Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Colonel John Rosenkrans Chapter of the New Jersey Society of Sons of the American Revolution. The Society strives to preserve and share the rich heritage of our Nation's birth for the generations. Its many chapters, dotted throughout our Nation, keep the spirit of the American revolution alive and help to spark the same love of country and principle that led our forefathers to give birth to our Constitution and our Nation.

New Jersey, often known as ``Crossroads of the Revolution,'' has a long and proud history and played a pivotal role in our nascent Nation's victory in the Revolutionary War. The New Jersey Journal, published in Chatham, was a major catalyst for the Revolution. The Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall at Princeton University. One of the most famous women of the Revolution, Molly Pitcher, was a legend born of New Jersey battles. And, this fine state was the third to ratify the Constitution and the first to ratify the Bill of Rights. Then, of course, there is Washington's crossing of the Delaware River, the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, the Battle of Monmouth, and more. These are all part of the American psyche and history.

Colonel John Rosenkrans has been described as ``perhaps the most outstanding Revolutionary patriot of Sussex County.'' The compatriots of this chapter of the New Jersey Society of Sons of the American Revolution have made it their duty to share his stories and those of the Colonel's heroic contemporaries. They play an important part in keeping our Nation's feet firmly planted in our proud past as we reach ever higher into the future. This weekend, they will celebrate their 50th anniversary, and I commend them for their good work.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Before I begin, let me just recognize and appreciate the work by the ranking member of the committee with regard to this overall underlying piece of legislation for his work to try to improve the legislation. I believe his actions have been done in view of his constituents and their concerns with the primary lending market as we see it today.

Getting to the amendment that is before us, Mr. Chairman, the amendment would simply strike the rebuttable presumption paragraph under section 203 of the manager's amendment text. As currently drafted, section 203 of the bill specifically lists several criteria that lenders must meet when they originate a loan and that loan to be considered a qualified safe harbor mortgage. Qualified safe harbor mortgages are loans that: one, document consumer income; two, an underwriting process based on fully indexed rate; three, a debt-to- income ratio not greater than 50 percent; four, no negative amortization; and five, six payments for at least 7 years an adjustable rate loan with an APR that varies less than 3 percent over indexed rate.

Now after meeting this prescriptive list of requirements, the loan can be considered a qualified safe harbor mortgage. It is presumed that the mortgage is an appropriate loan. However, section 203 also contains a provision that, even when all these provisions are met, would allow a borrower to rebut this presumption in a court of law and claim that the creditor has made a loan to them in bad faith anyway.

You see, by allowing lenders to still be held legally liable for a loan even after all these conditions have been met, we are creating even more uncertainty for loan originators. This will in turn lead to further tightening of the credit market and keep more people from getting loans.

Mr. Chairman, if a creditor goes through all these requirements as listed, I do not believe that they should still have to worry about being held legally liable if the borrower cannot make their payments. Such a provision undermines the very nature of a safe harbor vision. It undermines the presumption of good faith that the law itself establishes. How can we on one hand tell the lender that they are providing them with a safe harbor from suit and then turn right around and say that safe harbor can be rebutted? I am afraid this will, at the very least, raise the cost of loans, at the worst, keep the loans from being made at all.

Mr. Chairman, I ask you to help the providers, lenders make some sense of the legal clarity and to make this a safe harbor, a true safe harbor. I would ask every Member to support this important amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman misstates the case when he says you can never get into court. You can get into court when these five different criteria are not met. But when these five criteria are met, you have a safe harbor. That is the language of the bill. What is a safe harbor for, if not for giving protection to those who are meeting the requirements.

With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker).

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that this amendment is supported by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Financial Services Association, and Financial Services Roundtable. I believe they do that because they realize when a bill sets up the language of presumption of ability to repay and net tangible benefits, as it has done on line 1, page 52, and then defines that as a safe harbor, with the one hand, but then immediately takes it away with the other hand by saying that you can still go into court after the lender has met all the requirements as we defined as what is an ability to repay and tangible benefits, we are creating more uncertainty in the market, as the gentleman from Louisiana indicated, one that will hurt the overall economy and the ability to secure loans.

I ask for a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend the Braen family for its tremendous service to its community. Currently in its fifth generation of family management of its quarry and construction business, the Braen family has long typified the ``good neighbor.''

In addition to the commitment that the individual members of the Braen family pursue in charity work and community service, the company has initiated a program to promote volunteerism with its own employees. Their efforts have not gone unnoticed. And, tonight, the Braen family and the Braen family of companies--Stone Industries, Inc.; Van Orden Sand & Gravel; Braen Supply, Inc.; and Braen Aggregates, LLC--will be honored by the Northern New Jersey Council of the Boy Scouts of America for exemplifying that high standard.

The Braen family also dedicates itself to community-friendly business practices that not only add to the value of the local economy but also to the quality of life Braen employees, customers, and others enjoy. They have always strived to meet environmental standards long before the standards are in place, thinking first of the health, welfare, and comfort of their employees and neighbors first. They have been honored for their good work, including as New Jersey Family Business of the Year.

So, tonight, as the Boy Scouts honor the Braen family for the support they have shown Scouts and Scouting, I rise to share in their tribute and to thank the Braen family for its contribution to making north Jersey such a fine place to live, work, and raise a family.

Mr. Speaker, earlier we heard from the other side of the aisle that President Kennedy once said: ``To govern is to choose.'' Well, so it is, and we have seen how the Democrat majority of this House has decided to choose when it comes to the issue of tax and spend. They always choose tax.

In the very opening comments from the Democrat chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he said that one of the options they could have considered was cutting spending in the United States Government for once, but they immediately dismissed that, saying that that was simply politically undoable for the Democrat Caucus.

So instead what they do they do? They raise taxes. Their proposal, they say, is to tax the rich. But really what they are saying is try to rob Peter to pay Paul and then go and try to convince Paul that Peter is paying and convince Peter that Paul is paying. But the American taxpayer knows that all of middle-class America will be paying for this tax increase.

This tax increase, a $76 billion tax increase over 10 years, follows a litany of other tax increases. I was on the floor last night and I went through about a dozen Democrat bills which, combined, totaled about $110 billion in tax increases on top of the largest tax increase in their budget. Vote ``no'' on this.

I appreciate that and thank the gentleman from Texas for your work on this issue.

I also commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania because I know he has been championing this issue and cause for a number of years. And I believe during his remarks he mentioned the piece of legislation he has had in this House for some time as well.

In his usual, understated way, the gentleman from Pennsylvania ended his remarks by saying this will begin a philosophical discussion, and the gentleman from Texas picked up on that as well. Indeed it is a great philosophical discussion to point out the disparity between the two parties. The Democrat Party, which is now in control of the House and the Senate, we can see from their actions during the past 11 months that they have been in control that families should be compelled to keep their house in order but Congress does not have to be forced to live within its means. They do that every time they come to the floor with another tax increase, which we will see shortly when their AMT bill comes, that Congress does not have to live within their means. The focus should be, instead, on the family budget, as we have always said on this floor in the past.

Before I came to the floor, I want to do a little aside, I was reading this current issue of Human Events, the week of November 5. It is a front-page story by Andrew Boylan: ``Rangel tax reform riddled with tax hikes.'' He has an expression in here, and I think it points out what Charlie Rangel and the Democrat majority are trying to do in the House. It says, ``Chairman Rangel's plan isn't just robbing Peter to pay Paul; it is robbing Peter and Paul while convincing both of them that the other guy is the one paying the higher taxes.'' That really puts it in a nutshell.

What you will hear from the other side of the aisle when they begin to explain this is no, we are just trying to set things straight. We are just trying to rectify a problem from the old AMT. But at the same time they really, in reality, are shifting it. No, they are robbing from all of us, the entire American population, and they will be trying to convince all of us through the spin and the rhetoric that we hear that the other guy is paying it. That is not the case at all.

You know, the word ``AMT,'' for those who don't follow this issue very closely, has a good name, alternative minimum tax. At first blush that sounds like something that you would want to pay instead of what you are currently paying.

``Alternative'' makes it sound like it is voluntary. ``Minimum''; I, too, would like to pay the minimum amount of taxes. But those words are deceiving just as the Democrat plan is deceiving. It is not alternative in the sense that it is voluntary. It is mandatory. You are compelled to pay the higher of the tax. And it is not minimum in any sense of the word. It is a maximum tax. That will be exactly what we get when the Democrats give us Charlie Rangel's bill of an alternative minimum tax fix.

Now the gentleman from Pennsylvania talked about a piece of legislation that he has worked on, which I have cosponsored as well, that tries to address this by simply repealing the entire AMT. It repeals the entire alternative minimum tax so that citizens of this country will not have to pay that higher tax.

I've cosponsored that legislation, and I support it, but let me just digress for 30 seconds here and just say that I also have sponsored a piece of legislation to address the AMT in this session of Congress. It does not go so far as to totally repeal the bill, but what it does is to try to do, let's say, a compromise measure, if you will, if we can't get that far because the other side of the aisle will not go so far as to giving American taxpayers that total relief. And what it does is it meets it halfway.

From my perspective, it gets halfway and says let's put a COLA in that bill, a cost of living adjustment into it, so that the AMT could do what it was actually intended to do several decades ago, target those very, very, very, very few. Back then, there were was only 150 of those taxpayers out of 200 million people, those taxpayers who were not paying any taxes, and put a COLA into it so that it would be just adjusted just as the rest of the tax breaks. So when your income goes up each year due to inflation and what have you, you would not find yourself falling into it.

So if the Democrats can't go so far as some of us, as Congressman English and others of us believe that we would like to see here, and that is to totally repeal, take away that burden on all American taxpayers, I would hope that they would see instead some sense to reaching halfway at the very least and saying let's make sure that it does not swallow up so many of the individuals in this country. If we don't do anything shortly, 22 million Americans will see their taxes go up dramatically.

Now, I come to the floor, as the gentleman from Texas says, from the great State of New Jersey, and I speak with some experience as to the fact that sometimes the other side of the aisle, both on a Federal level and on a State level, will try to deceive us on some of these things as to who they're really going after.

Here, if you read and listen to the rhetoric from the Democrats on this issue, they're saying, well, we're just trying to go after the rich people in this country. In New Jersey, a few years ago, there was Governor McGreevey at the time. They said the same thing. They said we're going to go with a millionaire's tax, and of course, the average citizen said, hey, that's fine, they're not coming after me; they're going after the other guy; in effect robbing Peter to pay Paul and convince them it's the other taxpayer that's going to pay the bill.

But you know what happened there. That millionaire's tax in New Jersey started at $1 million, and then suddenly it went down to $900,000, then $800,000, $700,000, and it kept on going down lower and lower and lower until eventually it covered just about everybody. Anybody who had a household where the husband and wife worked, you had a husband maybe a policeman and the wife might be a school teacher or a nurse or something like that, they became covered by that so-called millionaire tax in New Jersey.

It was the so-called tax that started out as a rifle shot at just a select few and instead turned into a shotgun approach and encompassed everyone. Same thing that's happening right here with the AMT so-called relief that we're getting from the Democrats, so-called going after the millionaires; but it's going to cover all of us with higher taxes.

When I say higher taxes, one of the things I say on the floor just about every time I come to the floor, I say this. We are now in November, the eleventh month of the year, which means we're on the eleventh of Democrat control of this House, and we should always ask ourselves, what has 11 months of control by the Democrats wrought for this House and the country.

It has initially brought us the largest tax increase in U.S. history. It has brought us the creation of slush funds in the various appropriation and budget bills that they gave us at the beginning of the year, and it has gotten rid of any hint of transparency in the earmark rules of this House, some things that they campaigned on.

The issue of tax increases continues here tonight, and if I have just another minute, they gave us the largest tax

increase initially when they gave us the budget at the very beginning of the year. Since that time, in just about every piece of major legislation that the Democrats have brought before this House, you have seen a tax increase. In bills that you would never even imagine would have tax increases, they have it. And let me just take a moment just to run through a list, and I don't have a chart to put up behind me so I'll have to give it to you this way.

The CLEAN Energy Act, we're all in favor of clean energy, I suppose, but it includes a $7.7 billion tax increase over 10 years. The Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act, $1.38 billion. Katrina Housing Tax Relief, tax relief, it sounds as though they're giving us tax relief. No, it's raising taxes by $241 million. Taxpayer Protection Act, $23 million increase. To amend the Internal Revenue Code, well, we all want to do that, but who knows. When they did it, they raised taxes by $14 million.

U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act. Gosh, by the name of that, they're all great things, U.S. troop readiness, Katrina recovery, but you know what, they tucked in a tax increase there. How much? $4.4 billion. Second bill, same name, H.R. 2206, $4.8 billion.

The Andean Trade Preferences Act, $105 million tax increase. Farm Nutrition and Bioenergy Act, $7.4 billion Democrat tax increase. The Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act, get this one, $54.8 billion Democrat tax increase.

Just three more. The Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Act, what does that have to do with taxes? Well, for the Democrats, it's $15 billion in tax increases.

The Airport and Airway Trust Fund Financing Act, trying to make our airports better. Well, how do they do it? They do it by raising our taxes by $1.8 billion.

And, finally, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act. Who could be against mortgage forgiveness and debt relief? Well, the debt is going to be on our shoulders because they're raising taxes by $2.005 billion.

You add up that whole list, and this is even before we come to the bill that's before us tomorrow, that comes to $106 billion tax increase over 10 years, on top of the largest tax increase as I mentioned in the budget at the beginning of the year.

Let me just conclude. I see our time is coming down. These numbers are for me, and I think most Americans, hard to put your arms around when you are talking about such high tax increases. The bottom line, though, is put them in large absolute numbers when you're talking about $106 billion or the $70 billion in permanent tax increases as the gentleman talked about, or as a Member from the other side of the aisle admitted, 130 percent tax increase, whether it's percentages or absolute numbers, put them down in day-to-day numbers. It's around $2,400 on the largest tax increase to the average American household that you will be seeing.

The question we have to ask is the one I started with and the one that the gentleman from Pennsylvania ended with. It's a philosophical discussion. Are we going to put the focus on the American budget or the family budget? I suggest, and this side of the aisle suggests, the focus should be on the American family's budget to allow the American taxpayer to keep as much of his money as possible and not see another tax increase on that family budget.

I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. I thank the gentleman also for bringing this issue once again to the floor. I was in my office earlier this evening when you began your remarks, and I have heard you on the floor on numerous occasions speaking to medical topics.

We appreciate very much your background, the expertise that you bring.

And on that point, I should just say that on my 3-hour trip from New Jersey traveling on good, old reliable, semi-reliable, slow Amtrak, I had the opportunity to read a number of your articles that you have written. I would commend anyone who is listening to us here tonight. I should ask the gentleman, is much of this material I read, one a position paper, another is called Addressing America's Health Care Challenge: A Solution, are these articles by any chance up on your Web site? Can I commend the audience here that listens to us tonight to go to your Web site and look to find these things?

I appreciate that, and just a couple of them, Addressing America's Health Care Challenge, with that and what you've talked about here, as I put the expression, you step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture, which is what I'm going to talk about in a moment. So I think this is a good one.

Another one is the cure to the physician crisis, and I'm not going to get into it here. This article gets into it pretty well to say, you can do all that you want to do when it comes to the issue of health insurance, but if we don't have enough docs out there such as yourself and other docs out there, physicians that are out there taking care of the patients, it's not going to mean anything.

When I'm back in my district and I tour my hospitals, what is one of the first complaints or concerns that I have, and I bet it's the first complaints and concerns that you hear from your hospitals, is a shortage of nurses. And whether it's long-term care facilities, hospitals or clinics, they say we just can't get enough visiting nurses, we just can't get enough trained nurses as well.

If we don't get that aspect of the problem solved, everything else that you and I and the rest of Congress talks here tonight and in the future will mean nothing because we're not getting the providers to the patients.

So, again, I just wanted to start where I should probably end, and I think I will in a little bit, thank you for your work in this area.

Where you left off and some of the points you were touching about goes along this line, and that is, that you have to look at some of the bigger picture.

In my office, I was looking at some data, and one of them is on data from the World Health Organization, and I think this is interesting. Again, regardless of what we do on health insurance and regardless of what we do in the government, whether it's in the Federal level, the State level or anything else, here's what they tell us. Here's what the World Health Organization tells us. That if Americans, and I guess the world community as well, but Americans in particular, would address three areas, smoking, eating disorders and eating, what your diet is, and exercise, if you address those in a logical coherent manner, presumably after consultation with your physician, 80 percent, an amazing number when I read it, 80 percent of Type 2 diabetes could be addressed and resolved. Eighty percent of heart disease could be resolved. Forty percent of cancer issues could be resolved.

Nothing about buying insurance. Nothing about spending more money. Matter of fact, you'd probably end up spending less money if you ate right and didn't go to McDonald's as much as I do. Those three areas.

The one on diabetes, I just had the opportunity in the last week to 10 days to have folks from that organization come and speak to me back in the district, and they pointed out a statistic. Approximately a little less than one-third of the dollars that we spend on Medicare goes to diabetes or diabetes-related injuries or other illnesses that are related to it.

So can you imagine, if we were able to resolve that issue, how we would be able to address our health care costs in this country. Costs being one factor, but obviously, the bigger factor is improving the quality of life.

So you're right on the target when you say how do we improve the health quality of individuals in this country first and foremost; and secondly, how do you do that through a proper physician relationship.

As I come to the floor this night, and I always make reference to this mark, here we are in November, the 11th month of the year, and we have to ask ourselves what has now under the new Democrat leadership wrought when it comes to the issue of health care in this country.

Somebody else pointed out some numbers to me the other day. I think it was this past week. So far the ledger is 106 bills have made its way to the President's desk. Forty-six of those bills have been to do with the naming of post offices and Federal buildings. Forty-four just have to do with Special Orders and special days and the like. That's almost two-thirds. Ninety bills out of 106 of no real major significance, and here we are at the floor tonight I think addressing something that is of major significance, second perhaps only to what our colleague Tim Walberg and others were talking about as far as their faith issues, and that is the quality of life and the health of the citizens.

This, though, is not a new issue. President Clinton, when he was President of the United States, said that he had an answer to this problem, and it goes in a totally different direction that you were addressing before. His solution was larger Federal Government intrusions into this part of the economy. It's approximately what, one- fifth of the overall spending of the GDP on health care. He wanted it to be even larger and more of a centralized control, government- controlled health care, if you will, socialized health care.

And he told us back at that time how he intended to bring this country, that he realized after Hillary's failure to address the issue through her secretive meetings that we heard about later on, he said how can we get there. He said we can get there through a centralized, government-run health care system incrementally. First, we'll insure and control the health care for indigent children, then all children and for indigent adults, and then for all adults. So all of us eventually will come under the control of the Federal Government.

That means we were basically putting that very personal, that you referred to before, and you know as well from the doctor side, we all know from the patient side, the placing of doctor-patient relationship under the control of the Federal Government, bureaucrats, faceless, nameless, maybe very nice people and well-intended, but bureaucrats.

I scratch my head to think when people actually advocate such a government control. This is the same Federal Government that we saw handle the Katrina situation and FEMA terribly, loss of life, loss of homes and what have you, that Federal Government. This is the same Federal Government during this past summer when families were trying to go on vacation and asked the Federal Government to do one of its basic functions, issue visas so families could go on family vacations. The government couldn't get the visas out the door. This is the same Federal Government that to this day we're still arguing and debating on this floor how do we close and secure our country's borders so that illegals and terrorists and drug traffickers can't come into this country. That same Federal Government can't control this, but they want to control our health care delivery system.

So he told us how he was going to do it, and one of the charts up that you have, I have a variation of it, but if I could just ask the gentleman from Texas to put that one chart back up with regard to the coverage. It tells us how he was going to do it, and they're now trying to do it through SCHIP.

By very definition, a middle-class entitlement means that you are going to be providing an entitlement, in this case, health care, for people who are making over or at the middle-class level of income and above. Well, we know that the poverty level is, for a family of four is around $42,000. I'm not sure if that's showing that on that chart, for a family of four is around $42,000. We also know that the median or the middle range of income in this country, again for a family of four in this country, is around $48,000.

So, by definition, if you're going to be providing a benefit to people over that level, over $48,000, then you're providing a middle- class entitlement. It's no longer talking about poor children first. I know there was another chart, benefits should go to poor children first. We're no longer talking about the indigent. We're now talking about just about everyone.

A family of four making over 300 percent makes around $62,000. So by definition we're saying, under the proposal that came before the House with regard to SCHIP, we want to provide benefits to a larger group of people, to a middle-class entitlement. And who is going to pay for that is the next question that should come to mind.

Well, the plan that is in place to pay for those various ranges, and without my far glasses it's hard to see them, says that that is going to come out of various sources, but one of the biggest sources will be smokers. And the interesting thing about this is that in order to get enough money to provide for that level of coverage, not just for the indigent anymore, but people above the 200 level of poverty, 300. As you know, in the State of New York they tried to go up to the 400 level of poverty, which means around $84,000 a year. In order to do that, they will have to look to smokers, which is fine on the one hand until you get into the weeds a little bit on this issue. And the Heritage Foundation did a little bit of study and said how many people do we have to actually have start smoking in this country in order to come up with that money, and they found out at the end of the day that we will actually be looking to find 22,000 more smokers in this country in order to fund this program.

Now, you are a physician and you could probably speak ad nauseam that smoking is harmful for your health, and actually it's most harmful probably for little kids more than anybody else. But in order to fund this program for the indigent poor and also for a middle-class entitlement, a government-controlled health care system, they will be looking to say we need 22,000 more children in this country in order to start smoking tomorrow so that we will have funding for this program down the road for the next few years.

It's an absurd situation, and it's even a little more absurd when you think about who actually does smoke in this country. This is a little bit of a sad situation. Lower income individuals smoke to a higher percentage than upper income individuals. And in fact, if you look at the numbers, it's something like this. People who make under $10,000 a year, so very low-income people, pay twice as much in taxes from smoking than people who make over $50,000 a year.

So what are we really saying? We're saying that we need 22,000 more kids to start smoking to pay for this program. And who are those people that are actually going to pay for it? The lowest of the low-income people who are smoking are going to pay the biggest percentage of their income towards this program.

It's an absurd situation to fund it, and it goes back then to the final point, and I'll close and I'll yield back to the gentleman, as I think our time is coming to a close. It's an absurd funding formula to come up with for a government-run program. And unfortunately for the advocates of the program, the money runs out. The money runs out.

You see on our little chart here, starting, if this program, as proposed by the other side of the aisle, Democrat side of the aisle, it would start in 2008, and there's little kids being encouraged to sign up. Indigent children are being encouraged to sign up for this program. I notice this picture does not have the children smoking. So, to be actually correct, we should have the children smoking, because they're encouraging them to smoke in order to pay for this program, but it would only last for 5 years. Then, after the 5 years, the funding is cut off almost entirely, 80 percent. That's why we have the chart go demographically down, and the kids are left hanging, in this case parachuting.

Why this is bad is twofold. One is because we're leading people to believe that we're actually setting up a program that's going to be paid for perpetually for the children. And two, who is this child that's now left jumping off of this cliff here? As your previous chart showed, he may very well have been a child who was already covered by your insurance. And your chart shows 55, 75, 80, 90 percent of the children had insurance prior to this program coming along, but now they were encouraged to join into this program and go into it, give up their prepaid plans under their father's programs, mother's programs, company plans, what have you. Five years from now under this program, it's designed to fail. They will jump off. They will not have anymore government program, and they also will no longer have any private insurance.

So we are setting up a system, encouraging kids to smoke in order to pay for it, and leading them to have to basically fall off the cliff in 5 years without having any health insurance at all.

At the end of the day, and I'll close on this, I commend the gentleman for leading us to look at this issue from a larger perspective, to ask a basic question. It's not so much about health insurance; it's about health care. And it's not so much of whether you have the coverage to provide you with insurance; it's whether or not you're actually going to have a doctor or a nurse out there to provide those services for you. And it's not so much as whether the government is supposedly going to do it, because we know at the end of the day they can't, by the numbers; it's whether or not at the end of the day we can come up with something to actually make sure that the patient is in control with his doctor of the delivery system and that it's the best care in order to provide the services to them, and at the end of the day the quality of life of those individuals as well.

I commend the gentleman from Texas for bringing this to the American public's attention tonight, and I look forward to reading more of his material, as well both on-line and in person.

You make a perfect point. Again, it goes to what we were saying before. It doesn't matter whether you have insurance or not. It matters whether or not there is actually a doctor who will be there to take the insurance.

How many individuals that you know, senior citizens that you know right now that are Medicare or Medicaid, and they went out to find a doctor to treat them for their ailment, and they found out there are no longer doctors in their community who are taking Medicare or Medicaid patients. They had all the great socialized programs, coverage, that they needed. They just didn't have any doctors who would pick it up.

You are explaining the same thing very eloquently. The same thing will happen to these poor indigent children. We lead them down the road to believe that they actually are going to have coverage now, that think that there is going to be a doctor there to take care of them. If their reimbursement rates are anything like they are for Medicaid, there may not be a doctor there to deliver the services.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for heading this program tonight to bring about the Truth Squad, which when I'm not here on the floor, I'm in my office turning on C-SPAN to make sure that I can find out the latest of what the actual facts are, because we can't always be assured that we hear them correctly from the other side of the aisle.

Actually, that's where I want to begin on this one. I was tuning in as I was doing some work at my desk for the last 10 or so minutes of the other side of the aisle, and I was a little bit amused by their closing comment. They seem to be chagrinned by the fact that they don't have the opportunity to get the message out, if you were listening to them, that the President seems to be able to have the bully pulpit and be able to get the record straight out to the American public, and they don't. I had to scratch my head at that time because I thought, well, gee, doesn't the Democrat Party now control both this House, isn't Nancy Pelosi now the Speaker of this House? Isn't Harry Reid now the lead in the Senate as well? I thought the Democrat Party was the majority party.

And I know that every time that I leave this Chamber during the day there are microphones out there waiting for speakers to speak. And they're not coming to me to ask for comments; they are looking to the Democrat majority. So I think they were a little bit flippant or disingenuous, if you will, when they're saying that they're not able to get the message out. I think what they are really saying, though, is the message that is getting out is not a truthful message, and some of the points that you've already made.

And if I may just touch upon a point or two here. If you go back in time a little bit to when President Clinton was in office, he laid out the groundwork of what his vision was for health care in this country. He told us where he would like to take this country and maybe where his wife would also like to take this country when it comes to health care. And he said that he wanted government-run healthcare. He wanted universal, socialized, Washington-controlled health care. And how would you get there, he said? Well, he laid it out in plans; he put it out in a book, almost, for us. He said, you get there not overnight, although I guess Hillary Clinton tried to do that, but he said, no, you get there incrementally. First what you do is you insure the indigent children, then you will insure all the children, and eventually you will insure all the adults as well. And what does that bring you to? Well, that's socialized, government-run and controlled health care. Now, that may be something that he would like and maybe a small segment of this country would like, but when I go back to my constituents, they remind me that Washington government may not be the most effective and efficient entity in the entire world of delivering services. They remind me of what happened back when Katrina occurred and we had FEMA step in to try to deliver services, and it was abysmal. They remind me continuously, regardless of which party is in control, earmarks, and we can talk about that ad nauseum later on probably, about the waste, fraud and abuse when it comes to spending their hard-earned dollars on earmarks.

They remind me, also, some of them who were trying to leave this country during this past summer for a summertime vacation and they found out that they needed to get a visa in order to do so. And they could not get their visa even though they put in their request one, week, two weeks, three weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks in advance. A very basic function of the U.S. government to supply visas to people, and they couldn't get them on time. They remind me that the government couldn't even do one of their basic functions.

They remind me, finally, when it comes to what is one of the most seminal issues when it comes to any government, and that is to protect your borders, and they say, you know, Congress, here under this majority, can't even get that issue resolved and done. We can't get the money to the border security guards. We can't get that fence built along there. If the government can't do those functions, they ask me, why in the world do we want to turn over our control, life-and-death

situations, really, and you're a physician, you know this, to an entity that can't run the functions that they're doing right now.

They tell me, the American public, my constituents tell me that they want to make sure that health care remains in their hands, that health care remains as a private matter in the sense of a doctor-patient relationship. Maybe you want to comment on that at some point, where they're in control of the delivery, of the questions and the asking and what have you and the needs for the services, and the doctor is in control of the services that are being provided. They don't want big brother, if you will, stepping in and saying, well, no, we're going to exclude you, include you and what have you. So they are very hesitant to go down the direction that Bill Clinton wanted this country to go down and now this Democrat majority wants us to go down as well.

And if the gentleman would continue to yield.

The very definition of a middle-class entitlement, which, as Bill Clinton would say, is the next step to go to socialized, government-run health care, well, the very definition of a middle-class entitlement can be seen in what the Democrats are trying to do right now with SCHIP. Look at the numbers. And I know I don't have a chart behind me like you do to have these numbers right next to me, but let's think of these basic numbers.

Right now the SCHIP program, as originally intended, was to fund indigent care for children, at what level? Two hundred percent of poverty. Ballpark figure, that's around $42,000 for a family of four; that's what is defined as poverty for that family. The medium income, that's the middle income in this country, for a family of four all across this country on average is about $48,000. So, $48,000 is the middle range. Any time you're going to start spending more, providing a government-run program for somebody making more than the middle by definition now becomes a middle-class entitlement, and that leads us to government-controlled health care.

So, when they're talking about providing services above 200, 250, 300, well, 300 percent of poverty, that would put you at approximately $62,000 for a family of four. In New Jersey, we're at 350 percent of poverty; that puts you around $72,000 for a family of four. So, by definition, they're telling us that they are not trying to create a program for the indigent and the poor in this country. By the very definition of the words they're using and the facts that are out there, they are trying to create an entitlement program for the middle class. And then of course the question is, who is going to pay for that?

I will yield.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in honor of the extraordinary public service of the Reverend Monsignor Michael J. Corona of Phillipsburg, New Jersey. Today, the Phillipsburg Area Chamber of Commerce will recognize his commitment to his community, naming him Outstanding Citizen of the Year for 2007.

Monsignor Corona completed his theological studies at St. Mary's Seminary and University

in Baltimore, Maryland. He also earned a Master of Arts in Education at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. He was ordained for the Diocese of Trenton in 1968 and has been pastor of St. Philip and St. James Parish in Phillipsburg, New Jersey since 1979.

Under his guidance, the parish has been active in the community. While activities like their soup kitchen and Thanksgiving food drive feed the bodies of those less fortunate in Phillipsburg; their compassion and love feed their souls. And, the parish elementary school provides a quality education to so many local children.

In addition to his work directly in Phillipsburg, Monsignor Corona spreads his skills and good nature through his work with the Diocese and other Catholic leadership organizations. He is a member of the Diocesan Presbyterial Council and College of Consultors, as well as the Director of Education for the Diocese of Metuchen. He is also the President of the International Catholic Stewardship Council's Board of Directors, an organization dedicated to the proposition that ``all members of our family of faith are called to be Christian stewards and share their gifts of time, talent and treasure in proportion to the blessings they have received from God.''

Monsignor Corona is an integral part of the community of Phillipsburg. I join his neighbors in commending him for his good work, his dedication to the people and particularly the children of Phillipsburg, and his commitment to continually improving this historic city.

Well, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for giving me the opportunity to address the House.

First, before I begin, let me just say this. I commend the gentleman for your being down here on the floor to, first and foremost, refute the arguments that had been made initially, in your opening statements, refuting the arguments made by the other side of the aisle, where I believe you were getting into the issues of the debt and what have you, and some of the other points you made with regard to our spending levels, and finally on SCHIP.

If I may, I want to address a couple of those. First of all, here we are at the end of October, 10 months into the rule under the new Democrat majority, and we have to ask, what has their leadership wrought? They have brought us the largest tax increase in U.S. history, the creation of slush funds, where a lot that money is going to go to, and the end to the transparency that they promised in the last election that they would bring to this House.

On the first point, as far as the largest tax increase in history, that began initially as soon as the Democrats took control with their budget, a $387 billion tax increase, which basically is too large of a number for any of us to get our hands around. But what it really translates down to is, on average, around a $2,500 to $2,700 increase that every individual in this country will have to take out of their pockets, from the hard-earned money they make, and send down here to Washington so Congress can spend it instead on who knows what it may be. That is where they began.

We know just this past week the chairman of Ways and Means has come out with the ``mother of all tax increases.'' That ``mother of all tax increases,'' of course, basically begs the question of what happens to all the orphaned taxpayers then in this country, those who are now left having to foot the bill for that tax increase.

So I raise these points only because it is truly ironic that the other side of the aisle would come to the floor and raise the issue of the debt level and the spending of Congress, because, when you think about it, they ran on a platform that the Republicans were spending too much, but what was the first thing they did when they came here? They decided that they would spend even more. They ran on the platform that we were taxing too much. And what was the first thing they did once they got here? They raised our taxes. And they have done so repeatedly. They have about half a dozen times now had legislation, just about every single major piece of legislation that has come to the floor so far, that has included some form of tax increase in it.

Now, the gentleman from Iowa raises the point now near the end of his discussion with regard to SCHIP, and I always appreciate his explaining to the American public what the acronym SCHIP really does stand for. SCHIP stands for ``Socialized Clinton-Style Hillarycare for Illegals and Their Parents.'' I will get to that point of illegals in a minute, but let's look at

the overall focus and what the intention is here.

I think it begs the question to ask, is anyone from either side of the aisle not intending working towards making sure all Americans can have the health care that they need? I think we all agree on that.

The next question is, do we not want to make sure then that all American citizens' indigent children get the health care that they need? I think, generally speaking, except for the partisanship and the politicking on the other side of the aisle, I would have to say that all of us agree on that as well.

Then we have to ask ourselves, what is the best mechanism to get there? Is SCHIP and the expansion that the Democrats want to foist on the American public the best way to get there? I would answer that question by saying, no, it is not.

Going in reverse order, the gentleman from Iowa raises the point with regard to illegals, an important point. The Democrats will tell you, don't worry about it. The bill already says in plain language that illegals are not allowed to get these benefits, as if all you need to do is put those words into a bill and that makes it so.

I see on the table over there, I think that looks like your demonstration for the wall. Is that what that is?

You know, we would not need that wall under the Democrat philosophy, because we already have a law that says no illegals may come into this country illegally. If that is all it takes is just to say they can't do it and it won't happen, you don't need that wall. You don't need any surveillance. We don't need any border security guards, because we have a law that says they are not allowed to come into this country illegally. But we know that that is not the way it works. What works is you need enforcement. You suggest enforcement in the form of a wall, and I agree with you on that.

In the area of SCHIP, enforcement means that we need to have a way of verification for an individual when they come to claim American taxpayers' dollars for their own benefit for them to verify that they are legal American citizens entitled to it. And that is all that the Republicans were asking for, some sort of process to make sure that was done.

Now, the Democrats also argue, look, they put in a penalty provision for the States. The Democrats were not willing to actually put an enforcement mechanism in themselves to say how they want to verify the illegals. But the Democrats will say, well, we are going to leave that little question to the States instead and have the States cleverly come up with it. Of course, you and I are all supportive of States being the laboratory of experimentation.

The Democrats then say that is all we need to do. I would suggest that is not all you need to do. The enforcement there is not to say to the States if you mess this up, if you don't enforce the law and allow illegals to get American taxpayer dollars under this program, and therefore potentially deprive other American children of their benefits, it does not say that those States will not receive any Medicaid benefits whatsoever. It does not say that they will not receive SCHIP benefits as well. It just holds the additional funding that goes to those States.

Under the original DRA law that was signed in 2005 and went into effect in July of 2006, for those States under Medicaid where it applied to, we saw a decrease because of the Republican enforcement mechanisms of illegals actually getting those benefits. What the Republicans have simply asked the Democrat majority to allow us to do is to allow those systems that are working to apply to the entire SCHIP process.

So on the point of trying to make sure that only U.S. American citizens get the benefits, Republicans have a plan and it has been working in other aspects of Medicaid, and we wish to expand it.

I yield back.

I will make this last point if the gentleman permits. The definition of a middle-class benefit or entitlement is one that goes to the middle class of America.

The definition, I guess, of a program for the indigent would be a program that is aimed for those who are making less than the average, less than middle-class America.

I wanted to give a couple of numbers. The median, middle, middle income in this country is around $46,000 for a family of four essentially. That is the middle. That would be how we define middle class across the board. Some higher, some lower. That is the middle.

The bill, SCHIP, as it was created initially was for 200 percent of poverty. That would be around $42,000 for a family of four, so less than the middle.

There are some discussions going on literally as we speak right now in what the Senate is looking at to bring this program up to around 275 percent of poverty. That would be $58,000 for a family of four. So if middle, middle-class America is around $46,000, and some are suggesting we should be bringing the coverage up to $58,000, by definition it is a middle-class entitlement. Actually above middle class. Slightly above middle-class entitlement, as a matter of fact. It begs the question if you are trying to set up a program to address the problems of the indigent Americans in this country, why are you bringing the number up so high we are going over the median income in this country.

That is a rhetorical question. I don't think the other side can answer it unless they simply want to be honest with us and tell us they are trying to do what Bill Clinton said back when he was President that he wants universal coverage where the government has socialized medicine, and you will start with indigent children, you will go to all children and eventually you will go to all adults in the entire country. One-fifth of this economy will be encompassed by a government- run health care system, something you and I definitely oppose.

SCHIP. It has another meaning as Republicans initially created it, but we see what the Democrats have morphed it into. SCHIP now stands for Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents. That wraps it all right up there. They are willing to go back to what Hillary and Bill Clinton wanted to do, and that was to have a universal, socialized plan that the government would control, literally one-fifth of the economy, health care economy, the same government that gave us FEMA and the way they handled Hurricane Katrina and the same aftermath of Katrina, the same government that gives so many other problems of waste, fraud and abuse, and the same government that gave us the proverbial bridge to nowhere. That Clinton-style type of government, Hillarycare for illegals. As the gentleman from Iowa just pointed out, it is not for American citizens. It is for anyone who simply wants to walk across the border and take the benefits of the hardworking American taxpayers.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the extraordinary public service of Patricia Hans, who this weekend will be honored by the New Jersey Council for the Humanity as the 2007 Teacher of the Year.

Pat Hans is an American Studies teacher at Ridgewood High School, where she teaches an interdisciplinary program of history and literature. Using literature to understand historical events and history to enhance the literary experience, her classroom has been described as a place where ``ideas explode into reality.'' Pat Hans draws on the rich cultural and historical resources of North Jersey to give her students a textured experience in learning.

In addition to teaching at Ridgewood High School, Pat Hans also teaches English Composition at Bergen Community College as an adjunct professor. A graduate of the State University of New York at Albany, with a Masters in English from my alma mater, Montclair State University, Pat Hans is a respected lecturer as well.

She has given presentations before the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, the New Jersey Writing Alliance, the New Jersey Council for the Teachers of English, and the New Jersey Education Association. She has been bestowed a number of fellowships and awards for her work, including the Summer Institute Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poetry Fellowship, and a John F. Kennedy Public Service Grant. In both 2003 and 2004, she was named the Seton Hall Teacher Scholar.

Pat Hans demonstrates an ongoing love for history and literature and continues to deepen her own knowledge and understanding for the humanities. Her passion for learning is infectious and no one benefits from it more than the students who enter her classroom. She is a model teacher and an exemplary public servant. As her colleagues honor her this weekend, I join them in commending her for her commitment to excellence in education.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to join the Jewish community of North Jersey in honoring an extraordinary family that has made giving back a multi-generational legacy.

This Sunday, October 21st, the Jewish Home Foundation of North Jersey will honor the Lippman Family of New Jersey for their intergenerational support for programs and services aiding thousands of Jewish seniors. Bill and Doris Lippman instilled strong values of community, compassion, and service in their children, who in turn have passed those very values onto their children. As a result, three generations of Lippman lineage have spent countless hours supporting their synagogues, local charitable organizations, and senior care programs. Though the family mourns the passing of their tremendous matriarch Doris, they carry on her legacy with respect and love for her memory.

In Hebrew, the word commonly referred to as the equivalent of the English charity is tzedakah. But, as scholars often point out, tzedakah goes far beyond the simple concept of benevolence and generosity; it implies an act of justice and righteousness. The Lippman Family has taken this concept even further, making the love of giving back to one's community a gift that is passed down from generation to generation.

As the Jewish Home Foundation celebrates the opening of its newest assisted living facility in River Vale, New Jersey and continues its notable tradition of caring at the facility in Rockleigh, I join them in saluting the tremendous public service of the Lippman Family whose generosity and support has made the Foundation's work possible.

I thank the gentleman for yielding time.

I want to begin by just complimenting one, two, three people. First of all, compliment Dr. Gingrey for having this session here on the floor tonight to bring this very important subject once again to the well so that we can have this debate, have this dialogue to address an issue that the American public is rightfully concerned about.

Secondly, and I'm sure Dr. Gingrey will agree with this, we should always applaud the gentleman from Arizona, Jeff Flake, who has been, let us say, the ``voice in the wilderness,'' if you will, for a number of years when it came to earmarks coming to the floor, repeatedly, time and time again, before you and I were even in Congress, bringing this to the attention of the Members from both sides of the aisle, trying to shine that light of day. Unfortunately, the process was not such that the information was going out. He did it sporadically, at best, because he had to literally go through the bills page by page to try to gather the information. And when he did, he would gather those infamous examples that he would then bring to the floor, outrageous examples, and try to get a majority of Members of either side of the House to support him in deleting those egregious earmarks. Unfortunately, in nine out of 10, actually, it's probably more like 99 out of 100 examples, he didn't get the support that he deserved.

And the third group of individuals that I think we should applaud is the American public, because they have been rightfully outraged from the very start, as soon as the information began to come out of this House, as to where their tax dollars are going. The American public saw that their hard-earned tax dollars that they work every week and send in their taxes to the Federal Government, to Washington, D.C., are going to absurd things: the rain forest in the central United States or ``bridges to nowhere'' and that sort of thing. It is only, I think, because their outrage has gotten to such an extent that Congress, especially from the other side of the aisle, the Democrat majority, is finally beginning to listen. And you and I also agree that they have not quite listened well enough because they have not brought through the sunshine and the adequacy of information that you and I would like to see and that the American public would like to see.

So I just want to start off by saying, let's applaud those and give credit, yourself and Jeff Flake and the American public, where credit is due.

I know you're about to talk about your proposal, so maybe I will cut my comments to a couple here because I would like to maybe discuss your proposal in detail so we can flush it out. But let me just raise this one point, and I think this is probably a good segue for where you're going to go into this.

When it comes to earmarks, when you think about earmarks, it is right to say that they are really a very small part of the overall expenditure of the

Federal Government. Unfortunately, I think some Members and lobbyists also spend, unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of their energy and time attaining those earmarks. I don't think that's why they sent us to Washington, to spend so much of our time trying to slice out a small percentage of the budget to bring back home.

We know that some Members probably spend more of their time than others. We also know that some Members have been more successful than others in bringing home those earmark dollars in perhaps a way that some would argue is not the most equitable and fair way. And I think that's what your bill will get to, to provide a more equitable and fair distribution of dollars.

How is the money being spent right now? Well, I understand that the average House Republican receives approximately $8.7 million on average in earmarks. I think that is an average as far as described as being a mean, or median, as opposed to a mode, when it comes to averages because some of them are considerably less and some of them have considerably more. The average Democrat, though, remember the Republican is $8.7 million, the average Democrat receives $10.3 million in earmark funds. And you have to scratch your head and think, where is the fairness there? Just because someone lives in a Democrat district, he may be a Democrat himself or he may be a Republican, is he more worthy? Did he pay more taxes that he is going to get more dollars coming into his district? Conversely, just because someone lives in a Republican district and he may well be a Democrat, as well, why is he being shortchanged? He is receiving on average a couple million dollars less.

Now, I said a moment ago those are averages. Some are lower. I don't know where you or I stand on those numbers. But some are considerably higher than that. The Speaker received some $67 million in earmarks in the last go around, and then there, of course, is the very cream of the crop, the very top, appropriations cardinal, Congressman Murtha, topped the list at over $179 million in earmarks to his district. $166 million were in defense earmarks. Someone suggested that when you are collecting and spending $166 million, you are no longer just a congressman, you are now a CEO of a mid-sized company at that point. Of course, the interesting thing there is you are a CEO of a mid-sized company that has been bankrolled by the taxpayers of the country. That is something that we should focus the light of day on: Why are some people being treated better than others just by who they are, what positions they hold and what ranking positions they have in various committees.

I think your legislation will possibly try to address those issues. And if it does, and as I understand it does adequately, it will go a long way to providing the equity and fairness that the American public has been seeking and has been outraged that we have not been providing them in the past.

I would like to touch on some other points as far as really the scope of where earmarks go and some of the other things we may need to do, but I think this is a great segue into what your bill is able to address, and I yield back to gentleman at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, as I sit here, and here we are in October, the question that always first comes to my mind is 10 months into the 110th Congress under now the new Democratic control, and what has that 10 months wrought: the largest tax increase in U.S. history, the creation of a budget by them with slush funds where there's no accountability; and, finally, the lack of transparency that was promised to us. That last point I think is what Dr. Gingrey is talking about here this evening. I am glad to join him to illuminate that issue a little bit more, the lack of transparency.

The Democrats ran the election of last year saying that there was not enough transparency and openness in the prior Congresses and that if they were elected and put in a position of power, they would bring that transparency, the openness, the sunshine, if

you will, to this floor. That is what they campaigned on. That is even, as Dr. Gingrey says here with the charts, the quotes from Speaker Pelosi, what they promised even after they came into a position of power. Of course that has not occurred.

Mr. Speaker, some who may be listening to us here right now say why didn't the Republicans do this when they were in charge? The fact of the matter is, as you may recall, we did. We did pass legislation in the 109th Congress to bring transparency to reform the earmark process. Unfortunately, not all those reforms were carried over with us into the new 110th Congress, and, I should add, some of the changes that have occurred in the 110th Congress only came about because of people like Dr. Gingrey, Jeff Flake, and other people, Jeb Hensarling from the RNC, coming to the floor and compelling and forcing the additional reforms that we have seen so far in this 110th Congress.

Let me just make this point. In earmarks right now, and it only applies basically to appropriation bills, which of course you have already spoken as far as the discharge petition, but in the rules of the House right now you would think that the American public would have the information now at hand that they have been asking for all along: Who's sponsoring the earmark, what the earmark is for, and how much money that earmark is allocating. You would think that is the case because that is the reform we compel the other side of the aisle to implement.

Well, they passed the rule, but they are not implementing the rule. What they did was quite clever. You take a piece of legislation that can be literally this thick, as far as a bill is concerned, an appropriation bill, or even thicker than this as well, and that information is in here, who sponsored it, how much it's for, and what the project is, but it's not in one place. Instead what they did was put it in two places. So you go to one page where it has the sponsor's name and the project, then you go 100 pages later on and there will be the project and the amount.

Now you have to search through literally thousands of pages, thousands of lines, and to put the two together to find out that, well, Congressman Murtha, for example, had this particular project in his district. You have to spend literally hours and hours and days and days to put it together to get that number that we gave before, $166 million in Defense Appropriations.

I commend ``Congressional Quarterly'', because that magazine did spend the time to put together that data and has published the report, and it was an outside organization that actually did much of the spreadsheets on that. Finally, the American taxpayer has that information, no thanks to the other side of the aisle, because they put it together in a convoluted and basically in an orchestrated manner to make sure that the information they were required to reveal to the American public was presented in a way that you could not see it.

The proposal that you are presenting to us tonight is a good one. I believe it is a step in the right direction, and I think the gentleman from Georgia would agree that it is a step in the right direction, and that we can even eventually, if we can get this step done, we can go even further, as you illustrated, to get even more information and to rein this in even further.

I didn't mean to say it wasn't a good first step.

Just a point that comes to mind. One of the issues that we will be dealing with this week is SCHIP. There is a piece of legislation you wouldn't think would be prone to earmarks. If you listen to the other side, they would tell you, hey, there are no earmarks in there.

That is one of the peculiarities of the rule, the way the Democrats have written it as far as providing transparency. All you have to do is take your bill, that could be chockfull with all of your favorite pet earmarks from the cardinals and the chairmen of your committees and all your other friends, and the ones requested by lobbyists and what have you, and all the Democratic majority has to do is say, we hereby say there are no earmarks in here, and that is it. You and I can come to the floor and rail about it all we want and say, yes, there are. Look at page 72, line B. Here is an earmark.

That is exactly what happened with the SCHIP legislation. They said there are no earmarks here. Lo and behold, there are. There are literally billions of dollars in earmarks in that going to special projects and special hospitals across the country, and you and I would not know about it if we were just to trust them and take them at their word.

None of these things, as good as all these ideas are, are going to happen unless the majority party, the Democrat Party, Speaker Pelosi agrees they are actually the right thing to do and are willing to move the legislation.

Your bill that would move in the direction that the American public wants us to move, to rein in excessive spending, to rein in earmarks, to put a clamp or a lid on them, to move in the direction of moving them out entirely

or at least scaling them down, will not move unless the Speaker, Speaker Pelosi, says that is a good idea and she will post the bill.

The legislation that you spoke about at the top of hour regarding the discharge petition that the Republican leader has that would expand earmark information to not just appropriation bills but also to authorizing legislation, to clean up some of the areas that have given them the latitude to actually continue to hide this information from the American public. That piece of legislation will not move unless the Democrat Party and Speaker Pelosi finally hear from the American public and realize this is what the American public wants us to do and wants us to move that legislation.

It is still early in the evening. It is only a quarter of 9. I am sure Speaker Pelosi is in her office or somewhere in the Capitol as we speak. I would invite her to come to the floor right now and join us with either one of those pieces of legislation. Maybe you could recite the words right back to her that she said some time ago, and remind her of what she said when it comes to the issue of giving transparency and openness. I would invite her to come to the floor and join us in this debate this evening, to say she will move these, will move these things in the next days, weeks. Just before the winter holiday so when we leave here in the next several weeks or months, they, we can say in the first session of the 110th Congress we finally gave the American public what they were promised when the Democrat majority came into Congress. I will eagerly await her arrival here.

I thank the gentleman from Iowa for coming to the floor and speaking on SCHIP. I was on the floor earlier this evening, as you may know, with Dr. Gingrey. We were speaking about earmarks. After us, the other side of the aisle began their talk about SCHIP. I was hoping to interject when they were on the floor but that was not possible. So I'm glad you bring this issue up.

Let me touch on one point you are talking about. That is the cigarette tax. You made a generalized statement. Let me give you an actual number here. The SCHIP program, of course, is intended to benefit the low-income and the indigent children. The question is how is this being funded? You had correctly stated it is going to be funded by a cigarette tax. You generalized the statement that the cigarette tax generally falls disproportionately on the poor. And that actually is correct.

A study was done in 1990. It said that people who made under $10,000 per year paid almost twice as much in cigarette taxes as those who made $50,000 and above. So there is the irony. We are trying to provide a health care program for the poor. And on whose back is it going to be placed? It is going to be placed and paid for by those very same poor people who are paying a substantially higher cigarette tax.

The study goes on to say that there are other adverse impacts to raising the cigarette tax. One of them you wouldn't necessarily think of. But when you raise the taxes that high, much higher, a higher Federal cigarette tax, the study says, will lead to more violent crime. The foundation's chief economist has documented that higher cigarette taxes fuel black-market activity, including truck hijackings and other armed robberies. In 2003 he said, for example, 200 cases of cigarettes in a modest-sized transport truck would have a retail value in New York City of around $1 million and

would be a tempting market for thieves. So these are the side issues you don't hear about when you hear the bumper sticker rhetoric from the other side.

The other thing that you don't hear from, and I will yield back at any moment if the gentleman has a point to make here I see with his signs or charts. Another interesting point is the need for the overall program. I don't want to get bogged down in numbers and you are better facilitated with the charts there. But let's take a look at where we have been over the last 20 years when we talk about children in need. In 1987, now look at 1997 and 2002. In 1987, child poverty rate in this country was 18.7 percent. The eligible children who were eligible for programs, at that time, 20.3 percent. So just about the same numbers who were eligible for some sort of a government program such as Medicaid were at the same approximate number who were in the child poverty rate. In 1996, you go ahead about 10 years, those numbers now are about 20 percent in the poverty level, 28 percent eligibility, that means we have now reached a point where more kids were eligible for government assistance than were actually classified as childhood poverty. Flash ahead now to 2002, the rate now of overall childhood poverty rate, 16.7 percent, eligibility though for government assistance and Medicaid and the like, government health insurance, 47.1 percent. We have gotten to the point where almost half of the kids in this country are now entitled to welfare payments.

You had on your other chart when I came in here a neat little acronym for what SCHIP was. We have to call it what it really is. H.R. 976, SCHIP expansion, Socialized Clinton-style Hillary-care for Illegals and Their Parents, SCHIP. Well, that's true. And another way of calling it is welfare. We have gotten to the point where almost half the kids in this country are now eligible for Hillary-care, welfare, whereas the poverty rate for these children has actually decreased during that period of time to around 16.7 percent.

We have gone in the right direction in this country as far as reducing the number of all kids who are in poverty, but we have vastly exceeded what the actual need is.

That is absolutely consistent with my recollection.

Another aspect of it was at the time that the master plan as you described it at that time was to be more, was to be broader than what eventually transpired, and that was to include the block grant type arrangement for Medicaid, as well. Had we done that, we would not be in this budgetary crisis that we find right now where Medicaid has continued to have gone up, and the States actually would have been in a better situation than they are right now. Just as with Medicare, just as with the welfare reform movement, when the States were issued a block grant and given the significant flexibility that they had with the set dollar amount, the States were able to use the ingenuity of their States to actually decrease the enrollment of their welfare recipients and at the same time actually since the dollar limit remained the same, the per capita number per recipient actually went up. So those individuals who had the most need, if you will, had the most difficulty climbing out of their condition and their plight that they were in, you had a larger dollar value that you are able to apply to their particular condition.

Had we done the same thing as this Republican Congress at the time intended to, but we were stopped, as you recall; President Clinton put up the roadblock to it. We could have done the exact same thing with Medicaid, done it in a flexible block grant arrangement to the 50 States. The Governors of those States would have no strings attached to it whatsoever. They could have decided who and how they were going to get into it. You could have had an SCHIP-type arrangement where you allowed them to go into privatized health insurance programs. The benefit there would of course be, just as a side issue, that you would not be squeezing out the private sector marketplace. You would be opening up and creating greater competition and you would not be having this dilemma that we are facing right now. That was all the possibilities we had back in 1996. We lost it at that time because of President Clinton and what he was trying to do.

Well, New Jersey, as you may know, has not gone up to the 400. New York is, I think, the only State that as of current law, not the bill just approved by the House, under current law, New York has attempted to go up to 400 percent. New Jersey is at 350 percent, which puts us at around, for a family of four, $72,000. Now the median income is around $61,000 or $62,000 for the State of New Jersey, which means you're at the average.

Mr. Speaker, so what are we saying here? We are saying that even those who are above average in income are now going to eligible for socialized welfare payments. Once a month they will get a welfare payment. It won't be in the form of a check, like a normal welfare payment coming to you to cash. Instead, it will be delivered directly to the insurance company, or other method.

What that means is this. For every ten people that you wish to enroll under the plan under the Pelosi method, approximately six those people will already have insurance. So in that last chart you would say up in the $103,000 range. Every ten new children that you bring into the program, these six over here already had insurance. You're only adding these four children over here. But you're doing it at a tremendous cost. You're using taxpayers' dollars now to pay for those children who maybe their parents are making $103,000.

Wouldn't it be so much better if those tax dollars were going to try to find a way to make sure that these four kids had all the, not only insurance, but also the actual health care, which is a question that I think you were bringing up before, because at the end of the day that is really what we should be focused on, making sure those kids have health care. Because it does those four kid absolutely no good just to make sure that they have insurance if they can't find a doctor to treat them.

How many people do you know of, senior citizens who have Medicare and go out and try to find a doctor to accept their Medicare payments, and they find out there's no Medicare doctors receiving Medicare recipients. How many people do you know that are on Medicaid right now, which is an insurance policy, and try to go out and find a doctor who says they are still taking Medicaid patients, and they are not taking them.

Mr. Speaker, we have done nothing if we simply have insured four new children under this SCHIP program if it's set up in such a manner that there is nothing else to facilitate more doctors to be out there to actually get care. We have done nothing to improve the health care coverage, all we've done is a sound bite for the Democrats, saying we improved insurance coverage.

Just one point on this issue of freedom and the opportunities that come from it and therefore the incentives that also lead to it.

We spoke just a moment ago with regard to the 1996 welfare reform package. Back when that was done, one thing that did impact the Medicaid program was a change to who was entitled to benefits. So in the 1996 Medicaid reform, they eliminated Medicaid benefits for noncitizen immigrants. Noncitizen immigrants. That means someone in the country legally, not illegal immigrants, but people in this country legally, so they are non-citizens and immigrants, they were eliminated from getting Medicaid coverage.

Now, the critics of the proposal you may recall at that time said wait, wait, wait. If we are going to take this class of people who are otherwise eligible economically income-wise out of the pool that are eligible for Medicaid, we know what is going to happen. Their health condition is going to deteriorate, and, as importantly, their coverage level is going to go down.

But you know what? For just the point you were saying, the increase in freedom, that did not occur. There was now a new incentive. Since they were not eligible to get Medicaid anymore, there was an incentive to do just what you say, to go out work, either get a job that had health insurance provided for it, or, if not, get a job that paid enough that they were able to buy insurance or do something to the health insurance.

So the result of that group being excluded from Medicaid coverage at that time, from 1996 forward, was an increase in insurance coverage for that class of individuals.

That is what we learned from expanding freedom, expanding opportunity, providing an incentive, as opposed to what is in the socialized Clinton-style health care for illegals and their parents SCHIP plan, is a disincentive and

a phasing out and pushing out for the opportunities for individuals.

Mr. Speaker, I should point out that the dependency and the loss of freedom is not only for the individual, it is for the State, too. What CHIP does is create an incentive for States to add more people onto the program since there is a 3 to 1 ratio as far as the dollars. The State spends $1, and they get basically a 3 to 1 ratio in dollars from the Federal Government.

That means that the State is no longer incentivized to do other creative things to actually improve the health of the kids in the State, just so they can turn around and say we are getting Federal dollars to put the kids on health insurance. So not only do we disincentivize or take away incentives from individuals, we take away incentives from the States to do the right things for themselves. We see it in New Jersey. I am sure you see it in your State.

Madam Speaker, last week the State of New Jersey lost one of its great political analysts, Dr. David Rebovich. On Friday, October 12, 2007, Dr. Rebovich died from a heart attack while teaching a class. He was 58 years old.

Rebovich was an associate professor and managing director of the Rider Institute for New Jersey Politics. He received a bachelor's degree in political science from Johns Hopkins University, and a master's and doctorate degree from Rutgers University.

As one of Dr. Rebovich's former students, I can honestly say that he was a genuine and fair professor. He continually put his students before himself and was an admired political asset to the State of New Jersey. He will be missed.

My prayers and best wishes go out to the Rebovich family.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend Michael J. Madonna for his extraordinary service to the people of the State of New Jersey, and particularly to its law enforcement community.

Last month, Mike retired as President of the New Jersey State Policemen's Benevolent Association. He's been active with the PBA since 1968, when be became the State Delegate of

the Oakland PBA. He later went on to serve on the State PBA Executive Board. In 1996, he began a nearly 11-year tenure as President of the State PBA. Mike has dedicated his life to keeping the people of New Jersey safe, putting his life on the line and sacrificing so much on our behalf.

The PBA is the largest union of law enforcement officers in New Jersey, with more than 350 Locals representing more than 30,000 municipal, county, state, and Federal officers. These officers have benefited greatly from the hard work and dedication that Mike has given the PBA these last forty years.

Tonight, the members of the PBA and community leaders from all across New Jersey will be honoring Mike for his career of service. I join them in thanking Michael J. Madonna for demonstrating such tremendous commitment to the safety and well-being of New Jerseyans statewide. The Garden State is a better place because of the service of people like him.