekend, for whom George Tenet seems to be wearing the laundry, or they are throwing him under the truck, remember, this was not good enough 2 weeks later for the Secretary of State who said, and I am quoting, ``This is crap, I am not going to use this.'' The Secretary of State threw it out.

We had George Tenet sitting behind them at the U.N. 2 weeks after the State of the Union. They knew it was not good then. If it was not good enough for the Secretary of State 2 weeks after the State of the Union, it was not good enough for the President in October, but somehow it has become good enough for the President at the State of the Union, a speech on the doorstep of a war where the world was hanging on every word.

Remember, the same people that wrote that speech were participating in crafting this policy, and they have now set out a course of $1 billion a week of occupation, $50 billion a year of U.S. taxpayer money for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. Yet when we talk this week about increasing funding for Head Start, we are told no money. Last week when we voted and there was a 6-year freeze put on Pell Grants, college assistance for people trying to open up the doors for higher education for themselves, we are told there are no resources. Yet we will be asked later on to commit resources to the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq to the tune of $50 billion. Yet here at home, we will be told there are no resources for health care or infrastructure.

The gentleman may say that the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing; I wonder if anybody knows what they are planning in Iraq and what they are planning here at home when it comes to our own economic development. The American people from World War II forward have been tremendously generous around the world, and yet they cannot continue to be asked to be that generous when their own needs and hopes and dreams for their own children are being denied, whether that is in the area of health care, investment in our environment, or our own economic development.

I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

If the gentleman would yield, I would say there is a very legitimate need to look into and acquire through the rearview mirror how did we get to this point, what were the justifications; and I too want to add my voice, although there has been a lot of controversy over the weekend about how did the sentence get into the President's speech. It is very important that we not lose sight, now that we are there, how was it that we had no plan for this occupation.

Time Magazine reports that NATO allies, important allies who have been with us in Afghanistan and other missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, will not join us in Iraq. They do not see a U.N. legitimacy for the effort or plan for the occupation. There are important countries who have traditionally been shoulder to shoulder with America, were in Gulf War I, were in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, every U.S. mission to free the world of a tyrant of some nature, have decided not to join this effort and will not postwar join this effort.

So as we look back, I think it is important to look forward. Again, I would remind my colleagues that in our plan for the reconstruction of Iraq we cite 20,000 units of housing for Iraq, yet the President's budget has 5,000 units of housing for America.

The President's reconstruction of Iraq calls for 13 million Iraqis, half the

Iraqi population, to get universal health care. Yet 42 million Americans work full time with no health care and no plan for health care by this administration.

There are 4 million Iraqi children who will be provided early childhood education. This week on the House floor we will debate the Head Start bill. 58,000 children in America will be cut from Head Start. 1.2 million will never be given the opportunity who are eligible for Head Start to go to Head Start.

12,500 schools in Iraq are planned for reconstruction and rebuilding with all books and supplies. Yet here in the United States, teachers must take out of their own salary the wages to pay for books and supplies. We have to give them a tax credit to reimburse them what should be provided by the school authority.

The Umm Qasr port in Iraq is built from start to finish, from top to bottom; yet the Corps of Engineers is being cut by 10 percent here in the United States.

So as we rebuild Iraq, we reconstruct Iraq, America is in the process of its own deconstruction. If we do not have an economic plan for America that is beyond what has been provided and we do not have a plan for Iraq's reconstruction that includes our allies, I would remind my colleagues that in both Bosnia and Kosovo, we had a plan for the occupation and we had allies. The two things that are missing today, a plan and allies.

My colleague asks who is benefiting. I do not have the answer to that, but I do have the answer for who is paying. That is the United States taxpayer.

Again, I want to remind our colleagues, for 60 years the American people have showed their unbelievable generosity. Every time they have been called upon to serve or to contribute, they have done it. Yet this is the one time in history that while we deny American people the access to education, health care and improved investment in their environment and economic development, we are asking them to call forth in a tremendous effort not seen since World War II to make an investment in another country's economic future when we have told them to shorten the horizons for their own children, to shorten their own homes and dreams for what they can provide their family. Yet we are calling upon them to once again show their generosity to Iraq that talks about a health care plan, an economic development plan, an education plan for Iraq and yet those same agenda items that we talk about here at home, we do not have.

As we know, a number of my colleagues have signed on, I have my own bill called the American Parity Act that says whatever we invest in Iraq, whatever goal we set in Iraq, we have to set here at home equally. Whether that comes from half the population getting health care, half the schools being reconstructed and modernized, teachers being paid, 4 million kids in early childhood education, reconstruction of a port for economic development purposes, we have got to do that agenda item here at home. Otherwise, the generosity of the American people showed over the last 60 years will come short and rightfully so.

I want to say one thing before I have to go, and our colleague from Massachusetts noted this. That is not a different question than the Republican Senator, Richard Lugar, had asked, the head of the Foreign Relations Committee. This again, I think it is important, we have people with different views on the war, but these are questions not from Democrats and Republicans, these are questions as God-loving and people who love their country who want to see America in front of the world stand tall are expecting. So the question you asked again is not a Democrat trying to get partisan political gain, it is a question that the Republican Senator, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, asked, questions that another Senator, Republican from Nebraska, equally asked. This is not inquiry for political gain. We all now, regardless of party, are vested in our success and bringing as many of our men and women home as we can safely as soon as possible.

So your question I would also like to note so nobody who may tune in and turn on the television right now and think we are trying to get partisan or political advantage, note that these are similar questions that Republicans have asked, people of all stripes, from all backgrounds and all economic incomes and regardless of their political affiliations saying we need to get level here. Where is it we are going? How are we getting there? Whether it is an inquiry to what happened in the past but also an inquiry into the future. These are not Democratic questions. These are questions that people who love their country think need to be answered.

Mr. Speaker, in yesterday's testimony, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted that our reconstruction costs, providing health care, education, transportation and housing needs in Iraq have cost the American taxpayers $2.3 billion, and projected over the year, $2.3 billion, that is equal to the amount we could provide in a child tax credit to the 12 million children, the 6\1/2\ million Americans who were left out of the tax cut the last time we provided a tax cut.

In the middle of July, the first set of tax cuts will begin to hit the mailboxes all over America, and yet 12 million children of American families, 6\1/2\ million families of working parents who get up every day to provide for their children and do right will not get a tax cut. Now we are going to be providing the same amount of dollars for Iraq's reconstruction, for their housing, their health care, their education, for their children's future.

I would hope that before we go home for our August break and our summer break to be with our families, our constituents and our neighbors that we would provide these working American families the same types of educational opportunities, the same type of economic security, that tax cut and an economic interest we are providing Iraq.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this legislation because it abandons our commitment, our common commitment to affordable college education for American families; and it abandons those values which guide us towards that commitment.

Just last month, unemployment rose to 6.4 percent, the highest in 9 years. America's working-class and middle-class families are struggling to make ends meet; and yet college tuition is skyrocketing in this country. Double-digit tuition increases are a standard at public universities, with these costs rising by more than 20 percent in some States.

The solution in this bill to these trends of rising unemployment and increasingly unaffordable college education is to freeze all student aid for the first time in 6 years. The value of the Pell grant, the biggest and largest Federal college assistance program and other student financial aid programs, actually decreases under this bill. It does not even adjust for inflation or counteract sharply-rising college tuition costs.

I believe that this bill runs counter to the values that Members on both sides of the aisle share. I know I have talked to Members on the other side of the aisle who have expressed the importance of college education. We would not be here in this Chamber if it were not for the importance that college education provided us to move and achieve for us and for our families the American Dream.

We tell our constituents that they should have to take out a second mortgage on their homes or burden their children with increasing amounts of debt to just make college education accessible. Now, I remember a family I met, a police officer and a spouse, a teacher in a parochial school. They had two kids in high school. They looked at me and they said they had no idea how they were going to pay for college education for their kids who wanted to go to a public university. I was running for Congress and I told them about the tuition deduction which ends in 2005, their ability to deduct $4,000 from their taxes. I told them about other availabilities of States programs.

Now, we have talked on both sides of the aisle. We are all here because of the importance we put on higher education. We know it is the door which every American middle-class family or low-income family walks through so they can achieve for themselves and their families the American Dream. This bill is in violation of our common values and the principles that we hold true, that a higher education is the key to America. We should not convince middle-class families of the importance of college education and then place it out of reach for them. The only guarantee that that parent has is to take a second mortgage on their house. The only guarantee we provide is that child graduates from college with $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000 in debt as they begin the new adventure of their endeavors in life. According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 48 percent of qualified, low- to moderate-income students from high school do not go to 4-year colleges because of financial barriers.

I believe, and I have talked to Members on the other side of the aisle, that this bill violates our fundamental commitment to make sure that college education is there for middle-class families by walking away from the commitment to make sure that college assistance is here today, there tomorrow, so they can go to college and achieve for themselves and their children what we are here doing for ourselves and our children.

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to thank my colleague from Texas not only for his generosity of providing this time, but for the passion that he brings to education and to working families of all ilks, and the eloquence he brought to the words about the importance of education as the stepladder to the American dream.

So I want to thank him now for the generosity he provided so I can be with my family this evening and catch the last flight, and for his passion and tireless work on behalf of all Americans. Texas is lucky to have you as a Representative and a voice; not only a vote, but a voice for their values.

Mr. Speaker, about 2 weeks ago a number of us came to the floor to speak on market access, and that is the ability of Americans to purchase medications anywhere in Canada, Ireland, England, France, Germany, Italy, wherever they get the cheapest price.

Since the last time that my good friend from Minnesota and I were here, there was a report yesterday by Families USA that ABC news covered and the Wall Street Journal covered, and I would like to bring that statistic to the attention of the American people. It reaffirmed a disturbing trend about skyrocketing prescription drug prices in the United States.

On average, the prices of the 50 drugs most commonly prescribed to seniors increased at a three-and-a-half times rate of inflation. The total spending of senior citizens on prescription drugs rose an estimated 44 percent from 2000 to 2003, when inflation was only running at collectively over those periods of time of 6 percent. Now we are projected to spend over the next 10 years $1.8 trillion by our seniors on their medications, and yet when we think about those dollars, the American elderly spend somewhere between 30 to 300 percent higher in prices than the senior citizens of France, England, Germany, Canada, Denmark, any of the G-8 countries and our colleagues in Europe.

My good friend from Minnesota has brought a bill into play that allows our American consumer, our American elderly, our businesses and, most importantly, our taxpayers to get the use of market forces to reduce those prices, bring real competition and the close market that our pharmaceutical companies have brought and bring competition that would save billions of dollars to the consumer and, most importantly, to the taxpayer.

To me, if we are going to have the largest expansion of an entitlement in 40 years, spend $400 billion, you would think you would want to get the taxpayer the best price, but the pharmaceutical companies have done a pretty good job of playing the political system to their benefit, and they have tried to prevent us from getting this bill to the floor, because if we got the bill to the floor, they would know what happens.

In my view, this is not only good for the seniors, they would get good prices, but it would be fair to the taxpayers who are going to be asked to pay this bill.

So my friend from Minnesota has a wonderful bill. I think he has been here many times to explain his chart about

comparative prices. I would like to yield now some time to him to talk, and then I would like to ask some questions, if he does not mind.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Those are the same drugs? I did not mean to interrupt my colleague. Same medication, nothing different?

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

(Mr. JONES of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, you should take a little solace in the fact that they have decided to go to scare tactics because they know this is not about price controls. This is about letting the market determine the price that we can pay, and they are scared of the free market. This is a large company that has a captive market and is scared of the forces of the free market to determine the best price. So they have decided to through a few Members try to play the worst and ugliest of politics because on the merits they cannot win it, and I compliment you for having the courage to stand by your principles.

I would like to make a note to something earlier that our good friend the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) said which deals with the fact that we are Democrats and Republicans here. We give different views on different subjects, but the fact is what has brought us here is our common principles and our common values, and this is a bipartisan issue because we jointly think that our seniors should not be paying the highest price, and our taxpayers should not be asked to pay the highest price when you can get lower prices.

As our colleague from Minnesota showed with that chart, although people cannot see the specific numbers, they get the basic gist that there is a 700-buck spread for the same drugs you buy in Germany versus what we buy here.

You do not have to have a party difference to understand it is fundamentally wrong. It is not right, and we cannot ask the taxpayers as we embark maybe on the largest expansion of an entitlement program in 40 years to foot a bill that would be, in my view, the greatest, largest fleecing of America in front of the naked eye.

So the pharmaceutical companies have decided to engage in this scare tactic because on the merits and on the ground they cannot win this.

I would like to ask one question because they are engaged in one other subject up here. If the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) could walk the folks through that are watching the notion of safety, just to walk them through this, because that is another scare tactic. This is the first of many salvos. We are not done with their attacks, if you do not mind me interrupting, but I would like you to walk the public through the issue of safety.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. So what you are saying is that unless it is FDA-approved, it cannot come in, and it is FDA- approved, meaning the Food and Drug Administration, which is the overseer, the czar of what is safe, approves it, then it can be purchased through the Internet or overseas and brought into the United States, because, as you said earlier, it is manufactured at the same facilities. So there is really no pricing differences except they get price differences there than here. So they are FDA-approved.

Mr. Speaker, both of my colleagues we were talking a little earlier; and perhaps you could address the question, what do you think, given they have projected, I think it is $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years that seniors will be spending on medications, but if we had access to this bill and it was in place, what would be the savings to both the elderly as well as to the taxpayer, projected?

The truth is, Mr. Speaker, that we had an original bill that was going to use market forces to

bring competition between generic medications versus name-brand medications. That was projected to save the taxpayers and the consumers and the elderly $65 billion over 10 years. This concept, following that same principle of competition as the price reducer, let the market determine best price, would bring, I think the gentleman just said, a little over a half trillion dollars to the consumers, the elderly, over the next 10 years. It is using market forces.

Bringing that competition to bear on the market, that would bring prices down, and no longer would the American elderly and the American taxpayer be seen as the profit guinea pig for our pharmaceutical companies. They are making up the difference where they cannot get it in Germany or in England. They are making it up, the price difference, their profit margins, on our elderly. Therefore, our taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill in one of the largest fleecings of the American people we will ever see.

The principles of competition will bring prices down, I think. Pharmaceutical companies have gamed the system from the patent laws, the laws as it relates to competition and globalization, and through the tax laws. As my colleagues know, we had a provision which was to allow the NIH to recoup 10 percent on any drug that was developed and brought to market through NIH dollars. My view is anything below 30 percent in the private market is considered dumb money. The taxpayers, all the cancer drugs, all the AIDS drugs on the market were developed with taxpayer-based research. We should be recouping a minimum of 10 percent to the taxpayers. The NIH would be a self-funded agency in 10 years.

But the core of what we have, the biggest dollar saver is the gentleman's amendment that we are honored to be cosponsors of. Again, this is not price control; it is choice. If you bring choice to bear in the market, consumers will flock to the lowest price, and I think that is the basic principle why you have Democrats and Republicans ready to vote for this, if we could get it to the floor.

Well, Mr. Speaker, before I try to catch that last flight, when I was running for office and I was in Six Corners Jewel, which is our big grocery store with the Osco, on Irving and Organza, seniors would come out and show me what they were paying and they told me the stories about how they cut their medications in half, or a husband would skip a month so his spouse could take her medications. And the first thing they said is, you have to make this affordable. I have to be able to pay for this. They would talk about that, and ask me to make sure that whatever we did, we did not mess with their private plans. But then they would say, please, add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

In my view, if we are on the doorstep of adding that benefit, let us ensure, because it is the first thing they have all said to every one of us who has gone to meet with them, we have to make these drugs affordable. They cannot afford these prices. They would tell me, look, somehow last month my month's supply was $70 and this month it is $96, and nothing has changed. Nothing. If we brought competition, something would change.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Ready to Teach Act. This bill takes important steps toward one of the most important goals for our Nation--filling our schools with committed, talented teachers.

The shortage of qualified teachers in our country has reached critical levels, and it has a direct impact on the quality of education, especially in underserved areas. In urban districts, close to 50 percent of newcomers leave the profession during their first five years of teaching. This bill recognizes the importance of not only filling our schools with teachers, but providing these teachers with the resources and training that allow them to be successful and to make their students successful as well.

I want to call your attention to a school in my district, The Chicago Academy, as an example of the type of positive change that can be brought about by quality teacher preparation programs. The Chicago Academy is a joint program of Chicago Public Schools and a nonprofit organization. Academy for Urban School Leadership, which is taking groundbreaking steps to address the teacher shortage in underserved Chicago schools. The President of the Carnegie corporation called this institution ``a model for our Nation.''

The Chicago Academy creates a ``farm team'' of teachers for Chicago's underserved public schools, through a teacher residency program which involves an entire year of in classroom training, instead of the typical twelve-week student teacher segment of graduate programs in education. Each classroom of 24 students is shared by one experienced mentor teacher and two resident teachers, providing an unmatched student-teacher ratio for public schools.

In-classroom training is coupled with graduate work with faculty from National-Louis University. Residents are provided with a stipend for their participation in the program, and receive a Masters of Arts in Teaching at the completion of the year. In return, they commit to five years of service in underperforming Chicago schools.

In the Academy's first year of operation, 82 percent of students performed at or above national norms in reading--better than any other school in the neighborhood This school is proof of the way that a quality school changes a community. Families are moving out of the suburbs and into Chicago in order to send their children to the Academy. And this effect can extend to the underserved schools that will be supplied with these committed teachers.

The first class of 30 resident teachers graduated last month. Next year, a second Academy will open, and the current school will expand to include the eighth grade. As these new teachers transition into underserved Chicago schools, the number of students served by this program increases exponentially.

The values embodied by the Chicago Academy are those reflected in this important legislation. I commend Mr. Gingrey, Chairman Boehner, and Ranking Member Miller for their bipartisan work to bring this reauthorization to the floor.

I think it is very important to note this fact that 2 weeks after the State of the Union, the Secretary of State was handed that same information as he was preparing his presentation to the U.N., and he rejected that data as insufficient and inaccurate.

Now, having worked in the White House, having worked on a few State of the Unions, which are the most important speech a President will give in their Presidency outside of an oval address, I cannot think of a moment in time where you can have a Secretary of State reject the information as inadequate for their presentation to the United Nations, and yet is adequate and sufficient for the President of the United States to stand in this well at that desk and address the Nation, the world, and for this speech on why we need to go to war.

Now, I happened to have supported the resolution, but the entire credibility of our ability to marshal the resources of the world as we relate to North Korea and Iran are going to be heretofore questioned. And I always think it is interesting if I were giving advice, not that I would be giving advice, nor would they be seeking my advice, that before the President of the United States was back from Africa, he would have the name, the phone number and the forwarding address of the individual that gave that information because they would not be in this White House any longer.

Well, heads would have rolled. You cannot allow the President of the United States to have gone up on any speech, let alone a State of the Union, to address the Nation and in this case, this State of the Union was unique, on the precipice of war, the world with information that was clearly, because of Secretary Powell's actions, inadequate, not up to snuff. Heads would have rolled. There would have been an accounting. There would have been an internal accounting to that; and I think properly so, Congress would have asked for it.

I would like to note, I cannot think what is worse, the fact that they have used, since there is ample evidence to say that Saddam Hussein was a dictator who used chemical weapons on his own people and started three wars, why you would go and stretch information, damage your own case. I cannot figure out what is worse, the fact that they used this phony memo, or the fact that they have had no plan for the occupation and no strategy for our exit.

I can feel the foam and the lather building up. We would not be arguing for 2 weeks whether Congress should call the inquiry an investigation or not. There would be a full-blown investigation, and it would be proper. Because the President of the United States at that point, at that Chamber, at that speech, at this podium would be addressing the world as the President of the United States speaking for all of us, not just the bodies in here and the cameras up there.

I want to add one thing to this whole discussion if that is okay with the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Because as we talk about this memo from Niger and how it got into the speech, how it got into the British dossier for the justification for the war, what is equally telling and missing in the debate is the discussion of reconstruction in Iraq. And if you go over and pull over at USAID, an agency within the State Department, the plans for Iraq's reconstruction, I would like to cite some statistics.

They call for 20,000 units of housing. Yet the budget for this country only calls for 5,000 units of housing here in the United States; 13 million Iraqis, half of the population, will get universal health care. Yet not a single penny in the budget presented by the administration or passed by a Republican Congress does anything to support health care for the 42 million working uninsured in this country; 12,500 schools will be given full resources for reconstruction and books and supplies. Yet in our country, teachers have to get a tax credit because they have to take money out of their own budget, personal budget, their salary to pay for supplies. Four million kids in Iraq will be given early childhood education. In the President's budget, 58,000 kids cut from Head Start. We have a deep water port in Iraq being built from top to bottom. Yet the Corps of Engineers in this country is cut by 10 percent, their budget.

I think if we look at the history, the American people are quite generous and quite supportive of our efforts and we support the notion of Iraq having a new beginning. But I do not think they would ever support the notion that we can deconstruct America while we reconstruct Iraq.

The fact is that there is nothing that has gone on post the war in Iraq that we could not have seen ahead. Nothing new. There was no plan for the occupation. In fact, there is no plan for the exit. We have 158,000 troops based there as far as the eye can see out to the horizon and there is no family member who can count the days of when they are coming home because they have no knowledge of when they are coming home. So nobody can check the calendar at home when the husband is coming, the wife is coming, the sister is coming, the brother is coming.

Remember, this is the heydays. These are the days we are getting the

kisses, the hugs and the flowers. A year from now they will be tired of our presence there.

I checked that statistic. It has been 69 days since the President on the Lincoln aircraft carrier declared our mission complete and 70 Americans have died; 69 days, 70 Americans since May 1.

The fact is among us four we had different opinions and votes on whether we should or should not go to war, whether there was a case for a war.

But we are united in our view that an administration should not mislead the America people; that a person who gave the President the wrong information needs to be held accountable because all of our reputations are on the line when the President of the United States is talking to the world with our judgment and justification. Second, that as we plan for this occupation, that if we had done the hard work of building allies on the front end, we would have allies on the back end. And that the only faces in the occupation are American and British and others, but dominantly American, and, therefore, Americans bearing this burden alone, which it should not, in both financial and human costs.

If I can add one thing to this debate before I need to go. I remember during the Reagan administration there was an open public discussion between the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, which continued in years past, about the fact that we could not get into a military operation without an exit strategy. And I think it would behoove all of us in this institution, regardless of party or regardless of position, if we could define what the exit strategy is. What is the test? What is the standard?

When we have 70 deaths in 69 days, and some people, I think Senator Lugar noted that we have to level with the American people we are here maybe 5, 10 years, that does not sound very convincing for an exit strategy and a standard that says here is when we know we are done. We cannot just say to the American people that we will know when we are done when we are done. We cannot have an open-ended checkbook and an open-ended sense of lives that are to be lost.

Again, I remind my colleagues that these are the days that are supposed to be flowers and kisses and hugs. A year from now we are supposed to be experiencing what we are experiencing today. Not today.

As a former staff person who worked for a President, I believe that every staff person in that White House who was sitting on the side cringed when they heard that, because you cannot but think that there was a President whose rhetoric got ahead of where the policy is and what they were saying.

Nobody would ever suggest that our men and women in uniform, who are doing all of us proud, should be the focus of further attacks, this notion of ``bring 'em on.'' We have lost 70 Americans in 69 days. There are other Americans we have lost in this whole battle, but 70 Americans who are fathers, who are mothers, who are brothers, sisters, who are Boy Scout coaches, leaders in their community, YMCA leaders. And the notion that somebody would sit here in the comfort of our great country in our capital and say ``Bring 'em on'' to our soldiers I think misses what they are facing every day. And I think it was a very, very unfortunate choice of words.

Well, my worry is not only do we not know the standard for our exit, and that before you get into any military engagement, you should know what your exit strategy is; that because we have 168,000 troops based now in all of Iraq, with no ability of any ally to come and replace our troops at a serious level, that our forces are stretched thin when it comes to the war on terrorism because of their occupation and being tied down in the deserts of Iraq.

Now, I think we are there, and we have to help turn this country around, but clearly now our troops are being targeted from guerilla warfare and

from terrorists. Our ability to do what we need to do around the world, both in Afghanistan and other corners of the world, our resources are being stretched thin and spread thin when it comes to the war on terrorism.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the ``Identity Theft Protection and Information Blackout Act of 2003.'' I am proud to offer this legislation on behalf of eighteen of my Republican and Democratic colleagues in the House.

As Congress debates reauthorization of the Fair Credit Reporting Act's preemption provisions, ordinary Americans are more concerned than ever about the privacy of their financial and health information. Moreover, the identity theft epidemic continues to disrupt lives and cost families and businesses millions of dollars. Americans want, need, and expect the Federal government to take action to address these issues.

In response to this urgent problem, my legislation establishes methods for preventing identity theft and amends the FCRA to protect consumers' sensitive, private health-related information by safeguarding it from indiscriminate use by credit bureaus, financial institutions, and affiliates.

This legislation also protects Social Security numbers from identity thieves. An individual's Social Security number has been called the ``the golden key'' to financial identity theft. To protect this vital key to personal information, my legislation institutes national standards governing the collection, use, display, sale and security of social security numbers by government and by private sector entities.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring the Identify Theft Protection and Information Blackout Act, and I strongly urge the House to consider this important measure as we move closer to reauthorizing the Fair Credit Reporting Act and similar legislation to keep personal financial and related information private and protected from fraud and abuse.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for yielding me this time.

What are the consequences of what we are talking about? I will give an example. When we were debating the tax bill a couple weeks ago, we found out after the fact because we only had an hour to debate this major tax bill that 12 million children of working parents, 6\1/2\ million families, were left on the editing room floor not getting a tax cut that they were promised, a $1,000 tax cut. It costs us $3.5 billion to make those children whole while millionaires were getting their tax cut.

General Musharraf of Pakistan came to the White House the other day, walked out in 24 hours with a $3.5 billion check, equal to the amount it would be to keep the children, 12 million children, 6\1/2\ million families, the same amount of money to give them a full $1,000 child tax credit.

They do not have time to debate these things. They learn the consequences later that 12 million children, American children, have been left on the editing room floor because they did not have a lobbyist in the conference room. And we did not know this fact because we had to debate this bill and move it immediately within 1 hour. Six and one half million working families who make $12,000 a year, equal to what a Member of Congress earns in 1 month, yet General Musharraf of Pakistan walked out in 24 hours with that check, equal amount.

That is a consequence. It is a real consequence about whether we have time on the floor to debate these issues, give voice to our values and principles. Whether they are Democrats or Republicans, there are common values, common principles we can find.

Now, if we want to have noncontroversial time on the floor, that is fine. But find in your heart, in your mind, that same sense of justice for controversial issues to debate. Respect the public that we are here to give voice to their values, that we should debate those issues. That is just one consequence.

I had a bipartisan amendment on the prescription drug bill that would allow generics to come to market to compete with name brands to reduce prices. It would also allow us to import drugs from American-made drugs that are sold in Canada, Germany, and England at cheaper prices, that would bring market forces to bear, bring real competition, make drugs affordable, would save close to a half of $1 trillion. There was no room for this debate on prescription drugs for that amendment.

So whether we want noncontroversial, it is not controversial to me, but whether we have real issues debated here on this floor, so people can vote and be held accountable, that, to me, is significant. Let us have time to bring our common values and common principles, to debate them, and stand up in front of our public to let them know where we stand.

Mr. Speaker, like the preceding speaker before me from Tennessee, my good friend, the Dooley-Tauscher bill, I think, addresses the right priorities, the right common values we have. It does not try to end Medicare as we know it. It keeps Medicare, that has done so well over 40 years, intact. And unlike the other bills, it lives within the $400 billion frame. It is true to the principles that have held Medicare true. It relies on part B of Medicare to deliver the benefit. It does not try to privatize that benefit. It is a low-income benefit for our seniors. But, most importantly, it is universal in its benefit. Everybody would get it. There would be a minimum of a 25 to 30 percent discount on drugs.

One of the biggest debates here is not only a benefit under Medicare of prescription drugs, but it is making the drugs that our elderly need every day when they go to the drugstore or their local pharmacy, making those medications affordable. The benefit accounts for all drug spending. That is the core principle here. It is a universal benefit.

So this is the right type of approach. The other day the Washington Post endorsed it. And, today, in the other body, a bipartisan group of Senators will be introducing it. I think it expresses our common values and our common principles of what is true to our vision of what Medicare should be, not what it should not be.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from California for yielding me this time.

Earlier the speaker before me talked about choice. In the prescription drug debate we are having, I have talked about choice and I have an amendment, a bipartisan amendment, to offer people choice between generic versus name brand drugs that would reduce prices so people could pick cheaper drugs. Also part of the provision allows individuals, government, private sector, to buy medications anywhere in the G-8 countries and have competition so they can get drugs cheaper in Germany or France or Canada or Italy. That would drive prices down.

I too agree with competition. The free market would drive prices down. So those of us who embrace the free market wonder why sometimes our colleagues on the other side are so scared of the free market. I have seen that the benefits of the free market work. I would like to see it come to the discussion we have on a prescription drug bill because if we bring that competition of the free market to the debate about prescription drugs, we will make medications more affordable to all Americans of all ages.

The interesting thing is there are two issues that are driving health care inflation at 25, 30 percent for the public. One is the cost of prescription drugs. Two is the 42 million uninsured who show up in our emergency rooms, driving up hospital costs which insurance companies pass on to employers and employers pass on to employees. And if we wanted to insure the uninsured, we can do it for a lot less money than this. Expand Kid Care. In Illinois we have a program known as Kid Care, insurance for the children of working parents, that expands the kid care to family care.

What is most interesting about this debate is that we have a prescription drug bill coverage for Members of Congress that is far more generous than the one that we are about to provide for our elderly. Those are the wrong values. Those are not the values that we came here to represent.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the fact is we would have competition. It is a Gutknecht-Emanuel bill with a number of the gentleman's colleagues on his side and a number of colleagues on my side. The three provisions to this bill, A, allow generics to come to market quicker so name brand pharmaceutical companies could not be involved in frivolous lawsuits.

Mr. Speaker, the speaker earlier talked about using competition and market forces. This bill allows competition between generics versus name brand, so we get the best price. It allows us to have competition whether we want to buy here in the United States, England, France, or Germany, and allows competition between those prices. It would save money. It uses market forces to reduce prices.

Third, it allows the Secretary of HHS to get the best available price, just like all of the Sam's Clubs all over America. It does that here. It allows competition and market forces to reduce prices.

These provisions have, in the past, received bipartisan support. They should receive bipartisan support today because they represent our common

principles of reducing prices and making medications affordable to all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, what is missing from the debate about Medicare this week is how to make medications more affordable at affordable prices and more accessible to all Americans of all ages. And this is not a partisan problem. It is an American problem.

We have a bipartisan bill to use market forces to reduce prices, allow generics to come to market to compete against name-brand drugs, which would save $60 billion over the next 10 years. Another piece of our legislation uses market forces to allow consumers, businesses, Federal Government through Medicare to buy drugs in 27 countries, be they Germany, France, England, Italy, Canada, where prices are 40 to 50 percent cheaper.

I have the full confidence through our market forces we can make medications cheaper, and I have the confidence and hope my colleagues have the confidence in market forces that they are able to do that.

The third component would be to allow the NIH to recoup a 10 percent royalty on any drug developed with taxpayer resources. In the private sector, 30 percent is normally recouped on a rate of return. Ten percent for NIH funded research, all the cancer drugs, all the AIDS drugs on the market are developed with taxpayer return.

We should no longer consider taxpayer research dumb money. We should recoup that money because the NIH is the largest venture capital fund out there, use market forces to reduce prices, make medications for all Americans more affordable.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of Senator Richard J. Durbin's bill, S. 858, to extend the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and to inform the American public about his selfless dedication and sacrifice to our country.

It is my privilege to represent Illinois in the House of Representatives just as Abraham Lincoln did more than a century and a half ago. I am honored to share this association with one of our nation's greatest lawyers, legislators, and presidents.

Toward the end of this decade, on February 12, 2009, we will recognize the 200th anniversary of President Lincoln's birth. Passage of this bill authorizes the Bicentennial Commission to explore the best possible ways to honor his lasting accomplishments.

Our state slogan, ``Land of Lincoln'' reflects how proud Illinoisans are of his enduring contribution to America's unity and strength. His home in Springfield, Illinois is a National Historic Site administered by the National Park Service, and his tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery, also in Springfield, is among the most visited sites in our state.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Senator Durbin for introducing this legislation to make certain that a hero to all in my home state of Illinois and throughout the nation is honored appropriately. I strongly encourage all of my colleagues to vote for S. 858, authorizing the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission to help preserve the memory of his noble vision, statesmanship and humanity forever in American history.