Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H. Con. Res. 284, expressing the sense of Congress that the United States actively support Taiwan's membership in the United Nations and other international organizations.

A number of countries have asked the United Nations to reconsider U.N. Resolution 2758, which has not resolved the issue of Taiwan's representation in the U.N. This resolution gave what has been called the ``China Seat'' to the People's Republic of China and excluded Taiwan from membership.

For thirty years, Taiwan's 23 million people have had no representation at the U.N. This is a violation of the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Taiwan does not seek the expulsion of the People's Republic of China, but asks that it be given its own voice in U.N. matters. Taiwan and the PRC can both be members of the U.N. The precedent exists: East and West Germany in the past, and North and South Korea in the present.

U.N. membership does not threaten or endanger reunification of Taiwan and China. In recent years, Taiwan has permitted banks and financial institutions to open offices in China. Taiwan has welcomed mainland journalists and eased restrictions on mainland spouses of Taiwan residents. It is conceivable that political relations will improve if Taiwan is given U.N. membership.

Taiwan's return to the U.N. will benefit all nations, especially the 23 million people of Taiwan. They deserve to have a voice in the U.N. and to be treated in the same manner as all other people in the world.

Mr. Speaker, a study released by the House Committee on the Budget staff concludes that the cost of the Iraq war and the Iraq occupation could easily reach $417 billion over the next decade. That is $17 billion more than the President has proposed for a prescription drug benefit for our seniors. The report says the best- case scenario would cost taxpayers only $308 billion. Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz said recently, ``No one I know of would ever say that this war is cheap.''

That, Mr. Speaker, contradicts what everyone in the Bush administration was saying before the war. Budget Director Mitch Daniels said Iraq would be ``an affordable endeavor'' that ``will not require sustained aid.'' Top White House Economist Glen Hubbard said back then before the war, the ``costs of any such intervention would be very small.'' And another White House aid, Larry Lindsey, was fired after he said it would cost $100 billion to $200 billion.

The report details how the President's request allocates $157 per Iraqi for sewage improvements, while the President's budget has only $14 per American for sewer improvements. This is U.S. tax dollars. The administration is devoting $38 per Iraqi for hospitals, compared with $3.30 per American.

The President is seeking $5.7 billion to rebuild and expand Iraq's electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems, just as millions of Americans are regaining power lost due to Hurricane Isabel, and Congress continues to deal with the fallout from the August blackout in my part of the country and in the Northeast.

The President's request would send over 350 times more per person, $255 per Iraqi, compared to 71 cents per U.S. citizen on electric power rehabilitation.

The President wants $856 million to upgrade Iraqi airports, seaports, railways and communication systems. Another $470 million would go towards repairing roads, bridges and houses in Iraq and rehabilitating Iraqi government buildings.

The fine print of the President's request shows how far U.S. expenditures are going overseas and how the Bush administration, frankly, misled us before the war when he said this could be done on the cheap.

In Iraq, $875 million is earmarked to restore drained marshlands, while at home the administration wants to hold wetland conservation programs to last year's level at $100 million, one-eighth as much.

We have a duty, to be sure, to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan as they rebuild their countries, but not at the expense of our own. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1738, the Iraqi Parity Act, a bill to require the U.S. Government to pay for infrastructure and social service needs for the 50 U.S. States in the same amount as the amount of relief and reconstruction funds provided to Iraq. State and local governments in the United States deserve, at a minimum, the same level of Federal involvement to address infrastructure and social service shortfalls as the amount of relief and reconstruction funds provided to Iraq.

What I am hearing from my constituents, and I have come to this floor day after day reading letters from constituents about their concern about our entry into the war and the aftermath of that war and how the administration may not have told us everything, it may not have told us the truth in how this Congress, this Republican leadership in this Congress, has failed and refused to investigate these expenditures and failed to and refused to investigate many of the other issues around the Iraq war.

But what I am hearing from my constituents in these letters is the U.S. cannot go it alone in Iraq. My constituents are uncomfortable with the huge price tag for reconstruction; my constituents do not feel their tax dollars should bear the entire burden of reconstruction in Iraq; my constituents do not feel our troops should bear the entire burden of protecting Iraq; and, most of all, my constituents are concerned that the administration is simply not doing enough to ensure the safety of our men and women in the Armed Forces.

Mr. Speaker, this is a serious issue that this Congress needs to debate. We need answers. We need the Bush administration to tell us what their plans are. How long we are going to be in Iraq? How we are going to rebuild that country? How much it is going to cost, and when we are going to withdraw from that country?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time.

The premise behind the Stenholm motion is simple. One fourth of all Medicare beneficiaries live in rural areas, and they are getting the short end of the stick. Rural hospitals are closing, and there are not enough rural hospitals to begin with. Twenty-five percent, as I said, 25 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries live in rural areas; 90 percent of all physician specialists practice in urban areas. Senior and disabled Americans who need care simply are not getting it in time. That is more than a problem. It is a tragedy. Because of the high proportion of elderly in rural areas, Medicare plays a particularly important role in those areas. Inadequate Medicare reimbursement means inadequate access. There is no cushion. Our responsibility to rural Medicare enrollees is the same as our responsibility to urban Medicare enrollees. They paid in Medicare throughout their working years in exchange for health care security during their retirement. It is the covenant between the Government and its people.

Now that those people are retired, their health care should be reliable. It should be affordable. It should be easily accessible. To meet that responsibility, we need to pay rural providers enough to stay in business. It is that simple.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker the House bill tries to have it both ways. It invests in rural hospitals. That is good. Then it squeezes blood from them by cutting reimbursement across the board. One cannot do it both ways. It makes no sense, no sense, to undermine our own efforts to help rural providers and by extension rural beneficiaries, the whole point, by simultaneously increasing and then cutting hospital reimbursement, not to mention the negative impact on urban and suburban hospitals.

This motion, the Stenholm motion, simply instruct conferees to eliminate the hospital cut. This motion instruct conferees to ensure that no senior ends up without access to prescription drug benefits. That is what this whole exercise is all about. H.R. 1 sets the stage for two scenarios when it comes to areas traditionally underserved by HMOs. Neither of those scenarios is acceptable from a public health perspective or, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) points out, a fiscal perspective.

First, to lure an HMO to provide drug coverage in a rural or other underserved area, in a sense this Congress bribes them. Knowing the Federal Government is prepared to cover virtually all of an insurer's risk in order to attract them to a rural area, I wonder how many private plans will not hold out for this sweetheart deal? Of course they will.

Of course, they will. But if no plan takes the bait, then seniors in that area just do not get drug coverage.

There are many provisions in H.R. 1 and S. 1 about which Members can reasonably disagree, but do any of us really want to pass a bill that plays that kind of game? The possibility that some seniors would not have access or they will have to shower almost unlimited tax dollars on HMOs to ensure that access, why would we ever think of going down that road?

Fundamentally, the Stenholm motion instructs conferees to take the best of both bills when it comes to bolstering access to care and ensuring access to coverage in our Nation's rural

areas. It warns that the hospital cut included in H.R. 1 short-circuits the bill's provider provision, rural provider provisions, and the Federal fallback omitted from H.R. 1 is crucial if our goal truly is to fill the drug coverage gap in Medicare.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for the Stenholm motion.

Mr. Speaker, two days ago developing nations walked out of the World Trade Organization meeting, exposing irreconcilable differences between poorer developing countries and the U.S., the European Union, and Japan. Rather than dealing with the still broken promises of the past, U.S. negotiators wanted to press forward on a privatization agenda, restricting governments' ability to act in the public interest and giving more rights to multinational corporations at the expense of workers all over the world, in this country and abroad and at the expense of the environment.

The world obviously now knows with what U.S. citizens already know. The Republican trade policy does not work, that President Bush's desire to expand NAFTA to the rest of the world is antiworker, antienvironment, and hemorrhages jobs. That is why 10 percent of manufacturing jobs in this country have disappeared since President Bush took office because of these trade policy.

The U.S. cannot continue pushing this antidevelopment, antiworker, antienvironment agenda on the rest of the globe. The failure of the talks in Cancun is a victory for the people of the world, a reality the Bush administration cannot ignore. The Bush NAFTA trade model is broken. We should fix it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) and the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), and I thank particularly the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) for his sponsorship on this piece of legislation.

I stand also to honor Larry Doby. I saw Larry Doby after his career in Cleveland for the White Sox had finished. My dad took me as a 6- year-old kid to see Larry Doby, and I saw him play then and met him later for a moment when he threw out the first pitch of the House baseball game.

Larry Doby in some sense was as courageous or even more courageous than Jackie Robinson. I asked a group of people as I was walking through an office earlier today what they knew about Larry Doby. These people were in their twenties and thirties. They knew almost nothing of him. Several people had heard of him. They knew he was a baseball player. They knew very little else.

Larry Doby was the second African American player to play major league baseball, the first in the American League. As I said, in some sense he was as courageous, maybe even more courageous than Jackie Robinson. In his words, and he said with certainly no bitterness but just as an observation, Larry Doby said, The only difference between us, Jackie Robinson and himself, was that Jackie Robinson got all the publicity. You did not hear much about what I was going through because the media did not want to repeat the same story, the same story they had written not long before.

He said, ``I could not react to prejudicial situations from a physical standpoint. My reaction was to hit the ball as far as I could.''

He had the same kinds of anger and bitterness and racist catcalls and violent behavior all aimed at him as Jackie Robinson did, and he was every bit the hero that Jackie Robinson was.

As the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) pointed out, he also changed not just baseball history, but he helped as a pioneer in pulling this country together, a pioneer in beginning to start to erase the racial prejudice in this country. He did it in a variety of ways. He did it as a baseball player in the way he played. He also did it with the strength in which he played. He also did it as a manager, and also in his professional and personal life back in Paterson. But he also did it in a way that is interesting.

In the spring of 1947, Bill Veeck, the Indians' general manger, understanding that Larry Doby was going to be playing, moved spring training camp to Arizona, away from the South, understanding that it would make things a little bit more even tempered, if you will, for Larry Doby to deal with.

So then the Brooklyn Dodgers moved their training camp from Florida to Havana, Cuba, again to deal with some of those problems, and the New York Giants moved their training camp from Florida to Arizona, and that is the advent of spring training being held in different areas around the country.

He was a pioneer. He changed not just the baseball world, he changed society. All of us should be proud of what Larry Doby did.

In my City of Cleveland where he played his best, most important baseball, he played in two World Series, made a difference in the last time the Indians won the World Series in 1949, but more importantly, what he did later with his life in Paterson, New Jersey, throughout the baseball world, and what he contributed to this country.

Mr. Speaker, 165 years ago the U.S. House of Representatives passed a rule to ban discussion, debate, printing of any information or discussion of the issue of slavery. As a result, former President John Quincy Adams, who was elected to the House of Representatives after he was President, came to the House floor night after night, week after week, hoping to change the minds of people and debate the issue of slavery.

Adams, one of the Nation's leading abolitionists, one of the Nation's strongest believers in giant social justice, as a result, because he was prohibited from talking about slavery, came to the floor and read letters that he received from constituents in Massachusetts and constituents around the country. He believed that Congress should discuss slavery and debate slavery, so he allowed citizens to speak through him as the microphone, citizens through using these letters to speak directly to Congress, directly to the American people.

In a similar way, many in this Congress are unhappy that we are failing to investigate what our role in Iraq was. My friend from Texas (Mr. Paul), Republican from Texas, has joined with many of us in questioning and asking for an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration's distortion of evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, saying that we need to know more in order to deal with the problems at hand more, and as a result, I would like to read letters from petitioners from Ohio, from my District most of them, from all of Ohio, received from Ohio literally thousands of letters questioning, asking that Congress investigate, questioning what we are actually doing in Iraq.

From Jay from Richfield, Ohio, While listening to the speech of the President regarding Iraq last Sunday, I was struck by the fact he is asking for $87 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. What is magic about $87 billion, Jay writes. If we assume there are 290 million men, women and children in the U.S., that means that every man, woman and child will be contributing $300 to the reconstruction of a country we will never visit and whose welfare would never have affected us but for the lies of our President.

When the President sold America his enormously wasteful tax cut a few years back, his cornerstone was $300 for every family. He was full of stories regarding what a family could do with an extra $300. Jay of Richfield, Ohio, writes.

Sue of Elyria, Ohio, writes, Rather than admitting the shortcomings of his failed policy and plotting a course to get us out of Iraq, President Bush used the Sunday speech to the Nation to repeat his lies in the hopes that people will believe them if they are said often

enough. There was no mention of weapons of mass destruction. Bush continued to equate Iraq with al Qaeda terrorists even though there is no factual basis for the charge. Then he asked us for another $87 billion to bail him out, and I am sure this is only the beginning. President Bush will be back asking for more.

How much is $87 billion, Sue writes. For that amount of money, America could solve the school budget crisis in every one of our communities and provide health insurance for every uninsured American child for 15 years, provide food for all six million of the children who die from hunger around the world for the next 7 years. Sue from Elyria, Ohio.

Ted from Lorraine, Ohio, where I live, asked about the $87 billion more for the invasion of Iraq. He writes, What happened to the $69 billion he spent already? Was it all given to Halliburton, the ``no bid'' contractor and friend of the President's? Why does not Congress write into the law giving him money that no contracts be let without fair and open bidding? His concern for the people of Iraq is heartwarming, but what of us, Americans who pay him and are suffering from a terrible loss of jobs and income? What of our schools and our roads and our bridges and constitutional rights under the Bill of Rights? Not a word from the President on that.

Jack from North Royalton, Ohio, writes, I believe that we, the American public, were manipulated by misleading statements by President Bush in order to gain support for a war in Iraq. This war is costing the American people billions of dollars. More importantly, it is costing the lives of American military personnel. This war has cost America the friendship and respect of law-abiding Nations. This is a sad period for America and for Americans. The Bush administration should be held accountable. President Clinton's lies were about a personal sexual matter. President Bush's lies are about an international issue.

Matt from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, writes, The costly war, which has not ended, has cost thousands of civilian lives and hundreds of American military lives. It has not improved national security. It has weakened it. It was evident, Matt writes, as the administration danced around looking for reasons to attack Iraqi men, women and children that there were conflicts of interest between members of the administration and the possible reasons for going to war.

These are five or six of the literally the thousands of letters, hundreds of thousands around the Nation that we are receiving questioning what we are doing in Iraq, wanting a plan on how we are going to get out.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) for his leadership on this very important prescription drug and Medicare issue.

I stand in support of the motion which instructs conferees to abandon the privatization provisions in the House prescription drug bill.

Under H.R. 1, Medicare would end as we know it. Medicare would end in 7 years. In 7 years Medicare would be replaced by a voucher to cover part of the premium for health insurance and costs would be shifted from the government to seniors. That is privatization pure and simple.

Mr. Speaker, we should not be surprised that Republicans want to privatize Medicare. Look at the history. In 1965 when Medicare came to a vote on the House floor, on the key vote on the key part of the bill, only 11 Republicans, 11 Republicans supported the creation of Medicare. Bob Dole, future Presidential candidate, voted ``no.'' Gerald Ford, future President, voted ``no.'' Strom Thurmond, long-time U.S. Senator, voted ``no.'' In the Senate, Donald Rumsfeld, later Secretary of Defense, voted ``no.''

Republicans could not stop Medicare in 1965, its creation, as hard as they tried; but once Republicans got a majority in this House of Representatives, the first time they had a majority after Medicare was created, a full 30 years later, one of the first things that Newt Gingrich and my friends on the other side of the aisle did was cut Medicare $250 billion to, guess what, pay for tax cuts for the highest- income, most privileged people in our country.

Now it is not just Newt Gingrich. It is the entire Republican leadership. Dick Armey, the majority leader until 9 months ago, as my friend, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), pointed out, said we would not have Medicare in a free society.

It is clear, Mr. Speaker, that the folks on that side of the aisle simply do not much like Medicare. Of course they want to privatize it. They did not support it when it was created. They have tried to cut it every time they have got a chance. They tried to end it as we know it. Now they have tried to privatize it. President Bush, Republican President, once he got a Republican Senate and Republican House, President Bush said, yeah, you can have a Medicare prescription drug benefit, but you have got to get out of Medicare to get it; you cannot have it in traditional Medicare the way the Democrats want to do it, provide the benefit the way that we know it works in traditional Medicare because seniors in this country love traditional Medicare, if they could have a drug benefit and a few other benefits that this Congress has denied them.

Instead, George Bush and the Republican leadership said, yeah, you can have a prescription drug benefit, but you have got to go into a private plan and have the insurance companies deliver it. That is what Republicans think about Medicare. So of course they are going to privatize it; and of course this motion to instruct says we are not going to let you privatize.

H.R. 1, the Republican bill, is a cop-out. The American public never, never in the election, never gave Republicans license to dissolve Medicare. The retirement safety net was not put in place for Republicans simply because they do not want Big Government to eliminate it.

Mr. Speaker, I stand in support of this motion, which instructs conferees to abandon the ``privatization'' provisions in the House prescription drug bill.

Under H.R. 1, Medicare would end in 7 years. In 7 years, Medicare would be replaced by a voucher to cover part of the premium for health insurance.

Medicare would no longer guarantee access to medically necessary care. Instead, the Government would contribute a capped amount to an HMO or some other health insurance.

So much for the Medicare entitlement. So much for guaranteed benefits. So much for the choices that matter: choice of hospital, choice of doctor. This voucher scheme would give seniors the ``choice'' to enroll in an HMO, and when that one abandons them, to enroll in another one, and when that one abandons them, to enroll in another one.

In his State of the Union address, the President called Medicare the ``binding commitment of a caring community.'' H.R. 1 rips that commitment to shreds. It chokes off funding for the core Medicare program and sends seniors into the private market to try their luck.

The President and the authors of H.R. 1 say that seniors deserve more insurance options, and that more insurance options will somehow save the Federal Government money.

Fourteen years ago, the Medicare supplemental insurance market offered so many spurious, confusing ``insurance options'' that seniors were being conned into purchasing multiple plans covering the same benefits. To protect seniors, the Government had to crack down and dramatically curtail the number of ``insurance options'' that could be marketed.

Over the last six years, Medicare HMOs have abandoned millions of seniors. Insurers haven't abandoned their shareholders--the industry is doing quite well--but insurers have promised seniors reliable health insurance one year and dropped those seniors like a stone the next.

H.R. 1 stacks the deck against the only coverage options under Medicare seniors can truly rely on--the core fee-for-service program-- and gambles seniors' health care on private insurance plans that by their very nature come and go. Insurance is supposed to alleviate uncertainty, not breed it.

Private plans are not and have never been a cost-effective alternative to Medicare. Medicare is a cost-effective alternative to private health plans.

Medicare costs have been growing at a slower rate than private insurance for 30 years now. 30 years.

H.R. 1 is a shell game. It doesn't confront drug costs or any other health care cost. It saves the Federal Government money by shifting the financial burden onto Medicare beneficiaries and their families.

It's a cop-out. The American public did not give us license to dissolve Medicare. The retirement safety net was not put in place because liberals wanted to make the Federal Government bigger, and it should not be dismantled because conservatives want to make the Federal Government smaller.

The retirement safety net was put in place because the private sector couldn't make a profit offering health insurance to seniors, so they stopped doing it. And it was put in place because the Nation believes Americans who helped build this Nation's unrivaled prosperity throughout their working years should not face financial uncertainty and hardship when they retire.

And now, the future of Medicare is on the line. My Republican colleagues say that seniors deserve ``better options.'' What seniors deserve is the truth.

If my Republican friends want to abandon the key principles defining Medicare--Guaranteed coverage, equal treatment of seniors regardless of income, consistent benefits, reliable benefits--if my Republic colleagues want to abdicate their responsibility for Medicare--they shouldn't hide behind a prescription drug bill to do it.

Instead of abandoning Medicare, I urge my Republican colleagues to reverse course and pledge to protect it.

Support this motion.

Mr. Speaker, we have seen little press coverage in the United States of the World Trade Organization before its ministerial beginning this week in Cancun, Mexico. But around the globe, the WTO's 5th Ministerial is a big story. The divide between WTO nations about its future is coming into public view. At stake in Cancun is the future of the World Trade Organization and how it will implement corporate globalization. Success or failure depends on which side of the divide countries stand. Given that the most powerful countries of the WTO, partnering with the supposedly neutral WTO Secretariat, have set the meeting's agenda to suit their goals. There can be no good outcome.

The best result is what the U.S. media may report as a ``failure.'' The small block of powerful nations fail to steamroll the majority of the WTO's members who are developing nations, and the summit ends in deadlock. The problem is that the U.S., the European Union, Japan, and a handful of other rich nations want the WTO to be ``the constitution for a single global economy,'' a description that the first WTO Director General famously uttered in a moment of unguarded candor.

They want the WTO to enforce one-size-fits-all rules on an array of issues ranging far beyond trade which all WTO countries must adopt as their domestic practices. These broad WTO rules would implement worldwide what has become known as the ``Washington Consensus.''

While this agenda has proven to be a devastating failure; its agenda of eliminating a role for Government and public interest regulation of the market, establishing new property rights and protections for corporate interests, of creating tradable units out of vital public services, privatizing water, supplies, all of that, genetic materials and common resources, is at the heart of the WTO, which currently enforces 18 expansive agreements implementing this version of corporate-led globalization. Yet to the world's largest corporations and their client governments, this is only the beginning.

The U.S., the European Union, Japan, and others are pushing for decisions in Cancun to add to the WTO extreme terms that are now only contained in the clearly failed North American Free Trade Agreement. These new issues include expansive new investor rights, rules on government procurement eliminating local or environmental preferences, undercutting domestic environmental food safety laws, and new rights for foreign service corporations to turn Government services such as water treatment facilities, how we get our water, into for-profit foreign or domestic corporations.

Meanwhile, an increasingly consolidated block of developing nations have a different view. These nations want the WTO to deal simply with trade, World Trade Organization, and do so in a way that benefits all of the WTO nations, not just the most powerful and the richest countries.

While different developing nations have different ideas about fair trade, they are united in opposing any expansion of the WTO into these new areas outside of just trade. When the Uruguay Round in 1994 created the WTO, developing countries were promised major gains. They were promised that industrialized nations would lower and eventually eliminate tariffs on items like textiles and apparel and cut agriculture subsidies that have enabled huge agribusinesses to dominate the world market. They were promised the WTO would be good for development in the poor countries. Newspapers and opinion shapers largely endorsed the ideas and promoted it.

As the WTO, however, moves forward on new issues of negotiations, these promises remain utterly unfulfilled. If the WTO is to maintain trade credibility as a trade organization rather than evolving into the CHO, the Corporate Handout Organization, it must revisit the issues that affect developing nations before adding to its agenda and it must stop pandering to the largest, most powerful multinational corporations in the world.

Mr. Speaker I would like to congratulate the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as they commemorate their 100th anniversary tomorrow, Saturday, September 6, 2003.

The issues the Teamsters have fought for and won over those 100 years are the issues that have strengthened America: equal rights for all workers, regardless of color, creed, or gender; a 40-hour work week; a pension for retirement; paid holidays; employer sponsored healthcare; equal pay for women.

As corporate raiders continue to turn a deaf ear to the needs of America's working families, the 1.4 million members of the Teamsters continue to ensure that the voices of American labor are heard.

I know that in the next 100 years, we can count on the Teamsters to continue their work against unfair trade commitments, from CAFTA to the WTO, that continue to hurt working families in the U.S. and abroad; to continue to protect our roadways from unsafe foreign trucks; to continue protecting the health and safety of America's workforce; and to fight against the current administration's attempts to disqualify hundreds of thousands of Americans from receiving the overtime benefits they fought so hard to gain.

The Teamsters are needed now more than ever as some corporations break labor laws and fight union organizing as they ship jobs out of this country by supporting trade agreements that exploit workers' rights across the globe.

I congratulate the Teamsters on their 100 years of commitment to America's working families, and wish them well in the next 100 years.

I thank my friend from Maryland for yielding me this time. I was not planning to speak;

I was going to speak later on another issue, but listening to my golden-tongued friend from Arizona engage in the histrionics he did about service men and women and about veterans, and I have been in this House for a while, I have never seen the treatment of veterans that this House of Representatives has given. It is three strikes and you are out. First of all, this President and the Republican majority have cut the prescription drug benefit to veterans twice in the last year and a half, once and the second time it is proposed.

Second, this leadership and this Congress and this President have cut health and education benefits to veterans. The President proposed a $26 billion cut. The Congress reduced the cut but nonetheless cut veterans services. And if you live in Ohio, it is three strikes and you are out because now this administration and this Congress want to close a veterans hospital in Brecksville, Ohio. To send working-class kids to Afghanistan and Iraq, to cut taxes on the richest people in this country, and then when these young men and women come back to this country and apply for veterans benefits, they see their drug benefits are cut, they see their education benefits are cut, they see that veterans hospitals in their communities are shut down in order to pay for tax cuts, the average millionaire, $93,500 for a tax cut, is simply immoral. This debate I think crystallizes that, showing what this Congress really stands for.

Mr. Speaker, about a century and a half ago, a little longer than that, the House of Representatives passed a rule banning, prohibiting the discussion of slavery in the U.S. House of Representatives. In those days John Quincy Adams, former President, was a Member of the House of Representatives and while he was banned, was prohibited from discussing slavery, former President Adams, Congressman Adams as an abolitionist believed that slavery was the biggest blot on our Nation's history and wanted to remove that. He came to the House floor day after day, week after week, and because he could not talk directly about slavery, he read letters from his constituents in Massachusetts expressing their concern about slavery.

Along those lines, this Congress today, my friends in the majority, will not allow us to debate the issue of the President's perhaps not telling the whole truth about his decision to attack Iraq. We have gotten literally hundreds of thousands of signatures in this body, petitions stating that Congress should support an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration's distortion of evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

I would like to share some of those literally thousands of letters from my State that have come with those petitions asking this Congress to investigate.

From Delaware, Ohio:

``I opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning, convinced there were other ways to working towards regime change, and I'm convinced that Saddam Hussein had more dangerous weapons secreted away than did many other national dictators. Now it seems possible the American public was duped by the Bush administration.''

From Dayton, Ohio:

``I am concerned that the public was not fully informed about the intelligence used to urge us to support going to war in Iraq. I'm particularly distressed that we didn't try harder to get United Nations support and that occupation plans were poorly formulated. If we had full intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we might have been able to make a more reasoned decision.''

I am hearing letter after letter now coming into my office, people concerned, people especially upset as the President announced this week that we are going to spend $60 to $70 billion in Iraq, we are now spending $1 billion a week of U.S. taxpayer dollars, dollars we are not spending to reconstruct America's schools, dollars we are not spending on highways, in mass transit and infrastructure, dollars we are not spending on prescription drug benefits, dollars we are not spending to give tax breaks to the middle class. We are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq.

But to make that even worse, my constituents tell me, and I hear people especially upset, is one-third of those dollars, those billion dollars a week, are going to private contractors, companies like Halliburton, happens to be a company on which Vice President Cheney is still on the payroll. Halliburton still pays Vice President Cheney $15,000 a month. They are getting billions of dollars in unbid contracts of our tax dollars as President Bush and our country continue the occupation of Iraq. A billion dollars a week we are spending in Iraq, a third of that goes to unbid contracts, mostly to the President's friends. Is it any surprise the President can raise $200 million in his campaign when he is giving unbid contracts to his friends of literally hundreds of millions of dollars every single week?

Another letter comes from a gentleman in Ohio also who writes:

``It's very important that this administration be held to the same standards of scrutiny and accountability as any other. This investigation is a congressional obligation, not simply a discretionary option. I urge you to support the vote for establishing a commission.''

Another letter from Ohio: ``Please cosponsor H.R. 260 and open up the hearings to the public. If the hearings are closed, it will send a loud message that Congress doesn't care about the truth that our Representatives want to hide foreign policy from the whole world, including the American citizens.''

Another letter: ``As a Vietnam veteran, I demand an investigation. Our children should not be expendable for political or financial gain.''

These letters, as I said, continue to show concern and in some cases outrage that we are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq with $300 million of that going to unbid contracts to private contractors, many of whom are major contributors to the President.

From Kent, Ohio: ``I am appalled by the continuing arrogance of the administration and its deceptive practices. Please call a commission to make them accountable for the killing of Americans in Iraq that I fear has only begun.''

Mr. Speaker, it goes on and on and on, from thousands of concerned citizens, literally hundreds of thousands, across the country.

Mr. Speaker, 165 years ago in this House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams came to the floor of the House to share letters from his constituents, letters which allowed him to speak about an issue that the House rules prohibited him from speaking about.

Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives in 1838, 1840, and 1842 passed a rule prohibiting, banning, a discussion of slavery, the biggest blemish in American history, prohibiting the discussion of slavery, banning the slavery debate from the floor of the House of Representatives. As a result, John Quincy Adams, former President, then Member of Congress in those years, came to the House floor and read letters from various constituents, organizations in his Massachusetts district and throughout the State of Massachusetts.

Today we see something perhaps not quite as serious, but pretty serious, and that is the questions of whether President Bush told us the truth about Iraq, about the weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam Hussein's and Iraq's links to al Qaeda, and the focus the President has lost from the war on terrorism by attacking another country, as bad as Saddam Hussein was, attacking another country and not 'fessing up to the American people the real story.

So because the President, this leadership, and this Congress will not let us really investigate what, in fact, happened, what the President said, what the truth is, I am reading letters tonight from constituents all over Ohio brought to us by an organization called MoveOn.org. MoveOn.org has received almost half a million signatures of people asking for this investigation. And about 100,000 of those petitioners to MoveOn have sent letters to the United States Congress, and I would like to share some of those letters from citizens in my State concerned about investigating how it is that we ended up in Iraq.

From Lorain, Ohio, in my district, a petitioner writes, ``Our leaders must respect our democracy. If our leaders lie or mislead their own people to support military action and to make an immense change in foreign policy, this greatly undermines our country. Saddam Hussein was evil, to be sure. Maybe we should have gone ahead with this invasion, but that decision should have been based on accurate reporting by the leaders and not by deceiving the American people.''

From Cleveland, Ohio: ``United States citizens, particularly the families of soldiers in Iraq, deserve to know the truth about whatever intelligence did or did not exist regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and support for terrorism by Saddam Hussein prior to the war and about whether or not that intelligence was falsely represented to Congress and the American people to make the case for war.''

From Marion, Ohio: ``It is time for the Oval Office to quit hiding behind false and misleading information. We were wrong to invade Iraq. Please help to spread honesty in the Federal Government.''

From Cincinnati, Ohio: ``I am very concerned about what led our government to undertake war in Iraq. Clearly the threat of imminent danger to the U.S. and her citizens was trumped up. It is an extremely serious situation which has led to the loss of over 150 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi citizens, mostly civilians.''

From Cleveland Heights, Ohio: ``There is no graver abuse of trust than a leader who deceives his fellow citizens into sacrificing themselves, their sons and their daughters in the name of protecting their liberty. These charges are too serious not to pursue until every question is answered.''

From Loveland, Ohio: ``This is a very important issue. Our credibility in the world is already at grave risk. We can restore it in part by taking this misinformation seriously and tracking down the process that led to erroneous statements by Colin Powell to the United Nations and by President Bush in his State of the Union address. I implore you to consider the image in a nonpartisan light and support an independent investigation.''

From Columbus, Ohio: ``As a decorated combat veteran and the parent of a currently-serving member of the U.S. Navy, both status that is not shared with many administration officials or Members of Congress, I gather, I am particularly concerned that there be no hint that our military forces are being used primarily for political ends.'' That was from Columbus.

From Cincinnati, Ohio: ``As a daughter and sister of veterans, I am appalled that soldiers may have been lied to about the reasons they were sent to Iraq. Please support an independent, nonpartisan investigation to get to the truth of the administration's call to arms.''

From Granville, Ohio: ``It was obvious at the time that the Bush and Blair administrations were playing fast and loose with the facts in order to drum up support for a war they had wanted to wage since September 11. It is time that the American people and British citizens, as well as people of the world, learn the facts.''

Mr. Speaker, these are letters from constituents in Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, 165 years ago the late 1830s, Congress passed a rule prohibiting the use of the word ``slavery'' in the Chamber of this House, prohibiting debate about the Nation's largest blemish, the Nation's largest embarrassment, the institution of slavery. For some years Members of Congress, because of this House gag rule, could not even debate the issue of slavery in this body.

Mr. Speaker, in those days Congressman John Quincy Adams, former President, elected to Congress after he left the White House, was particularly outraged by that gag rule, and he came to the floor of the House, to the Chamber of this House of Representatives, week after week, day after day in many cases, reading letters from his constituents about the issue of slavery. Since he was prohibited from the debating the issue, he served as the megaphone, and he let his constituents speak about slavery.

Today, we face a similar situation in which the leaders of this Congress have refused to discuss some of the issues about the President's behavior in Iraq, about who knew what when, and as a result, a group called MoveOn.org, a national Internet organization, a group of about 1.4 million citizens, circulated a petition, and the petition said ``We believe Congress should support an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration's distortion of evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.''

Several hundred thousand people signed the petition, tens of thousands of people actually wrote letters about this petition, about this issue. And I would just like to serve as the mouthpiece for those Ohioans who are concerned about what we need as a Nation to find out about the reasons that we actually went to war, whether the President told us the truth.

Ms. Durkin of Cincinnati wrote: ``The possibility that the administration may have misled America (Congress and the American people) is a matter not of politics but of integrity.''

Chris Bache of Poland, Ohio wrote: ``The distortion of intelligence concerning Iraq . . . is a gross violation of the duties of public office.''

Jim Waldfogle from Cincinnati wrote: ``Even if well-intentioned, distortions of the truth can only hurt the credibility of government in the long run. If this has taken place, it needs to be brought as soon as possible by Congress, to restore the public's faith that Washington will not tolerate abuses of the system.''

From Akron, Ohio, Mary Benzie writes: ``Was our son in the Army Reserves sent to Iraq for a cause based on, at best, inaccuracies, at worst, a deliberate deception? How do you think we will feel the next time?''

Timothy A. Bennett of Springfield writes: ``This is an extremely urgent issue which requires investigation. Failure to do so would undermine the public's faith in our democratic institutions. Please support an investigation.''

Constance Bouchard from Wooster, Ohio, writes: ``We seem to have three choices about the missing weapons of mass destruction, none of them good. One, our intelligence is deeply flawed or two, our intelligence was deliberately distorted by the administration, or, three, the weapons have left Iraq and are now in terrorist hands.''

Suzanne Seals of Worthington, Ohio writes: ``I am very frightened for the freedom and welfare of our country when the administration can bully the evidence and distort the truth to a naive public without any accountability. When this behavior is used to wage war, I become even more concerned about the policies of our administration.''

Deborah Steytler of Mentor, Ohio writes: ``Please support appropriate investigations into the methods of war-making and intelligence- gathering.''

Victoria Kelsey of West Chester writes: ``I feel that the exaggerations employed by politicians to push their agendas have overstepped all boundaries in this case and cannot condone it by my silence on this important issue.''

From Kingsville, Ohio, William Venable writes: ``We need to know the truth without spin, without obfuscation, and without prevarication.''

Paul Burnam of Westerville, Ohio writes: ``I am indeed troubled by, at best, the use of outdated and inaccurate evidence to make the case to invade Iraq. The Bush administration needs to be held to account for the which it `marketed' (I am using presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card's word) the war.''

Elmer Fischesser of Cincinnati writes: ``Because individuals are still losing their lives, we have a right to know, as a matter of justice, what was known and how the information was acted upon.''

From Canfield, Ohio, Marcia Malmer writes: ``This cannot be a government by the people if we are given misleading and/or false information on which to base our decisions.''

Mr. Speaker, these are all important letters and important concerns. We do in fact need an investigation to set the public's mind at rest.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, in today's Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper of record, there is an article, FDA's Lobbying Questioning. Let me read a couple of paragraphs:

``In a rare lobbying campaign by a Federal agency, the Food and Drug Administration has formed an unofficial alliance with the pharmaceutical industry to urge House Members to vote against a bill that could flood the Nation with cheap prescription drugs from Canada and overseas.

``The FDA's extraordinary moves to kill the bill'' this article says, ``and the informal lobbying partnership between a Federal regulator and an industry it oversees, has coming under fire from several Members who support this legislation.''

Mr. Speaker, this may not be illegal, what the Food and Drug Administration has done, but it is certainly untoward, it is certainly unprecedented.

In my 11 years as a Member of Congress I have never seen a Federal agency use its civil servants to lobby Congress so directly and so brazenly; and what is particularly outrageous is that they are doing that against American consumers, against America's elderly, against people who need lower-priced prescription drugs. The drug industry's contributions to the Bush administration and to far too many people in this Chamber unfortunately might be paying off.