Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, America's newspapers are widely read, except on Saturdays. So it is not much of a surprise that the Bush administration waited until late on a Friday afternoon leading into Labor Day weekend to announce that they were raising Medicare premiums by a record 17.4 percent. That is the sort of news, however, you just cannot suppress, so the news that Saturday was all about the Bush administration's plans to impose the biggest premium increase in Medicare's 38-year history. But the White House public relations office is nothing, if not tenacious. So faced with the bad news and faced with the blame for that increase that would naturally affix to the Bush administration, they did what they always do, they tried to shift the blame. Even though the Republicans have controlled the House and the Senate and the White House for the last 3\1/2\ years, it is actually the Democrats, they said, who are responsible for the premium increase. But no one bought it then and no one buys it now. The facts are the facts and no amount of spin, no amount of revisionist history, can change the facts.

Before the Bush Medicare bill became law, the nonpartisan Medicare trustees estimated the monthly Medicare premium increase for 2005 would be $2. After the Bush Medicare bill became law, the premium increase instead jumped $11.60. That is the 17.4 percent record increase. The facts are that the premium increase after the Bush Medicare law, which was written by the drug and insurance companies, is five times larger than the premium increase estimated before Congress passed the Medicare law.

So where is all that money going? Where are the billions of dollars out of seniors' pockets, that huge increase, where are those dollars going? The Bush administration is quick to remind us that some of it goes to new preventive health care benefits. That is true. But what they are less eager to say is that a whole lot of it is going directly from seniors' pockets into the pockets of the biggest HMO insurance companies in the country.

The Bush Medicare law creates a $23.5 billion slush fund that HMOs can use to lure seniors out of Medicare and out of Medicare's reliable, equitable core program into the HMO private insurance. This windfall is in addition, this insurance company payoff, to the payments HMOs receive in exchange for covering enrollees. It is a bonus largely paid for because of major political contributions the insurance and the drug industries have made to the Bush administration. Seniors who already spend more than 20 percent of their incomes on out-of-pocket health care costs are receiving a giant increase in their Medicare premiums, and HMOs are receiving a giant boost to their bottom line. HMO profits already, before the Bush administration did this, jumped 50 percent last year. They hardly need more money from America's overstretched seniors.

Social Security benefits for seniors will increase by 2 percent next year. So the Social Security increase and the checks that seniors get will go up 2 percent. The Medicare premiums will go up 17 percent. I will say it again. The Bush administration is draining billions from the Medicare trust fund into the pockets of the big insurance companies. At the same time, the Bush administration is emptying the pockets of America's seniors, again to the tune of billions of dollars.

It is no secret that President Bush and his privatization of Medicare plans wants to take the responsibility for retiree health care away from Medicare and give it to HMOs. But to actually make seniors pay more so the President can pave over their Medicare program, every senior should be enraged, every American taxpayer should be outraged and none of us should put up with it.

The bottom line is the Medicare legislation which the President pushed through this Congress and signed was written by the drug industry and the insurance industry. Medicare premiums went up 17 percent announced by the administration earlier this month and the drug companies and the insurance companies have given President Bush and the Republican leadership tens of millions of dollars in political contributions this year. In the end, it is really as simple as that.

Mr. Speaker, President Bush was again in Ohio in the last few days, a key battleground State, again trying to justify a failed economic policy, a policy where we have lost one out of six manufacturing jobs in our State, a policy where we have lost 150 jobs every single day of the Bush administration, yet the President's answer continues to be the same old tired bromides, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Taxpayers who make $1 million a year, they get a $123,000 tax cut, hoping it trickles down to create new jobs. That has not worked.

The other President Bush answer to bad economic times is more trade agreements that ship jobs overseas. In fact, this body is coming back in a lame duck session in November, probably to try to pass a Central American Free Trade Agreement to expand the failed policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mr. Speaker, we need a new economic direction in my State of Ohio where we have lost more than 200,000 jobs. We need a new economic direction in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I want to follow on the heels of the comments of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) about the Bush administration not telling the truth about Iraq and how much the country has paid for that and discuss how the President of the United States did not tell the truth about the Medicare bill and how, unfortunately, because of that, senior citizens of this country will be inflicted with the largest Medicare premium increase, 17.4 percent, that seniors have ever seen in the 38 years of Medicare's history.

On this chart we can look at what is entitled ``Medicare Bill's Dirty Laundry.'' I want to talk for a moment how we got where we got, how this bill came to become law and led to that 17.4 percent premium increase that Medicare beneficiaries will be forced to pay.

First of all, the Medicare bill was written by the drug industry and the insurance industry, both industries having given the President of the United States tens of millions of dollars, and to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and Republican leadership, tens of millions of dollars for their political campaigns. So the legislation was written by the drug and insurance companies as a payback by the Republicans for the help that they had gotten from these industries.

Now, when the bill came to the floor of the House of Representatives, and everybody in this body remembers that night, the debate started at midnight, the votes started at 3 o'clock in the morning. The vote went for 2 hours 55 minutes as the Republican leadership attempted to bribe, as told the next day by one Republican Member, strong arm, twisted arms, waked up the President, got him on the phone with Members of Congress, campaign contributions flowed liberally to Republican Members of Congress, and that vote, after 2 hours 55 minutes, the longest vote in Congressional history, two Members changed their vote at 5:55 in the morning and that Medicare bill barely passed.

Then the administration used tens of millions of dollars, of taxpayers' dollars, to try to convince the public that this was a good bill. At the same time we found out that this bill that was to cost $400 million, we were told would actually cost about $530 billion, from $400 billion to $530 billion. The President knew it, the head Medicare knew it, and they simply did not tell the people and the Congress of the United States. That is why we ended up with a 17 percent increase.

Then this was capped off by the fact that the President of the United States did not release this information about the 17 percent increase until they could almost do it in the dead of night. They chose a Friday afternoon right before the Labor Day weekend to announce to the public that, yes, this increase was going to be 17 percent.

Now, before the Bush Medicare bill became law, the nonpartisan Medicare trustees said the premium increase for 2005 for Medicare beneficiaries would be $2. Instead, once the Bush Medicare bill became law, the premium increase jumped to $11.60. The premium increase after the Bush Medicare law was more than five times larger than the previous premium increase was estimated to be.

So where does that money go? Where do the billions of dollars that come out of seniors' pockets on the one hand go? It comes out of seniors' pockets. By and large, it goes into the insurance company HMO pockets.

Insurance company HMOs had a 50 percent increase in profits last year. That is before the Medicare bill became law. In fact, that 17 percent largest increase in Medicare history premium goes directly into a $23.5 billion slush fund for the insurance industry. The insurance industry, which enjoyed huge profit increases the year before, now is going to get a $23.5 billion bonus, thanks to the increase in premiums for seniors.

So, Mr. Speaker, it makes a perfect circle. The Medicare bill is written by the drug companies and insurance companies; the bill passes Congress in large part because of huge contributions from the drug and insurance companies to the Republican leadership and to President Bush and to Republican rank and file members; the bill then means huge subsidies for the insurance companies, $23.5 billion, and even bigger profits for the drug companies; and then, when all this is over, the premium goes up not $2, but $11, 17 percent, the largest premium increase in Medicare history.

Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of corruption that I hoped we would never see in this body, where campaign contributions result in a bill written for the drug and insurance industries

under the guise of improving Medicare, although seniors never really believed that. The bill passes in the dead of night, seniors' Medicare premiums go up 17 percent, the largest increase in history, and Republicans cash in with political contributions.

Mr. Speaker, that is shameful.

Mr. Speaker, is pointing out that the President receives tens of millions of dollars from the drug and insurance companies, is that considered a criticism? Is that appropriate to say?

Mr. Speaker, I was only talking about his actions. It is nothing personal. I just thought that tens of millions of dollars in contributions which lead to legislation which means bigger profits for the insurance and drug companies was shameful. I did not cast aspersions on the President himself.

I guess, Mr. Speaker, that I do not know if the President told the truth, but people who report to the President that should have been informing the President certainly did not tell the truth, because they said the bill would cost $400 billion. It cost $534 billion, and that led to the biggest Medicare premium increase in history.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

When it comes to jobs, President Bush has a credibility problem, not just the White House applauding the offshore outsourcing of American jobs as a ``good thing'' then trying to explain that a good thing does not really mean a good thing; not just his Labor Department issuing guidelines to help companies avoid paying overtime to middle-class and low-income workers then insisting that they did not really mean for employers to actually use that guidance to avoid paying overtime; not just the fact that George Bush promised 6 million jobs with his tax cuts and has fallen 7 million short of that goal; not just that President Bush, in a 63-minute speech at the Republican Convention, mentioned the word ``jobs'' one time.

The particular credibility problem I am talking about can be summed up in one word: McManufacturing.

In the President's Economic Report, this is put out every year, signed by the President of the United States, by George Bush, this report referred to, in trying to answer the problem of lost manufacturing jobs in our country, and my State alone has lost 170,000, my State of Ohio alone has lost 170,000 manufacturing jobs, 150 jobs every single day since George Bush was sworn in 3\1/2\ years ago. So to deflect that, they have talked about changing the definition of manufacturing, and here is what they said. This is on page 73 of the President's economic report: ``The definition of a manufactured product is not straightforward. When a fast food restaurant sells a hamburger, is it providing a service, or is it combining inputs to manufacture products?''

So here is what we got, according to the Bush administration, who knows they have a problem with the loss of manufacturing jobs, we got the kid in the restaurant at McDonald's or Burger King, whatever. He is setting up an assembly line. He unwraps the package, and then he puts the bun out. And then they chemically treat the beef. We call it cooking, but in George Bush administration legalese, I guess they call it chemically treat the beef. They put that on the bun. And then they take the lettuce, and they put that on and slice the tomato, part of the manufacturing process, and put that on. Then they chemically treat the cheese. We would call it melting the cheese. And then they get a foreign component. They bring french fries in and make some kind of happy meal of some sort.

I am not making this up. This is in this economic report.

My point is, Mr. Chairman, that we know what manufacturing is. We know what manufacturing is not, and these are the kinds of games the Bush administration plays to try to deflect attention away from what they have done with American manufacturing.

In my State of Ohio, we have lost one out of every six, one out of every six manufacturing jobs since George Bush took office. And his answer every time is more tax cuts for the richest people. If you are making $1 million, you get a $123,000 tax cut. That is not creating jobs in Ohio and across the Midwest in this country.

His other response is more trade agreements that continue to ship jobs overseas. It is clear, Mr. Chairman, we need a different direction. That different direction is to extend unemployment benefits to the 60,000 or 70,000 Ohioans who are looking for jobs but have lost their benefits; they have expired. This Congress will not extend unemployment benefits.

We also need to quit giving incentives to companies that send their jobs overseas. We continue to give them tax breaks instead of passing the bipartisan Crane-Rangel bill, which will give those companies that manufacture domestically, give them incentives. We need to stop those tax breaks, as I said, that ship jobs overseas and stop those tax breaks for those companies, in giving those companies contracts with the Government, like Halliburton and other companies, that continue to violate so much of what we stand for in our country.

Then the President wants to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement which will, again, be more of the same. We need to stop these kinds of trade agreements. We need to pass unemployment compensation. We need to pass bipartisan legislation to give incentives to those companies who manufacture in America.

This amendment, while modest in its goals, I believe at least is honest in its goals and honest in deciding what really is manufacturing, what is not manufacturing. It stops the games. This Congress needs to stay in session and pass legislation that really will create jobs.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time and ask support of the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, President Bush said about a year ago he would veto any Medicare bill that cost taxpayers more than $400 billion. The President then signed a bill that cost $551 billion. His Medicare Administrator, who had lied to Congress, who had not shared any of this information as they continued to say it was $400 billion to people on both sides of the aisle, his Medicare Administrator knew the true bill's cost long before the President signed it, and you have got to think that the President knew what the bill cost since the Medicare Administrator works for the President, that the President knew what the bill cost before he picked up his pen and signed that legislation late last year.

Seniors would have been outraged had they known that this bloated bill that the President signed would have increased their Medicare premiums 17 percent. Image that, the Medicare premiums that seniors have paid, they have fluctuated a little over the years, but imagine a 17 percent increase, the largest increase in Medicare premiums in Medicare history. Thirty-eight years of Medicare, never an increase like this. But seniors would obviously have been outraged to know that Republicans in Congress and the Administrator not only made this happen by passing that bill, but that the President and the administration and the Republican leadership knew that this increase was going to happen because of this bill.

But, of course, this increase happened. Of course, George Bush had to push forward and announce a 17 percent increase. Why? Because of the increased subsidies in the Medicare bill for the insurance industry, for the HMOs. The health maintenance organizations had a 50 percent profit increase last year, yet we are subsidizing them additionally under this bill to the tune of billions of dollars. So, of course, we have to take money out of seniors' pockets in increased Medicare premiums and then turn that money over to Medicare HMOs.

Here is how it works. In this Medicare bill that Congress passed last year, a year ago, starting in March 2004, Medicare HMOs got from taxpayers $229 million. In April they got $229 million. Still no Medicare drug benefit, which does not go into effect until 2006, but the HMOs were getting subsidized by the Federal Government.

In June, $229 million. In July $229 million from seniors and taxpayers to the Medicare HMOs, to the health maintenance organizations, yet still no Medicare drug benefit. July $229 million. August $229 million. This month, $229 million more, and still no prescription drug benefit for seniors. September, October, November, December and all of next year Medicare HMOs, private insurance companies, will continue to get a subsidy from the Federal Government of $229 million extra that they were not getting before this Medicare bill took effect.

Of course, the President had to increase premiums 17 percent to pay these insurance companies subsidies. Why would the President raise Medicare premiums to give money to insurance companies? Well, it might be the fact that insurance companies have given tens of millions of dollars to the President's reelection, tens of millions of dollars to my friends on the other side of the aisle. It might have something to do, too, with the fact that this Medicare bill was written by the drug companies, written by the insurance companies.

Drug company profits will go up $180 billion over the next 10 years because of this prescription drug bill. Insurance companies subsidies, subsidies directly from seniors through higher premiums and taxpayers will go up literally tens of billions of dollars to those insurance companies, to those HMOs.

The whole Medicare bill, middle of the night debate, vote at 6 o'clock in the morning after the rolls were kept open for 3 hours. One Republican Member accused his own leadership of trying to bribe him on the House floor; arm twisting in the middle of the night; and then the secrecy of trying to foist this 17 percent Medicare increase by announcing it sort of under the cover of darkness, late in the afternoon, right before Labor Day weekend; the secrecy of this whole administration, and ultimately the payoff that this Medicare bill has done, the payoff to the drug and insurance industries because of political contributions.

Remember, a 17 percent increase; a record in the history of Medicare; never an increase this big; 17 percent, the largest premium increase in Medicare history in order to subsidize the insurance companies, in order to give even bigger profits to this country's drug companies.

Mr. Speaker, it is shameful.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the time of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio?

Mr. Speaker, Republican leadership in the Senate confirmed last week they have no intention of acting on prescription drug importation legislation. Senate leader Frist said there just is not time to take it up.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, it has been 400 days since a bipartisan majority in the House passed legislation giving Americans access to safe, affordable medicine from Canada and other allied nations, 400 days. Since then, the Senate has passed legislation commending a sculptor, a painter, its own staff, the nation of Bulgaria, and Smokey the Bear. The Senate has recognized the importance of motorsports. The Senate, as has the House, has spent many days renaming post offices and Federal buildings from sea to shining sea.

There was time for all of those things, but for an issue as important to the American people as relief from the exploding price of prescription drugs, the other body simply could not find the time.

This importation issue is just one example of the three Ds of the Bush administration's health policy playbook: denial, disinformation, and dodging responsibility.

Here is one example: the Bush administration suppressed the new true cost of the Medicare law. The bill was originally tagged at $400 billion. The President told us that. The President said he would not sign it if it cost more than that. The government's own Medicare actuary and the President surely

knew, the President's staff knew, that the bill actually cost $530 billion.

So what did they do? They suppressed it. In a nutshell, the President's gag order worked, the bill passed, and the President signed it. And do my colleagues know what we got? Seniors got a 17 percent increase in their premiums, the largest increase ever inflicted on America's senior population, simply because the President of the United States did not tell the truth when he signed that bill and when he lobbied Congress for that bill.

Importation is another example of the Bush disinformation strategy. The drug industry has no better friend than President Bush. Of course they do not. The drug industry has given President Bush $30 million for his reelection, has given millions of dollars to my friends on the other side of the aisle. Of course President Bush will do the drug industry's bidding. That is why we ended up with a 17 percent increase, the largest premium increase ever inflicted on America's seniors.

Dodging responsibility is the third play in the Bush administration's health policy playbook. The best example is a 17 percent increase. The President announced the 17 percent increase on Friday afternoon before Labor Day. The press had gone home, people had turned their TV sets off if they were watching any of these announcements, and the President thought nobody would notice. Well, people certainly noticed. But the President then said, because people did notice, he said, it is not really my fault. I was the hapless victim, he said, of a formula written into the law.

It happened to be the law that he pushed through Congress and that he signed, the Medicare law. That is like stomping on the gas pedal and blaming the engine for getting a speeding ticket.

President Bush championed the Medicare bill. He twisted arms. We remember in this Chamber, my friends on the other side of the aisle remember this, we had a 3-hour vote starting at 3 in the morning, and it took until 6 in the morning. One Member was bribed on the House floor. Member after Member after Member had his arm twisted, her arm twisted, yet the President says it is not my fault that we had this 17 percent premium increase.

The fact is, the President is responsible for that 17 percent premium increase, and the President needed to get that increase so that the insurance companies and the drug companies could get their money out of the bill.

So basically what happened is the money is taken out of seniors' pockets; that is why we have this record 17 percent premium increase for every one of America's seniors. The money is taken out of the pockets of seniors; and then that money is taken together, billions of dollars, and put into the coffers of the drug companies and the insurance companies, direct subsidies for the drug companies, increased profits to the insurance companies, and then it comes full circle, and those companies then put millions of dollars in President Bush's campaign, in Majority Leader Delay's campaign, in the campaigns of Republican leadership in the House, in the other body, and for the President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, it is scandalous that seniors are inflicted with a 17 percent, a record increase in premiums so that George Bush could have his campaign funded by the drug companies and funded by the insurance companies. It is wrong. They should be ashamed.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 441, 442, and 443, I was in the Cleveland airport awaiting a flight which was delayed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on 441, ``yes'' on 442, and ``yes'' on 443.

Mr. Speaker, the President spent some time recently taking, and I concede this, well-deserved credit for last year's Medicare bill, for foisting last year's 678-page, $534 billion Medicare law on seniors and the rest of the American public. The fact that he is proud of this law, a law that hands HMOs $12 billion in bonus payments, HMO insurance companies get $12 billion in bonus payments while raising seniors' premiums by 17 percent, a record amount, raises a larger issue: How have seniors fared under the last 3\1/2\ years of the Bush administration? It is not a difficult question to answer. The facts speak for themselves.

We remember several months ago the President actively lobbied for the Medicare overhaul that would treat seniors without drug coverage like second-class citizens, forcing them out of traditional Medicare and into private insurance company HMOs.

Members will remember that vote. It took place in the middle of the night. It was a 3-hour vote, the longest in congressional history. There was more campaign payoff money on that vote from insurance companies and drug companies to Republican Members of the Congress. We all remember that. The President put his weight behind that new Medicare law that lines the pockets of HMOs to the tune of $12 billion, that lines the pockets of drug companies to the tune of $182 billion, and explicitly blocks seniors from access to competitively priced prescription drugs. The insurance companies, as I said, got a payment of $12 billion. The drug companies' profits went up $182 billion and Republican leadership and the President did very well in this campaign year with contributions from the drug companies and the insurance companies. They could certainly afford it after legislation that will create and bring to them those huge profits.

After that, the President spends millions of dollars of our money, of taxpayer money, of dollars that could have gone to a prescription drug plan, could have gone to seniors to reduce the cost of seniors' drugs, but the President spends millions of dollars of our money on ads touting the new Medicare bill with the slogan ``same Medicare, better benefits,'' even though the President and his advisers knew his handiwork would be directly responsible for the largest premium increase in Medicare history, 17 percent, the largest premium increase in Medicare's 38-year history, not to mention deductibles that will for the first time that seniors have to pay increase year after year after year.

Do not believe anyone that tells you the Bush administration is not responsible, in spite of the ads the President is running, is not responsible for the 17 percent premium increase just because he says premiums are calculated by a formula. Yes, they are calculated by a formula written in the bill that the drug and insurance companies wrote that the President pushed through. That is like pouring gasoline on a campfire, then blaming someone else when the forest burns down.

The President's Medicare law, inflated by a $12 billion HMO slush fund and an outright prohibition on bulk rate prices, bringing the price down, swelled the overall cost of Medicare which in turn increased the premium that seniors pay. America's seniors know it. You and I know it. Everyone in this Chamber knows that is why premiums went up, because of the deal the President made with the drug companies and the insurance companies.

In his budget proposal this year, the President recommends cutting $60 billion from the Medicaid program, $60 billion, even though Medicaid covers 70 percent of the nursing home care provided in this country. Without Medicaid, two-thirds of America's seniors in nursing homes would have to find some other source of care. For many of those seniors, there is no other source of care. For others, families have to patch together the care any way they can, even if it means they become impoverished.

Medicaid provides health care, nursing home care and home health care to nearly 5 million seniors living below the poverty line, 149,000 people in my State of Ohio alone. The recession and massive job losses have left States struggling to finance their full financial obligations to Medicaid. If the Federal Government does not do its part, the Medicaid program is in jeopardy. The Bush administration is simply not doing its part because of its budget cuts to Medicaid and because of the tax cuts which have gone overwhelmingly to the 1 percent wealthiest Americans.

The President's hand-picked Social Security Commission came up with a privatized plan to drain $1.8 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund over the next 5 years. Privatizing Social Security, privatizing Medicare, cutting Medicaid is no benefit to seniors. It is the wrong direction for our country.

Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin, for yielding me this time.

For the first time, under the San Manuel decision, workers at Indian casinos, Indians and non-Indians alike, enjoy the full protection of the NLRA's right to organize and right to engage in collective bargaining. The right to organize and collectively bargain, those rights are internationally recognized ILO human rights.

Many tribes have established tribal labor ordinances pursuant to State gaming compacts. Basic labor rights, including the right to free association, the right to collective bargaining, and labor rights that are reflected in both the NLRA and many tribal labor ordinances, are the rights that we insist on in international trading with our international trading partners, including underdeveloped nations.

We insist that labor rights be enforced in international trade agreements. We include provisions in trade agreements to protect those rights. We debate those rights on the House floor. We insist upon that, yet this amendment denies those rights to workers in the United States.

This amendment leaves workers with no enforceable right to organize or to engage in collective bargaining. So we are saying to other countries, do it there, but in our own country we are not preserving and protecting those labor rights, the rights to organize and the rights to bargain collectively.

Rather than pass this amendment, Mr. Chairman, we should be working with both tribal and labor representatives to discuss solutions to the potential conflict between workers' rights and tribal sovereignty. The Hayworth amendment pits workers' rights against tribal rights. Ultimately, it damages both.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

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

I rise in support of the Stark amendment. This whole Tom Scully issue is a sorry page in a sordid chapter in congressional history. Think about this whole process of the Medicare bill passing this Congress if this new law that seniors, most seniors I know, think was foisted on them, this bill written by the drug industry and the insurance industry.

The vote to pass Medicare was taken in the middle of the night. The debate started at midnight. The vote was taken at 3 o'clock. The roll call, unprecedented in congressional history, was kept open for 2 hours and 55 minutes until Republican leadership could twist arms all over this House floor back in the cloakroom; waking up the President in the middle of the night; trying to change Republican votes; trying to literally bribe at least one Republican Member of Congress, who talked about it on radio the next day; the millions of dollars in campaign contributions that were used to pass this Medicare bill. Tens of millions of dollars went to President Bush's reelection from the drug industry and the insurance. Tens of millions of dollars went into Republican leadership campaign coffers from the drug industry and insurance industry. And then to top off this sordid chapter in congressional history, Mr. Scully, the gentleman, a good public servant, but the gentleman that was negotiating on behalf of seniors, on behalf of taxpayers, was negotiating this bill, and he was lining himself up for a job soon after the bill was signed by President Bush, a job representing and lobbying for drug companies and for insurance companies. What is wrong with this?

This amendment needs to be passed to at least undo part of this very sordid chapter in congressional history.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, last week, the Bush administration on Friday afternoon when no one was paying attention, right after he made a speech at the convention assuring seniors that Medicare would be strong and prosper, and right as Labor Day weekend began and no one was paying attention, the President announced a dramatic increase, a historically high increase in Medicare part B premiums paid by seniors and the disabled, a 17 percent increase, the single biggest premium hike in Medicare history.

Most seniors rely on the Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, COLAs, to offset Medicare premium increases. Though the administration has not published it yet, the Social Security COLA will be about 3 percent, making the Medicare increase almost six times what the COLA increase for Social Security will be.

Usually they are announced at the same time. This year, because of the election, presumably, the President thought he could sort of quietly do this right before Labor Day. He did not really want to announce them at the same time, presumably because the premium increase for Medicare was five to six times what the COLA increase would be.

Why are those premiums rising so dramatically? The Bush administration spokesman says it is because seniors are going to receive enhanced benefits. He did not acknowledge that the premium increase will help cover enhanced benefits for HMOs, $12 billion worth.

So we have a $130 increase for seniors' premiums, and we have $12 billion more going into HMO pockets. HMO profits already are soaring; they increased 50 percent last year. Yet the Bush administration is tapping the Medicare trust fund and making seniors pay more out of pocket to finance a $12 billion HMO slush fund. That is just the beginning. The total HMO payment changes in last year's law will cost taxpayers $46 billion.

So even as it is emptying the Medicare trust fund, the Bush administration has the audacity to ask the American seniors to pay more. The change would require each of 40 million senior and disabled Americans to pay $139 more next year for Medicare coverage. My amendment would stop the premium increase.

Unfortunately, my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), is using his discretion to object to the amendment on procedural grounds. I urge my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), to reconsider because we need to look at this bigger picture: how much money are we paying the insurance companies; how much are we telling seniors they have to reach into their pockets.

There is no justification for pouring billions into the pockets of already very profitable HMOs and asking seniors on fixed incomes to absorb a 17 percent increase just to appease a President bent on privatizing Medicare.

Asking seniors to finance the President's privatization agenda is not just unjustifiable; it is, frankly, shameful. If this amendment does not pass, seniors will see their premiums rise sharply while HMOs take billions more in so-called bonus payments.

The chairman can and should permit a vote on this amendment so we can begin to restore the trust of seniors and the fiscal integrity of Medicare.

Mr. Chairman, I have one additional speaker. Is it possible that he can speak before that?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to speak respecting the opinion and statement of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) on the point of order.

Mr. Chairman, this is a question of, by and large, moving money from the Medicare trust fund, the money that Congress has decided should go to insurance companies, and, as a result, costing Medicare beneficiaries an additional payment out of their pockets.

It is basically a zero-sum game. Are we in this body going to say insurance companies are going to get the money, or are we going to say we are going to charge beneficiaries for that money? I would appeal based on that.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 440, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, I support the legislation.

I do not oppose. I support.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), for their dedication to this bill. I also want to commend Cheryl Jaeger and John Ford of the staff of the Committee on Energy and Commerce for their good work.

Youth suicide is an issue that strikes a deeply personal chord for all too many Americans. An intern in my office lost five classmates to suicide, the most in her school's history. This legislation recognizes that the causes of youth suicide are complex and individual; but every one of these tragedies is, in fact, preventable. It reflects the fact that preventing suicide requires an approach that is both comprehensive in its scope and targeted toward the populations most at risk.

We will continue to work with the Department of Health and Human Services and mental health advocates to address one outstanding issue concerning parental consent; however, it makes sense to move forward and ensure that the good ideas in this bill are implemented as soon as possible.

This legislation honors the courage of the families both within this Congress and across the country who have endured the tragedy of youth suicide and who seek to stop this crisis in its tracks. I am pleased to support this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon), the sponsor of the bill, who has been a leader on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, President Bush has spent a lot of time in my State of Ohio in the last few weeks. He was in Brecksville in my district just this weekend. He comes to Ohio to try to argue for an economic policy that has seen one out of six manufacturing jobs in our State disappear. His answer to every bad piece of economic news is more tax cuts for the wealthy, a person making $1 million gets a $123,000 tax cut, and more trade agreements like NAFTA that continue to ship jobs overseas. Clearly his economic policies are not working in a State that has 220,000 fewer jobs than it did when George Bush took office.

Instead, as Senator Kerry suggests, we should extend unemployment benefits. We should reward those companies that manufacture domestically. We should penalize those companies that go offshore like Halliburton and continue to ship jobs overseas, that continue to take tax advantage of the American people and continue to lose jobs in our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, here we are again debating overtime in the Labor, Health and Human Services bill.

I feel like it was just last year when we had this same debate, because we did. Last year I supported a Democratic overtime pay amendment which proposed to prohibit the Department of Labor from using funds to enforce any regulation that would cut overtime pay. When the amendment was voted on in the House, the Republican majority blocked its passage.

However, the Senate approved an amendment offered by Senator Harkin to block the Bush administration from issuing the overtime changes, protecting people's overtime. The House then reversed course, against leadership's advice, and bipartisanly voted to instruct the negotiators to instruct the Harkin language, therefore preserving workers' overtime. Even though both the House and Senate voted to protect overtime, a few hand-picked Republicans on the conference committee, all doing the bidding of President Bush and the Republican leadership, removed those protections from the bill.

The Economic Policy Institute study calculates that under the revised Bush overtime rules, kindergarten and nursery school teachers, firefighters, police, nurses and hundreds of thousands of other workers would lose an average of $250 a week in overtime pay. Millions more lose future eligibility for it.

Under the Bush rules that cut back on overtime, we will see an explosion of executives in the United States workforce, companies redesignating regular workers to avoid paying overtime.

It will not be executives the way we think of executives in the traditional white-collar sense. Instead, it is workers who supervise only two coworkers, such as a shift manager in the toy department of Wal-Mart. That person could be classified as executive and then lose overtime eligibility.

Companies can exempt more than one executive for the same workers, as long as they maintain a 2-to-1 ratio of exempt to nonexempt employees. Supervising, therefore, does not have to include the right to hire and fire, as executives usually have, or even take up the majority of the executive's time under the new rules. A worker could spend all day serving customers, sweeping the floor, doing the same things coworkers do, be called a supervisor, and then be denied eligibility for overtime.

Similarly, the new rules create a broad new exemption called team leader that can exclude workers from overtime pay under the administrative classification. This is a huge loophole. Team leaders could have no supervisory authority at all, but still be prohibited from receiving overtime.

The new rules make it easier to exempt workers in financial services and in computer-related occupations, among dozens of other job categories.

Tonight the Labor-HHS bill was pulled off the floor and Members of Congress were sent home, that is why there are few here now, because Republican leadership lacked the votes to defeat this amendment on overtime.

The Department of Labor's mission statement describes it as the primary agency to promote the welfare of job seekers and wage earners. That is why the Department of Labor was created decades ago. It was established solely to represent the interests of the American workforce.

Now, under Secretary Chao, taking her orders from President Bush and especially from Vice President Cheney, and especially from the Chamber of Commerce, and especially from the American National Association of Manufacturers, the Department of Labor now represents corporations at the expense of workers. That is why the assault on overtime pay coming from our government's Department of Labor against the workers it should be representing.

My colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), wants to offer an amendment that prohibits the Department of Labor from implementing these new rules on overtime pay, which would protect American workers, if we could win our amendment, and protect American families from the rising cost of living. We have the votes to pass it, but Republican leadership, at President Bush's request, pulled the bill off the floor, and we are not going to vote on it. We have the votes to pass it, as I said.

In a democracy, you know, you vote on things. If you have enough votes, they pass; if you do not have enough votes, they fail. It is as simple as that.

But here tonight we saw something that cannot quite be considered democracy. We do not vote on something because the leadership on the other side of the aisle, taking huge campaign contributions from darn near every corporate interest in this country, we do not vote because leadership on the other side of the aisle simply does not want to lose. Their corporate contributors do not like that. The will of the American people has been stifled. A major appropriations bill has been held up. Also the Republicans do not lose a vote that their corporate backers want, that the majority of this House, the representatives of the American people, support. You can call that government, but it sure is not democracy.