Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this week enrollment began for the prescription drug discount cards available for the Medicare bill passed last year. For some seniors in my home State of Ohio, this could mean $600 in prescription drug benefits. That sounds great. We want seniors to look into these cards. If they can get help, that is obviously a good thing.

However, the real story about these cards is found in the details. The discount drug cards will further complicate an altogether too confusing process for America's seniors. Instead of implementing a prescription drug benefit under one program, Medicare, which serves 39 million American beneficiaries, the administration fought to create an unnecessarily complex system that diverts money away from benefits and gives it to drug companies and the insurance companies. The drug companies under this legislation, this new law, according to bipartisan studies, will profit $150 billion more than they are already making, and at the same time, this bill gives a $46 billion subsidy, a $46 billion direct subsidy, taxpayer dollars, to the Nation's insurance industry.

That is not any real surprise, considering that President Bush's reelection campaign has received tens of millions of dollars from the drug industry and tens of millions of dollars from the insurance industry.

But this new program will feature 70 cards, 70 choices of private insurance prescription drug cards, by 70 different companies. It is a lot like the multiple HMO system our Republican friends are trying to foist on Medicare beneficiaries.

So here is the deal. Beginning this week, seniors will get notices at their houses. They will get visits, in Ohio, from up to 50 insurance agents, they will get mailings from up to 50 companies, and then they will get to choose these cards.

Now, what we could have is one Medicare card where seniors get a discount negotiated by the government, the way they do it in every other country in the world, as the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) said, one card with prices negotiated by the government on behalf of 40 million beneficiaries. But the Bush administration way, in part because one of his best friends and biggest contributors owns one of these card companies, but let us get back to this, the Bush administration is going to give you a choice of 50 cards.

Now, you buy one of these cards. Pick this card. This card perhaps might have a 30 percent discount or a 20 percent discount on Fosamax. This card here might have a 15 percent discount on Zoloft, or this card here might have a 12 percent discount on Celebrex.

Then you choose this card. You can only choose one card. You pay $30 for this card that you get to choose, one of these 50 cards, as these insurance agents come to your home and these mailings come to your home and these fancy brochures come to your home. You choose one card; you pay $30. And then this card company can actually change what drugs are covered by this card any week during those 52 weeks, during that year, or it can change the percent discount.

So you get this card, this one right here, because it has got a pretty good discount for Fosamax and Vioxx and Zoloft, three drugs you are taking, it has a 15 percent discount. But then after you pay the $30, three weeks from now the card company can say, well, we are not going to cover Vioxx anymore, we are going to cover Celebrex, and we are not going to give you a 20 percent discount on Fosamax, we are

going to drop it to 10 percent. You have no control over that.

So it is a question of do you want to choose among 50 cards, the way that President Bush and his big contributors in the drug industry, the insurance industry and the insurance discount card industry want, or would you rather have one Medicare card, where the government has negotiated a good discount? That is the way Canada does it, and that is why my constituents in northeast Ohio, why they drive to Canada. Canadian drugs are 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent cheaper, same drugs, same dosage, same manufacturer. So you got one card, or you got a choice of 50 cards.

Now, there is one other part of this bill, Mr. Speaker, that is really pretty incredible. As I mentioned, in this bill we give, taxpayers give, out of our pockets, reach into our pockets, $46 billion direct subsidy from taxpayers to insurance companies.

Think about what we could do, instead of that $46 billion going to the insurance industry, with their huge executive bonuses and stock options and marketing costs and all that, instead of $46 billion going to the insurance industry, if that money went to Medicare beneficiaries for their drug costs, that would be almost $1,200 for every one of the 39.5 million Medicare beneficiaries. So we are giving $46 billion directly to the insurance industry instead of taking care of our seniors.

Again, the question is, why would this possibly happen? How could Congress be this stupid, how could Congress be this greedy, how could Congress be this out of touch, to choose this, over this? It has got a whole lot to do with how much campaign contributions George Bush has gotten and how much campaign contributions my friends on the other side of the aisle have gotten from the drug industry and the insurance industry.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

I want to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) for his leadership on this critical and growing health problem, and I would like to thank my friend from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, for his good work on this issue and on many others.

One of the more eye-opening meetings I have had in my 12 years in Congress was with the family of an autistic child. The first time I did that, it was sobering to listen to the mother and father talk about their son's diagnosis of autism, a disease about which the causes are disagreed and generally unknown. It is sobering to learn what

these caring parents deal with every working hour of every day, trying to carve out as normal a life as possible for their son, trying to break through emotional barriers, intellectual barriers, barriers they do not fully understand, barriers that no one really fully understands.

It is sobering to learn the steps that these parents take to improve their son's development: consulting with the developmental pediatrician; a child psychiatrist; a clinical psychologist and occupational psychologist and therapist; a physical therapist; a speech and language therapist; as well as often a social worker, if they have the wherewithal to be able to get the best they can for their son.

This family could. Many families in our health care system that does not cover many people so well do not. It is heartbreaking to know these parents get no help from health insurers, forcing them to spend thousands of dollars each year towards treatment that may improve their son's development or may not improve their son's development.

My home State of Ohio's families of autistic children have a tremendous resource in the Cleveland Clinic Center for Autism. This unique center provides specially designed services and support to children with autism, or while fostering research on autism, to gain a better understanding of its causes and its effective treatments.

But families throughout my State and throughout the Nation deserve similar support. The resolution we are considering today brings us closer to achieving that. The resolution raises awareness about the unique needs of autistic children through a number of avenues, a few of which I want to mention. Perhaps most importantly, the resolution recognizes the dedication of the parents and families of autistic children.

To the countless families in Ohio and around the country who care for autistic children, you demonstrate every day what it means to be outstanding parents.

The resolution also recognizes the important work the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta does in studying the trends of autism throughout the country. It supports the critical need for early intervention in caring for an autistic child and the need to train teachers in addressing the needs of a growing population of autistic children in our schools.

The resolution supports Federal research into causes and treatments of autism at the National Institutes of Health. If this Congress is serious about the causes that we articulate so well in this resolution, we will be equally serious about providing adequate funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers For Disease Control, something the Republican majority continues to fall short on because they want to do our tax cuts and choose to give tax breaks to millionaires instead of funding these public health programs that are essential to the well-being of families of children with autism and so many others rich and poor in this country alike.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the resolution, and I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) for their work on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of my friend from California (Ms. Waters) and her passion about what has happened in Haiti and how our government has not been exactly on the right side of that. Equally important, I want to say something about my friend from California (Mr. Dreier) and his comments.

To try to make it sound like the Democrats and Senator Kerry want the French and the German model, while he wants the red, white, blue American model is just a bit much. We are all proud of the economic growth. We are all proud of the freedoms of our country. We are all proud of our strong environmental laws, our worker safety laws, our laws to protect the public and the dynamic economy we have. No one is arguing, nobody I know, John Kerry, anybody else is arguing we want the French economy or we want to be Germany.

What we are arguing is that we can do better with this economy than George Bush has done. We look back at the 1990s during Bill Clinton's 8 years and saw 25 million jobs created. We look at George Bush's 3\1/2\ years and see 3 million jobs lost, and we see a President who, during his term, will be the first since Herbert Hoover that has expressed, that has experienced a net loss of jobs.

I look at my State when I hear the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) speaking about this incredible economy. Then I look at my State, and we hope we had an economy like he was talking about. I do not think very many places in this country, if any places, do have that kind of economy, the picture he painted; but we know what we need to do to make the economy better.

Instead, President Bush has used the same old tired bromides, tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the society. If you make a million dollars in a year under the Bush plan, you get a $20,000 tax cut. The Republicans hope this tax cut will trickle down and create jobs. It clearly has not worked. We lost 3 million jobs in the last 3\1/2\ years.

The second part of his economic plan over and over is let us do more NAFTAs, let us do more trade agreements that continue to ship jobs overseas, that outsource, that hemorrhage jobs to China and Mexico. That clearly is not working, but I understand my friend from California. I understand his viewpoint.

Members of Congress do not feel the anxiety that my constituents feel. In my State, we have lost 177,000 manufacturing jobs. One out of six manufacturing jobs in my State has simply disappeared during George Bush's Presidency. Yet George Bush's answer continues to be more tax cuts for the most privileged and continues to be trade agreements that do not work and continues to be this ideological mission to give tax cuts and say that automatically tax cuts to the wealthy automatically create jobs. It simply has not worked.

What we need to do is extend unemployment benefits to the 1 million Americans, fifty-some thousand Ohioans, whose benefits have expired since January. We need to, instead of rewarding those companies that go offshore and change their corporate headquarters to Bermuda so they can avoid taxes and have continued to get various kinds of Federal contracts, on-bid contracts in the case of Halliburton, and all of that, we need to pass legislation that will actually give tax breaks to those companies that stay in the United States and manufacture here.

Several manufacturing companies from my State came to see me today. They cannot believe we continue to give tax breaks to these big, multinational corporations who ship jobs overseas, who outsource to India, and we do not give any kind of tax incentives to American manufacturers. I just wanted to say that in response to my friend from California.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. Speaker, tonight I am joined by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and I want to talk about Medicare and the discount card program that has been unveiled this week.

Enrollment began for the prescription drug discount card through the Medicare bill passed last year. For some seniors in Ohio, this can mean $600 in prescription drug benefits. On the surface that sounds good, and we want seniors to look into these cards. If they can get any help, that is a good thing.

However, the real story about the discount cards is found in the details. The discount drug cards will further complicate an already confusing process for America's seniors. Instead of implementing a prescription drug benefit under one program, Medicare, the simplest, cleanest and the deepest discount available and possible, which 40 million of America's seniors know and trust, the administration fought on behalf of the insurance and the drug companies, who really wrote this bill, the administration fought to create an unnecessarily complex system that diverts money away from benefits and gives it to drug companies, insurance

companies, and to these discount card companies that we will talk about in a moment.

The big drug companies under this original $400 billion bill, the big drug companies will profit an additional $150 billion from this bill, and insurance companies will get $46 billion. The insurance companies get a direct subsidy, a direct payment of my tax dollars and your tax dollars directly into their pockets for this bill.

No wonder, considering the drug companies, we hear on the streets of Washington, the drug companies are going to give $100 million to President Bush's reelection. They have already given tens of millions. No wonder the President wrote this bill so these companies benefited.

The drug card portion of the bill was in part crafted by friends of the President, such as David Halbert, CEO of Advanced PCS, one of the discount card companies, a man who set President Bush up in business before he was President and before he was governor, around the time he ran unsuccessfully for Congress, Mr. Halbert set President Bush up in business and helped President Bush make his first million in an unsuccessful oil company.

It is no surprise then that this system features 70 cards by 70 different private companies. It is a lot like the multiple HMO system that my Republican friends are trying to foist on Medicare beneficiaries. The gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) has said on the House floor that seniors want a choice of doctors and hospitals and prescription drugs, they do not want a choice of insurance agents or fancy brochures or insurance companies. Unfortunately, what this discount card does is give seniors a choice of a whole bunch of discount cards, and it is almost impossible to figure out which one is the best.

A senior in Akron in my district will have to research through 50 cards to find one that works. Under our plan, they could have used one card. Under the Republican plan, they are going to have to go through 50 cards. They are going to have 50 cards that they need to sort through. Let me see, I am taking Fosamax. This card covers Fosamax, this card covers Vioxx, but this card covers Zoloft, but this card covers Celebrex.

Why do they make this more confusing instead of allowing seniors one card, one discount, one plan. Instead, the Republicans have 50 cards, 50 plans, 50 insurance companies, 50 mailings coming to their house, 50 insurance agents knocking on their doors representing 50 different insurance companies. The answer is why would they choose this over this? The answer is pretty obvious. It just might, and correct me if I am wrong, I ask my friends from Washington and Ohio and Maine and New Jersey, it might have something to do with the insurance industry, the drug industry, and Mr. Halbert, CEO of Advanced PCS, that makes these cards, it might have something to do with the fact that they gave lots of money to President Bush's reelection.

We have all read in the paper that President Bush has set all kinds of fund-raising records. One week it is 150, then he flies Air Force One out to Cleveland or Portland or New Jersey or Washington State, does a little bit of government business so he can charge it off to the government, and then he does another fund-raiser and raises another $3 million. It just keeps going up, setting records every week. No wonder he can raise $200 million when he does things like this instead of doing it right.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

So I look through these cards. I am a senior and I decide Fosamax is here, and they also do Claritin and Zoloft, so I want this card. I pay $30 and sign up for the whole year. And then Mr. Halbert's company, if it is his card, he can change it, but I have to stay with this card, is that how it works?

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I choose a card and I get a decent discount, even though the price goes up 20 or 30 percent per year. So you are the card maker, you can both cut the discount and you can take my drug off the discount card list totally?

One card for $30.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to say that it is a good deal when the drug companies raised the price 20 percent and President Bush has a discount card that might be 12 or 13 percent, and then it happens again and again.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), who has done so much in this whole issue.

Mr. Speaker, it is almost like NAFTA. People lose their jobs. We are retraining them. We are retraining seniors so they can negotiate private health plans.

Think about what the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) said now. We had a choice. We could do what President Bush wanted to do on behalf of his friends that own the drug companies and the insurance companies. We could have 50 cards to choose from and seniors can go through and try to choose the best one and pay $30 and the cardholder changes the way it works and changes the discount, changes what drugs are available. We can look at 50 cards and choose and get about a 10 or 15 percent discount, or we could use one card and we could tell the government to negotiate price, tell the government to negotiate on behalf of 39 million Medicare beneficiaries a better price the way Canada does. Canada's prices are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 percent lower than the United States because the Canadian government on behalf of the whole country, 29 million people, negotiates drug prices.

Why could we not use a card like this, give this to every senior, and then negotiate prices on behalf of every senior in this country, 39, 40 million beneficiaries? They go to a drug store and they show this card and they automatically get that 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 percent discount. Instead, because President Bush receives so much money from the drug and insurance industry, he has given us 50 cards for seniors to choose one of the 50, and then maybe, if they are lucky, get a consistent 10 or 15 percent discount. So we have one card that could do 50, 60, 70 percent discount or a choice of 50 that might do a 10, 15, 20 percent discount.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

It is just incredible that the Congress has passed something to put more confusion in seniors' lives, to make the choices more difficult, more complicated. One of 50 cards that gives a small discount instead of using the buying power of 40 million Medicare beneficiaries to get one good discount that every senior can put in his wallet or in her purse and get a good 30, 40, 50 percent discount like the Canadians and the French and the Germans and the Japanese and the Israelis and the Swedes and everybody else.

Everywhere, Mr. Speaker. And I cannot think of any other reason. It is all because President Bush has received literally millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the drug industry, from the insurance industry, and from Mr. Halbert, the CEO of AdvancePCS and his company and other companies that make these prescription drug cards.

I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. Speaker, think about this. We are giving the insurance industry $46 billion just direct, reach in taxpayers' pockets, put $46 billion from taxpayers' pockets into insurance companies' coffers. I mean, there is no doubt about that, $46 billion. That is actually $1,100 for every single senior in this country. There are 40 million Medicare beneficiaries. That is more than $1,000 for every senior in this country. So instead of giving $1,000 to seniors to buy a drug benefit, which is a lot of money and most seniors have drug costs not much more than that, and many have a lot more, but $1,000 goes a long way for anybody, instead of giving $1,000 to every senior, we are giving the insurance industry $46 billion, $46 billion that could go to all kinds of things. But how much money did they give President Bush and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and the Republican leadership?

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to think when this bill was written by my friends on the other side of the aisle, if my colleagues remember, during the debate on that, they started the debate at midnight. The vote was cast at 3 in the morning, not finished until 6 in the morning, so they could twist enough arms and do enough drug company contributions to get it through, it is hard to think that seniors were ever in the calculation. It was about the drug industry and the insurance industry.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, imagine if everybody in this Chamber had known, Democrats over here, Republicans, if all of us had known that this bill would send 46 billion taxpayer dollars directly to insurance company coffers. If people in this hall had known that, Members of Congress had known that that would mean $1,100 for every Medicare beneficiary would just be a gift to the insurance industry, no matter how much money the drug companies gave to Republican leaders, no matter how many calls George Bush had made to Republican Members, no matter how many arms they twisted, no matter how many drug company lobbyists had descended like vultures into this institution, no matter all of that, if we had known, if they had not broken the law and been honest with us, if we had known 46 billion in taxpayer dollars were going directly from taxpayer pockets to insurance companies, there was no way this bill would have passed. There is just no way. No matter how many lobbyists, how much campaign money, how many calls from the President, this bill simply would not have passed.

I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his compassionate commitment.

I yield to my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

When it could have been so simple. When it could have simply been one discount card where the government negotiated price, using 40 million beneficiaries as the negotiating pool, could have gotten one much lower price. Instead of that, because the drug and insurance companies wanted it, the President made it very, very confusing.

I yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman next door in Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all of my colleagues together tonight: the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), the gentlewoman from Ohio ( Mrs. Jones), the

gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), and the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Alan).

I want to close with an interesting point that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) raised. He said it just seems that Republicans do not much like the Medicare program. On the surface, that does not sound like it makes sense, because I have a whole lot of Republican constituents who love Medicare. They know it has saved their lives and let them live longer, let them live healthier lives; but there is something about Republican politicians and their relationship with Medicare.

Back in 1965, 12 Republicans, 12 Republicans total voted for Medicare, to create Medicare. Bob Dole voted against it, Gerald Ford voted against it, Strom Thurmond voted against it, Donald Rumsfeld voted against it. Then, 30 years later, the first time the Republicans had control of this House and the majority, they tried to cut $270 billion, with a B, billion from Medicare. That failed because President Clinton got out his veto pen and said, Do not even try.

Then, in 2002, or in 1999, Congressman Armey, the second top Republican in Congress, said, in a free society, we would not have Medicare; we would not want something like Medicare. Whatever that meant. Then, in 2002, another Southern Republican Congressman in the leadership, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder), said that Medicare is a Soviet-style program, whatever that meant.

The fact is that a lot of us in this institution, every single Democrat and some of the Republicans, care deeply about Medicare and want to preserve it, and that is why we fought against the privatization of Medicare that President Bush tried to foist upon us. That is why instead of these 50 cards, we want to see one discount card where seniors get a good benefit under Medicare, get a 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 percent discount like our neighbors to the north, the Canadians have, and like our neighbors across the ocean in Europe have. Instead, what we got was a bill written by the drug discount card companies, written by the insurance companies, written by the drug companies, all of whom are major contributors to the President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, it was a sad day last December when this bill passed. It was a sad day when President Bush signed this bill. We all have work to do.

Mr. Speaker, President Bush is in my home State of Ohio, campaigning for maybe the 25th time. He knows he has to spend a lot of time in Ohio because of what has happened to the Ohio economy since George Bush has been President.

Ohio's lost one-sixth, one out of every six manufacturing jobs has left the State, some 170,000 manufacturing jobs every single month in the Bush administration; but as he travels throughout Ohio, he is going to stop in Dayton and do a little program, Ask President Bush, and the members of the Ohio delegation put a list of questions we would like to ask the President about the new Medicare prescription drug discount card that the gentleman from New Jersey asked about earlier. I would like to go through some of these questions, hoping, as we pose these to the President and wrote him a letter, that we can get answers to them.

We asked the President, is it true that the Medicare law allows drug and insurance companies offering discount cards to change covered drugs and discounts weekly? Does this not mean that seniors may choose a card one week and pay for it and be stuck with it for a year that will be worth little or nothing to them the next week? We ask, if seniors are guaranteed discounts that last as little as 1 week, why must they sign up for a discount card for the entire year and only that discount card?

The $600 annual benefit will mean a lot to very low-income seniors, but this benefit lasts only 2 years. Many of the same seniors may be unable to pass the

assets test required for the low-income benefit that will take effect in 2006.

We ask the President, why give low-income seniors help now and then pull the rug out from under them in 2 years, give them the help before the election, and after the election, the help's not there? If the Federal Government acknowledges those seniors need assistance, why are we excluding them after the Presidential election?

Ohioans can save, we found, almost 50 percent by importing prescription drugs from Canada, same drugs, same dosage, same manufacturer, from what the price is in the United States. With the cost of popular drugs rising at triple the rate of inflation, we are asking the President how he can deny seniors and all Americans access to these safe, more affordable drugs from Canada and France and Germany, when all over the world people are paying so much less.

The law creating the discount card program expressly prohibits the government from negotiating prices for prescription drugs, but the VA's price negotiation system has proven effective. We asked the President, why are America's seniors being denied the benefit of the government's buying power to leverage for lower prices?

We pretty much know the answers to these questions because this drug discount card simply will not work. The more we know about it, drug prices go up 25 percent in a year. The discount card will give maybe 10 or 15 percent. That is not price savings. That is really an insult. When we look at this, it is pretty easy to understand why.

This prescription drug bill, the Medicare bill, was written by the insurance companies and written by the drug companies for the insurance companies and for the drug companies. President Bush brought the drug and insurance companies into the Lincoln Bedroom or into the Oval Office or somewhere in the White House and let them write this legislation. It is now the law of the land that now hurts our seniors, and there is not a real surprise there when the drug industry's already given President Bush tens of millions of dollars for his reelection. The word on the street in Washington is the drug industry will donate $100 million to the President's reelection campaign. The insurance industry is not quite as wealthy, not quite as generous, but will donate and has already donated millions of dollars to the President's reelection campaign. So it should come as no surprise that this is the kind of drug bill we get.

Then to add insult to injury, the gentleman who wrote the language in the bill dealing with the discount drug card is, number one, a friend of the President's; and, number two, he has a discount drug card company. So we have got the drug industry writing the drug bill. We have got the insurance industry helping the drug industry write the drug bill, and now we have the discount card company writing the language for the discount cards.

That is why America's seniors feel betrayed, because this Medicare bill is not for America's seniors. It is for President Bush's reelection campaign, for his fund-raising, and for those companies that are so powerful in this city.

Madam Speaker, President Bush came to Ohio today on about his 20th trip to campaign for reelection in our State, and the reason he comes back so often in Ohio is to try to explain away his terrible economic record.

Since George Bush became President, Ohio has lost one-sixth of its manufacturing jobs; 177,000 manufacturing jobs alone have left the State. Every single month of the Bush administration, we have lost manufacturing jobs.

The President's answer? More tax cuts for the most privileged people. If you make $1 million, you get a $123,000 tax cut, hoping that will trickle down and create jobs. It is not working. His other solution is more NAFTA-like trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs, that send jobs overseas.

We need to change the direction of this economy, to change the direction of this country. Workers should get their unemployment compensation extended. We should be giving breaks to those companies that manufacture in the United States, not ship jobs overseas.

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

Mr. Speaker, last month, not too long ago, the President was asked in a news conference, only his third news conference in prime time since he took office, What would your biggest mistake be after 9-11 and what lessons have you learned from it?

President Bush said, ``I'm sure something will pop in to my mind here in the midst of this press conference, with all pressure of trying to come up with an answer but it hasn't yet.''

Then on May 1, earlier this week, the President, joking about it, said, ``I was going to start off tonight telling some self-deprecating jokes.'' And the Republican crowd laughed. And then he said, ``But then I couldn't think of any mistakes that I had made to be self-deprecating about.''

Now, it is hard to believe that anyone in my State of Ohio who has lost his or her job, 177,000 manufacturing workers in Ohio have lost their jobs since President Bush took office, it is hard to think that any one of them thought that was very funny, that the President could not think of any mistakes that he made; mistakes that he could learn from, that he could correct and do something about.

It is hard to think that any veterans who have seen their benefits cut under this President think this was very funny. It is hard to think that those soldiers who do not have body armor in Iraq because the President and the Pentagon did not plan for it, that they think that is very funny, to say that he could not think of any mistakes. I do not think that too many Americans of the 43 million without health care think that is very funny that the President mentioned he could not think of any mistakes that he had made.

Now, there are a group of us coming to the floor tonight. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), that are going to talk about some of the mistakes, not to embarrass the President, in some sense not even to criticize the President, but just we hope to point some mistakes out tonight that the President has made so that he can correct them. Because we are all taught as children to learn from our mistakes.

If the President is unwilling to admit a mistake, if the President is unwilling to acknowledge that he even made any, and then if the President is willing to sit around and joke that he has not made any mistakes when we have lost this number of jobs in my State of Ohio and across the country, when our soldiers in Iraq are in harm's way because we have not provided body armor, because we are not providing the armor underneath the Humvees and on the doors of the Humvees to protect American troops, it is not really not much of a laughing matter.

Today the President was in Ohio and, again, the President continued the let us just kind of joke about this.

AP reports, ``With humor and sarcasm, President Bush is trying to make John Kerry eat his own words. At every stop of his Midwest bus tour, the President is mocking Kerry to the delight of partisan audiences.''

I understand this is a Presidential race. I understand that politicians need to attack each other and make fun of each other and all of this, but in light of the fact that the President is unwilling to admit any of these mistakes he made, we, tonight, the five or six of us, would like to help him talk about, whether it is a mistakes he made with weapons of mass destruction or Medicare or veterans' benefits or the tax cuts, a millionaire gets $123,000 in tax cuts; whether it is job loss, whether it is totally forsaking both small business and the manufacturing base in this country.

The entire six Democratic-member delegation of Ohio wrote the President a list of questions as he arrived in Dayton, Ohio today in his Ask the President Forum that he is beginning to hold around the country. He did the first one in Dayton today.

We had some questions for the President about the new Medicare bill because we recognize that the Medicare bill was a mistake. First of all, the President allowed the drug companies and the insurance companies to write the bill. He also allowed the drug companies, that are going to make $150 billion additional profits from that bill. The insurance companies will get a $46 billion direct subsidy from this bill. But no surprise there, the President has already received tens of millions of dollars from the drug and the insurance industry for his election.

In fact, the word in the street in Washington, my colleagues and I have all heard, is that the President will receive a total of $100 million from the drug industry for his reelection. Of course, he is going to support the drug industry. But, frankly, we consider that a mistake, when you write a Medicare bill that helps the drug industry, it helps the insurance industry, and then maybe you get around to dropping a few dollars for seniors.

When they release this prescription drug discount card today, we asked the President a couple of questions. Is it true the Medicare law allows drug and insurance companies offering discount cards to change covered drugs and discounts weekly? Does this not mean that seniors may choose a card one week that will be worth little or nothing to them the next?

In other words, seniors sign up for one of these discount drug cards. If you sign up for one of the 50 or 60 or 70 cards, you are stuck with it the entire year, even though the drug discount card company can turn around and take your drug off the list, can raise the price, can cut your discount.

Mr. Speaker, the President also mentioned in this bill, this Medicare bill, there is also a prohibition on drug companies, on the government negotiating cheaper prices. We know we can get cheaper drugs in Canada, yet the President will not allow it. Something is wrong. I wish the President would acknowledge his mistake. Go back to the drawing board and write a drug bill for the seniors, not for the drug companies.

Mr. Speaker, President Bush was in Cincinnati this week to sell his program of tax cuts and trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the most privileged Americans, hoping that it would trickle down and create jobs and more trade agreements that unfortunately have shipped jobs overseas. The problem with his economic program in Ohio and elsewhere obviously is it is not working. We have lost almost 150 jobs every single day during the Bush administration. In Ohio alone one out of six manufacturing jobs in our State has disappeared. Yet the President's solution is always the same.

Instead, this Congress should extend unemployment benefits to the 50,000 Ohioans and 1 million Americans who have seen their benefits run out. This Congress also should pass the bipartisan Crane-Rangel bill which will give incentives to manufacturers that manufacture in the United States, not outsource and ship jobs overseas.

Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago the President held only his third public news conference in the evening when Americans could watch it. He was asked a question by one reporter: After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, what would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?

Mr. Bush was surprised. He stopped, he paused, he hesitated. He said, I am sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all of the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it has not yet.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), who also spoke of this, and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky). We are not here particularly to criticize the President about this. We want to help the President learn from his mistakes; and we want to outline, each of us, a couple of mistakes tonight that I think the President could learn from, if he thought about them and if he tried to act on them.

Saturday marks the 1-year anniversary of the President's flying on to the aircraft carrier with the sign that his staff put up that said ``Mission Accomplished.'' Karl Rove, the President's political guru, strategist, said recently he regrets using the ``Mission Accomplished'' sign; but nonetheless, it sort of galvanized the public to think about all of what this Iraq war has been about and what the Iraq occupation is about.

But I want to concentrate tonight, as we look at some of the mistakes that have been made by the White House, mistakes that, unfortunately, he has not thought about and talked about publicly to learn from, whether it is what he has done with Medicare, or veterans, shortchanging veterans, or the tax cuts only for the wealthy, the loss of jobs, the weakening manufacturing base, trade agreements and all of that.

But I want to talk tonight about how the soldiers have been equipped in Iraq. Only recently, I got a letter from a mother in Avon, Ohio, my district, informing me that her son serving in Iraq receives only one meal a day.

Now, much of the last year I have met with families of young men and women serving in Iraq, and those families have talked about not enough safe drinking water. That is why so many of our servicemen and -women have come down with dysentery. Many have talked about having to send food to their sons or husbands or sisters who are serving in Iraq, because the military has not equipped them and Halliburton and those private contractors have not fed them well enough.

Most seriously, and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is going to talk about this, as she has other nights, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) also, how we simply have not equipped our soldiers with the right kind of body armor.

I met a young man on a plane one day who did reconnaissance for the military, just left, just had gotten home from Iraq. He was given one plate of body armor, everybody in his patrol

was given one plate of body armor; and he said, we decided to put them on our fronts rather than our backs, because we were not going to be running from anybody. But he had to make that choice.

Our government, our military, the Bush administration, would spend $1.5 billion in Iraq every week, but did not have the foresight and the interest to outfit our soldiers and our servicemen overseas with the right kind of equipment to keep them safe.

As the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) said, we have not put the armor on the Humvees nearly to the degree necessary on the doors and on the underbelly. We have not provided the kind of body armor.

Month after month after month after month, Members of Congress have stood on this floor, parents wrote the Pentagon, people called the White House demanding, asking, pleading that body armor be provided for our soldiers. Some people died, some young men and women in Iraq were killed because the government, the Pentagon, the White House, simply did not provide the most basic body armor for our soldiers.

Then you go to the President's budget; you go to what is really the measure of ourselves as a Nation, to provide for those men and women after serving their country when they come home. I just would like to read you four quotes that I think will help us see how we can fix the President's mistake, the mistake of not caring for the Nation's veterans.

The Paralyzed Veterans of America said, ``The lack of consistent funding for the VA and the uncertainty attached to the process fuels efforts to deny more veterans health care and charge more veterans for the care they receive.'' That is the Paralyzed Veterans who gave so much to their country. We are not taking care of them.

The President of Veterans of Foreign Wars said, ``The President ignored veterans in the State of the Union address and in the 2005 budget. It is further evident that veterans are no longer a priority with the Bush administration.'' The Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The Vietnam Veterans of America, ``The budget proposed by President Bush for veterans health care is not only inadequate, it is an insult to veterans.'' That is the Vietnam Veterans of America.

The Disabled American Veterans said, ``It is clear that vets are not a national priority to the Bush administration. The President's budget plan attempts to shift the burden for funding veterans health care,'' shift the burden for funding veterans health care, ``to those brave men and women who have served and sacrificed for our country.''

Mr. Speaker, we can fix one of these mistakes. The President could fix them by adequately funding veterans benefits and taking care of our troops.

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

Mr. Speaker, I again join the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) in urging Congress to authorize the U.S. to endorse and obtain observer status for Taiwan at the annual summit of the World Health Assembly, the meeting of the World Health Organization, set for next month, May of 2004, in Geneva.

I would like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler) and especially the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) for their hard work and dedication to world public health. H.R. 4019 is another important step in fulfilling the commitment that we in this country made in the 1994 Taiwan policy review to more actively support Taiwan's membership in organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization. We should continue to support Taiwan in international bodies. We should continue to advocate for Taiwan to be represented in the WHO.

There are more reasons today to support this bill than there were last year even. Those reasons are SARS and the avian flu outbreaks. How much more limited would the effect of SARS worldwide have been if Taiwan's government had been fully engaged in the work of the World Health Organization? How much more quickly would the disaster have been contained if China had not covered up the outbreak and Taiwan could have stepped forward?

Excluding the people of Taiwan from the WHO violates the basic premise of the WHO to enjoy the attainment of the highest standard of health ``is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.''

Last year the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, caused 73 people in Taiwan to die. This

year, avian influenza has reemerged in Asia, has been reported in China and Cambodia, Indonesia and Japan, Laos, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. SARS and the avian influenza continue to threaten Taiwan. The case has never been stronger for allowing the people of Taiwan access to the WHO. As globalization quickens, and as the spread of infectious disease accelerates, it is crucial that the people of Taiwan be given the opportunity to participate in international health organizations such as WHO.

This bill authorizes Secretary of State Powell to endorse and help obtain observer status for Taiwan at the week-long health summit of the WHA, and authorizes the State Department to introduce a resolution on the floor of the WHA in support of Taiwan's participation in the organization. The bill directs the State Department to submit a plan to Congress on how to accomplish this objective.

Taiwan has eradicated smallpox, cholera, polio, and achieved infant mortality rates on a par with Western, wealthy nations. These accomplishments warrant an invitation to participate in international policy health discussions, to sit at the table with scientists and physicians and other public health experts in all these countries.

With a population of 23 million people, Taiwan is larger than 75 percent of the countries which actually belong to the WHO. Taiwan is prepared to contribute meaningfully to the global health efforts discussed at the WHA, but without observer status, its delegates cannot even enter the room. This bill would prevent the international community from missing out on the insight and experience Taiwanese health officials can offer. This bill is good for the 23 million people in Taiwan, and it is also good for the rest of the world because of the expertise that Taiwanese health officials bring to the table.

I urge my colleagues to support access to the WHO for the 23 million people of democratic Taiwan and support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the numbers are out again. Ohio and most of the rest of the country continue to lose manufacturing jobs. One out of six manufacturing jobs in my State has disappeared since President Bush took office. The President's solution and the solution for our government continue to be the same: more tax cuts and trickle- down economics tax cuts for the most privileged in our country with the hope that maybe some will trickle down and create jobs. That has not worked, or more trade agreements like NAFTA which ship jobs overseas, which does not work. The President refuses to extend unemployment compensation benefits to millions of Americans, literally over a million Americans who have had their unemployment benefits run out in the last 4 months; and the President refuses to extend those.

Madam Speaker, we should extend unemployment benefits, we should pass employment agreements that create jobs, and instead of tax cuts for the wealthy, we should do focused tax cuts that reward those manufacturers that create jobs in this country.

Mr. Speaker, 8 days ago at the Presidential news conference, only the third he had done in prime time since he has been President, the President was asked just sort of an obvious question that we all deal with from time to time in our lives, political or not, tell us about one of the biggest mistakes you have made.

The President kind of looked a little deer-in-the-headlights and he said, ``I am sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, but with all of the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, it just hasn't yet.''

We would today like to try to help the President, not because we want to criticize President Bush, but because we want to help him learn from his mistakes.

We see several of the mistakes here, from veterans cuts, to trickle- down tax

cuts for the wealthy, to trade that the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) talked about, to helping keep our soldiers as safe as possible that the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) talked about.

I want to talk for a bit about Medicare, not the fact that the bill, they told us it would cost $400 billion, it will cost $534 billion. That was sort of a purposeful mistake from the President. Not about Medicare privatization, that mistake. Not about the gap in coverage, that if you have $5,000 in drug costs, the government only pays $1,000 of it, you have to pay $4,000 out of pocket. The mistake I want to talk about is not even the fact that the drug and insurance companies wrote that legislation.

What I want to talk about is the specific prohibition in the bill that clearly the drug industry, the President at the behest of the drug industry, inserted into the bill that prohibits the government from negotiating the price of prescription drugs.

Now understand, the Canadians pay a lot less than we do for prescription drugs because the Canadian Government negotiates directly with the drug company on behalf of 29 million citizens of Canada to get the best price. But this legislation, written by the drug companies, excuse me, written by the President, this legislation expressly prohibits our government on behalf of 39 million Medicare beneficiaries, prohibits our government from negotiating the best price for our Medicare beneficiaries. That is why we pay so much for our prescription drugs.

Now, when the Architect of the Capitol bought the carpet in this room, he did not take the manufacturer's word that a fair price would impair carpet fiber research and then pay whatever the carpet company wanted. When the Park Service buys rangers' uniforms, it does not take just the first bid, no matter how expensive.

But with drugs, the President and his allies in the drug industry and his friends that run the House of Representatives, the Republican leadership, they say the government must pay any price the drug industry wants to charge. That is why Lipitor costs $763 here, but $438 in Canada. That is why Fosamax costs $797 here, an anti-osteoporosis drug, mostly for women, but only $323 in Canada. That is why Tamoxifen, a breast cancer drug, costs nine times in the United States what it costs in France, even though U.S. taxpayers paid for much of the research through the National Institutes of Health to develop those drugs.

Now, this policy, this mistake, this mistake on Medicare that the President made that says we are not going to negotiate price, we are going to let the drug companies charge whatever they want, this mistake is a joke on the American people; and the drug companies are laughing all the way to the bank.

Perhaps the reason for this Presidential mistake, the Medicare prescription drug Presidential mistake, is the fact that the millions of dollars have come from the drug industry to the Republican Party, and the word on the street is the drug industry is going to give President Bush's reelection $100 million.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleagues in recognizing the week of April 19 as National Primary Immune Deficiency Diseases Awareness Week. Primary immune deficiency diseases (PIDD) are genetic disorders in which part of the body's immune system is missing or does not function properly. The World Health Organization recognizes more than 150 primary immune diseases, which affect as many as 50,000 people in the United States. Fortunately, 70 percent of PIDD patients are able to maintain their health through regular infusions of a plasma product know as intravenuous immunoglobulin. IGIV helps bolster the immune system and provides critical protection against infection and disease.

I am familiar with primary immune deficiencies because a family in my district, the Gargaszs, have a son Dylan who has a primary immune deficiency disease. Dylan was born looking healthy, but by his first month checkup he had a raging ear infection, followed by chronic infections throughout his first year of life. Additionally, Dylan was failing to thrive and grow like a normal child. Dylan spent at least one day a week in the doctor's office, and was hospitalized with pneumonia five times by 18 months old. Finally, at 18 months, Dylan's mother took him to Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, where an immunologist finally diagnosed him with a primary immune deficiency disease. Dylan started his IGIV therapy once a week, and now at 6 years old, is doing relatively well. His younger brother and mother are now being tested to see if they have a primary immune deficiency disease.

Dylan is not unique with the difficulty and delay in diagnosis of his primary immune deficiency disease. Despite the recent progress in PIDD research, the average length of time between the onset of symptoms in a patient and a definitive diagnosis of PIDD is over 9 years. In the interim, those afflicted may suffer repeated and serious infections and possibly irreversible damage to internal organs. That is why it is critical that we raise awareness about these illnesses in the general public and the health care community.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Immune Deficiency Foundation for its leadership in this area and I am pleased to join them in recognizing the week of April 19 as National Primary Immune Deficiency Diseases Awareness Week. I encourage my colleagues to work with us to help improve the quality of life for PIDD patients and their families.

Mr. Speaker, a week ago this evening right around this time, President Bush held his third news conference in 3 years during prime time for the American people to examine his record and for them to watch the President answer for some of his policies, good and bad.

The President, if you recall watching that news conference, was asked by a reporter if he would outline what his largest mistake or one of his biggest mistakes was as President. And the President literally could not think of a mistake that he had made.

Well, tonight the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), and I are going to help the President a little bit, not to make the President look bad, that is not really our mission, but to help the President help the Nation understand what some of those mistakes are by pointing them out, perhaps forcing the President to think a little more about them, because I do not think he has given a lot of thought to his mistakes and some of the wrong directions and wrong courses that he has taken the country and ultimately to learn from those mistakes and then to correct those mistakes.

I was speaking with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) a moment ago. He said when he was a child he was taught over and over, and probably everybody in this Chamber has been taught, that one of the first things you do is you learn from your mistakes. But obviously you need to recognize those mistakes.

This chart here tonight just gives an idea of some of the issues that the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) and I and others this week will discuss about some of the President's mistakes with weapons of mass destruction, with Medicare, and veterans, tax cuts with small business, with manufacturing, with Head Start, the energy bill, flip-flopping on a whole host of issues, the environment, and many others that we will get to later.

But I want to talk tonight about the President's inattention to manufacturing and to the economy. And to me, I do not think there is a person watching when the President kind of stood back almost in shock and said I just cannot think of any mistakes. I just cannot think of any mistakes.

I think almost every American thought about our economy, how there are schools in decline, in part because of Federal inaction and Federal wrong action, about the environment, about the job situation, about their communities. And tonight I want to point out that the President's largest mistake on the economy may have been embodied in this economic report of the President, something that the President's chief economic advisor put out not too long ago signed by the President on page 4.

In this economic report, the President and his chief economic adviser kind of trumpet their success in the economy. They say we predicted 2.6 million jobs would be created this year, even though they have already lost 3 million jobs.

Then the President's chief economic adviser, and probably his largest mistake in showing how he really has not thought about this, the President's economic adviser trumpeted outsourcing, saying that outsourcing, our losing jobs to other countries, whether they are blue collar manufacturing jobs, they are steel and auto machine tools, chemicals, whatever, or whether they are white collar jobs, maybe phone operators, maybe computer programmers, maybe even radiologists as we have outsourced those jobs, the President's chief economic adviser said outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradeable than were in the past, and that is a good thing.

Secretary Snow, the President's appointee as the Secretary of the Treasury, said outsourcing is part of trade. It is one aspect of trade, and there cannot be any doubt about the fact that trade makes the economy stronger.

It is hard for me to think that the American people when they hear George Bush say I cannot think of a mistake I made, that they do not think about the lost manufacturing jobs in this country.

My State of Ohio, we have lost 2,000 manufacturing jobs in my State every week. We have lost more than 200 jobs every single day in manufacturing in the Bush administration. One out of six manufacturing jobs in Ohio, not temporary layoffs, those jobs have gone to China, those jobs have gone to Mexico, those jobs have disappeared.

The President's answer, when he does reflect on his mistakes, when he does reflect on the economy, he has had two answers. He said we need to do more tax cuts for the most privileged, trickle down economics, hoping that will perhaps create some jobs in the country. It clearly has not. We have lost 3 million jobs in the United States. His other answer is outsourcing. His other answer is more trade agreements, more NAFTA-like trade agreements that ship jobs overseas, that hemorrhage jobs to China, that hemorrhage jobs to Mexico, that send our good- paying industrial jobs abroad.

And as we tonight, as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) and the gentlewoman

from California (Ms. Woolsey) tomorrow night and many of us try to help the President through this, remind him of the mistakes that he has made, we also have an obligation to talk about what we should do. And what we should do with this economy, we can talk about these mistakes, but what we should do is we should first of all extend unemployment compensation, second we should pass the Crane-Rangel bill, which gives incentives for those corporations that actually produce manufacturing jobs in the United States instead of rewarding those companies that ship jobs overseas.

The President's mistakes can be fixed. We need to fix them by doing some of the things I just talked about.

Mr. Speaker, Secretary John Snow, the President's second top economic adviser, was in Ohio this week trying to defend the administration's economic and budget policies. Secretary Snow said outsourcing is a good thing. Outsourcing creates more efficiencies in the economy.

I wish that Secretary Snow, when trying to justify the President's economic policies, had been with me in Akron, Ohio, a couple of weeks ago. I spoke to a group of business owners, small manufacturers, the Akron machine shop, group of machine shop owners and operators. They are concerned that Ohio has lost one out of six manufacturing jobs, probably permanently. They are concerned that Ohio has lost 236,000 jobs overall. That is about 1,500 jobs a week since President Bush took office. That is about 205 jobs every day since President Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001.

When I was talking to these machine shop operators, one gentleman presented me with a pile of brochures about twice this size. Actually, I do not have all of them with me. These are going-out-of-business sale notices, auction notices from companies all over the country, small manufacturing companies. He receives a stack of about that many every month, he said, at his place of business, companies going out of business, selling their equipment.

Let me just share some of these. A company in Cleveland, Ohio, selling all its assets; a company in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, absolute auction; company in Waterville, Ohio, near Toledo, live one site, selling everything; company in Springfield, Ohio, going out of business; company in Mansfield, Ohio, where I grew up, that is going out of business, selling its real estate and all its production capacity; a company in Sydney, Ohio, major equipment manufacturer, public auction; company in Dayton, Ohio, facility closing; company in Cleveland, Ohio, assets no longer required in the continuing operations of this tube mill facility; a company in Akron, Ohio, in my district going out of business; another company in Cincinnati, Ohio, I believe, public auction, going out, precision machining facility; a company in Toledo, Ohio, going out of business, don't miss this sale, everything sold; a company in Youngstown, Ohio, going out of business; a company in Painesville, Ohio, going out of business; a company in Medina, Ohio, facility closed, all must go; Marion, Ohio, complete shop closeout auction; Tipp City, Ohio, machine tool auction, selling everything; Cleveland, Ohio.

That is just the Ohio companies here that are going out of business.

I bring this up partly because the administration does not get it. They keep talking about the economy is coming back. We are not seeing jobs created, and we are not seeing jobs created because the administration's answer to this kind of bad news is more tax cuts for the most privileged people in our country with the hope that some of those tax cuts will trickle down and maybe provide some jobs and more trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs, that ship jobs overseas.

This administration needs to do two or three things immediately. We need to extend unemployment benefits. Fifty thousand Ohioans in the next couple of months will have had their unemployment benefits expire. These

are people that want to have jobs, that are looking for work. It is 50,000 workers. It is 50,000 families that lose their benefits in communities all over my State, all over this country.

The second thing the administration needs to do is allow for trade adjustment assistance. They have opposed that, even though all those jobs that have gone to Mexico and China and all over the world, those workers need help.

And, third, the administration needs to pass the Crane-Rangel bill, bipartisan legislation that will give tax breaks to those corporations that hire people in the United States.

The President, on the other hand, wants to give more tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and more tax cuts to the largest corporations and rewarding those companies that are outsourcing, that are sending their jobs overseas. We need to reward those companies and give incentives to those companies that are hiring American workers and build back our manufacturing base. My State has lost one out of six manufacturing jobs in the last 3 years. My State has lost 205 jobs every single day of the Bush administration. These pleas continue to fall on deaf ears. The President tries the same tired solutions. They have not worked for 3 years. It is time we changed course.