Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No. 407, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Amendment No. 4 Offered by Mr. Sherman

Madam Speaker, I strongly support House Resolution 921 and America's ally, Israel.

This is a critical time for the entire Middle East. The unprovoked, illegitimate acts of Hamas and Hezbollah in recent days have been despicable. As the President has said, Israel, like any other sovereign nation, ``should be allowed to defend herself.'' Israeli citizens should not have to live with hundreds of Hezbollah's Katyusha (ka-TOO- sha) rockets reigning down upon them in their neighborhoods.

Let there be no question that the attacks on the northern border and the kidnapping of the soldier along the western border are the result of more than 58 years of hatred against Israel by supporters of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. These terrorist organizations simply do not want to live in peace alongside Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah both officially state they are totally dedicated to ending the nation of Israel and killing Israelis.

Certainly, the loss of innocent life anywhere in the world is tragic. We all mourn for families in Lebanon and Israel who have been torn apart in the recent violence. But perhaps the real treachery of extremist terrorists lies in their efforts to assimilate into nations of the world and hide amongst law-abiding citizens. For one full week now, from civilian areas of Lebanon, Hezbollah terrorists have lobbed more than a thousand rockets at innocent people in Israel. In response, Israel retains every right to retaliate against these attacks, and Hezbollah's disregard for innocent life on both sides of the Lebanese- Israeli border has led to needless deaths.

While our brave servicemen and women fight for freedom and democracy in Iraq, we must never forget that the nation of Israel has for decades been the greatest Middle East ally to the U.S. and all democratic, free nations.

The enemies of Israel can choose to live in peace alongside Israel. If they do not choose peace, Israelis have every right to defend their nation, with full confidence the United States will always stand with them.

Madam Speaker, while this week we are discussing ways to treat disease with stem cells, let us not overlook what we should also be doing to prevent disease.

Each year nearly 50,000 adult nonsmokers die from lung cancer or heart disease from secondhand smoke. A recent U.S. Surgeon General report found 60 percent of nonsmokers, about 126 million people, have biologic evidence of nicotine, carbon monoxide and tobacco-specific carcinogens in their systems from secondhand smoke.

In adults, secondhand smoke can increase the risk of developing lung cancer and heart disease by up to 30 percent. And in children secondhand smoke leads to premature birth, asthma, respiratory illness and ear infections.

Encouraging smoke-free workplaces will help to reduce $10 billion in annual medical costs. Offering deductions in health insurance, and smoking-cessation treatment are just a couple of ways that the Federal Government and employers can cut health care costs.

To learn more about ways to save lives and money in health care, I urge my colleagues to visit my Web site at murphy.house.gov.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of sustaining the President's veto. This is not a vote for or against stem cell research. Many U.S. companies and universities are engaged in a great deal of embryonic stem cell research.

In fact, the President and the U.S. Congress have supported this research with over $90 million for embryonic stem cell lines derived from embryos that had already been destroyed with more than 700 shipments to researchers since 2001.

The question is whether to use federal money or U.S. taxpayer dollars to destroy human embryos for research?

The research bears out that several types of stem cell research have been successful. These are adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells.

However, no research has shown embryonic stem cell research to be fruitful. A year ago

when we debated this issue, a study at Seoul National University in Korea was brought up as an example of success to create the world's first embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo. Since then, we've learned that study was filled with erroneous data. The DNA studies on the two preserved stem cells did not match those from the published study and were not cloned human embryonic stem cells.

But, beyond this, we must keep in mind how we use human life and think about where we should draw the line.

Those who support destroying embryos for this research have stated these will be embryos that will be discarded. This is not true.

Many parents would love to adopt these embryos and raise these children as their own. According to the non-partisan RAND Corporation the ``vast majority'' or 88 percent of the 400,000 embryos that have been frozen since the late 1970s are not going to be discarded but are held for family building and not for medical research. In fact, over 21 families who visited the White House last year adopted these embryos in order to fulfill their own dreams of having a family.

Even to refer to these embryos as ones that are unwanted and will be destroyed raises the ultimate question: where do we and where will we draw the line?

If we say a human embryo is unwanted and discardable, we head down the road of asking ``what next?''

Do we view seriously disabled newborns as unwanted? Will it be acceptable to discard them?

This is a road down which we cannot afford to turn.

The research does not support it, morality does not condone it. U.S. taxpayer dollars must not support destroying a life to save a life.

I thank the Speaker and the Members on this as I speak in favor of this amendment.

As a person who has spent my career as a child psychologist and have dealt with many children who have struggled with many problems in families, I have seen families ripped apart by so many things that sometimes law has tried to deal with. Instead, I think over the years we have cut the strength of marriage and relationships by the law and weakened the institution. We have tried to deal with relationships with no-fault divorce, with child custody, with so many other avenues; and it has not helped.

What I do say is, yes, children may be resilient and they have been able to deal with all sorts of difficulties they have faced, but the bottom line is this: I believe very strongly children need a mother and a father in the home. They need strong relationships with men and women both, and they are the ones that I believe are part of what is preserved in this amendment and why I believe we need to support this, if anything, for the sake of those children who need this kind of support in their lifetime.

Mr. Speaker, did you know that a 25-year-old male in good health can purchase a policy for health insurance for $960 in Kentucky and the same policy costs about $5,800 in New Jersey? Did you know that a policy priced at $1,600 in Iowa is $2,600 in Washington State? And did you know that that same policy costs about $4,000 in Massachusetts?

One reason for this disparity is that families have little or no choice when it comes to selecting health care insurance. Where there is no competition, there is very little that drives cost down. Each State has its own health insurance mandates, and some of them are good, but there are about 1,800 of them all across the Nation, including provisions for acupuncturists, massage therapists, and hair replacements.

Many of these mandates may be helpful, but when you add up the cost, they can put health care out of the reach of families. Congress should establish a trial program allowing consumers and families to purchase health insurance policies from other States. Let us give families a choice instead of more costs.

I urge my colleagues to learn more about competition in health insurance by looking at my Web site at Murphy.house.gov. America needs us to go to work on this.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, first, I thank the distinguished chairman, Chairman Wolf, for his work on this bill.

This amendment is intended to highlight the dangerous practice of caller ID fraud or ``call spoofing'' and hope the FCC moves quickly and takes immediate action to protect the public from this. It is a deceptive practice being used to defraud people of their money and deceive citizens into releasing private information.

There are now several Web sites where anyone can change their outgoing phone number to any number that they choose on a temporary basis. This practice is not just for harmless pranks but has tremendous identity theft and other security implications.

For example, the AARP bulletin recently reported that people received false calls claiming they missed jury duty and were asked for their Social Security numbers. The phone number of the local courthouse had shown up on their caller ID.

Criminals have engaged in caller ID fraud to gather private consumer information from businesses that rely on caller ID for authentication, such as financial companies that perform wire transfers. Cell phone voice mailboxes often only require verification that an incoming call is from the user's cell phone number.

Lastly, in 2005, SWAT teams surrounded an empty building in New Brunswick, New Jersey, after police received a call from a woman who said she was being held hostage in an apartment. She was not in the apartment, and the woman had intentionally used a false caller ID.

False caller ID information can be used to bypass safety systems made to prevent domestic violence and harassment. Imagine what can happen when predators use false caller ID numbers to prey upon children and senior citizens. I might add that these phone spoofing Web sites also offer to disguise the voice of the caller and to record the call.

The House has already expressed its will on this matter, unanimously passing H.R. 5126 earlier this month; and I am pleased to be a cosponsor of that bill. I have another bill, H.R. 5304, that would go a step further by amending criminal law to protect Americans from this practice.

We cannot keep waiting to deal with this insidious problem and must ask the FCC to move forward quickly.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a courageous hero of the war on terror, Private First Class Steven William Freund.

Steven Freund of Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, attended Thomas Jefferson High School, and he loved to hunt and fish and do just about anything outdoors. He joined the Marines and served in Iraq for 6 months, already escaping two separate roadside bombs. It was dangerous there, and he knew that, but he strongly believed in and was dedicated to America's mission.

But on May 23, Private Freund made the ultimate sacrifice for his mission and the Nation he loved. He was tragically killed by a third roadside bomb while riding in a Humvee conducting combat operations outside Fallujah.

Private Freund is survived by his father, Steven Freund, his brother Mark Menzietti, sister Angela Menzietti, cousins Matt Freund, Jason Eiben and Justin Eiben, and his aunt Donna Eiben of Pittsburgh, who was his legal guardian.

His funeral was a solemn, but beautiful, service that I attended, along with many friends and family. After the funeral, he was awarded the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with combat cluster in a graveside ceremony.

Mr. Speaker, I know that I speak for this entire body when I express the deepest condolences to his family on behalf of a grateful Nation. Semper Fi, Private Freund.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman and chairman, Mr. Deal. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this legislation and to have worked closely with him on this vitally important bill that saves money and lives, and I am pleased to represent Cornerstone Community Center, one of the centers in my district.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5573 is a great step toward meeting our Nation's health care needs. Community health centers are a critically important solution to providing affordable and accessible quality care to millions of Americans who are uninsured or underinsured.

Medical care at community health centers is approximately $250 less than the average annual expenditure for office-based doctor visits. And keep in mind that over 30 percent of patients seeking care at a health center are uninsured. That is some 15 million people a year that seek care.

Moreover, health center services save money and lives by treating diseases before they become chronic conditions, require hospital care or require a trip to the emergency room.

I have with me here a list of the typical procedures that are offered at community health centers: Prenatal care, dental care, mental health care, substance abuse counseling, hearing and vision screening. They also offer discount prescription drugs. They provide vital case management for those with chronic illness, and keep in mind that 80 percent of health care costs go to those with chronic illness. Oftentimes, those complex cases require that sort of case management to help them meet the needs of their cases. They provide smoking cessation classes, blood pressure monitoring, weight reduction programs, and a host of other programs so vital to saving money in health care.

It also provides a health care home for many folks, many clinics giving patients a card so they recognize this is a place where they know their doctor and their doctor knows them.

By expanding community health centers, Americans could save as much as 30 percent for Medicaid patients, or $17 billion annually, due to reduced specialty care referrals and fewer hospital admissions.

However, our Nation's community health centers are experiencing a staffing crisis. A March 2006 publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that community health centers have a 13 percent vacancy rate for family physicians, a 9 percent vacancy rate for interns, 20 percent vacancy for OB-GYNs, and an 8 percent vacancy rate for podiatrists, 22 percent for psychiatrists, and 18 percent for dentists. In other words, although we are trying to meet the needs of the 15 million who use the community health centers, the problem is growing in that not enough doctors are available to provide that care.

Vacancies of needed medical personnel at community health centers jeopardizes access to care to the Nation's uninsured and underinsured. Plus, the President has called for more centers around the Nation to fill our needs, and 11,000 more doctors are needed to fill those needs.

I have a letter from the National Association of Community Health Centers that says there is a dire shortage of health care providers in underserved communities where health centers are located. Congress and the President have worked to double the capacity of the Federal health centers programs, but in order to ensure that millions of additional patients can be served through this initiative, health centers must also double their workforce by adding 12,000 clinicians and 48,000 administrative staff soon.

Many skilled health care providers are willing to volunteer their time and

expertise. Volunteer doctors acting as Good Samaritans have proved invaluable to clinics across the Nation. However, many skilled medical volunteers are turned away because community health centers cannot afford to cover their additional medical liability insurance.

Over the past year, I have been pleased to work with Chairman Deal, Mr. Bilirakis, and also Chairman Barton to make volunteering at community health centers more practical to doctors in order to meet the needs of families. Community health centers play a key role in any reform-minded approach to improving our health care delivery system.

Mr. Speaker, there is a desperate need for doctors and medical personnel of all sorts at community health centers, and I pledge I will continue to work with Chairman Barton and Chairman Deal and other members of the Energy and Commerce Committee and every Member of this body to explore every solution possible to meet our Nation's community health center staffing crisis.

We owe this to the patients, to the taxpayers of America who recognize this is a cost-saving, viable measure where we can provide care to millions of Americans who otherwise do not have it. This is the way we should be doing this, through community health centers, centers where the doctors know the patients and the patients know the doctors.

Please let us continue to work together to make this care affordable and accessible for patients all around the Nation so they do not have to see dire consequences that come when their conditions get worse because they couldn't receive the care they needed.

I thank the chairman for yielding me this time and for our collaboration together.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, as a psychologist who spent many years working in the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, I was pleased to cosponsor H.R. 5574, the Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act of 2006, and I am pleased to speak on the bill today.

The Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education program has been of significant help to Children's Hospitals across the country, like Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, whose pediatrics department is also headed by Dr. David Perlmutter. For several years I served on the staff of Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh and remain on the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh as an associate professor of pediatrics; so I have seen firsthand through many years the ongoing value of pediatric education for young physicians where they have so much of their learning that comes not from books but at the bedside. Children's Hospitals provide the world class expertise needed to teach the next generation of medical professionals.

Recently, I received a letter from Mr. Roger Oxendale, the president of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, who summarized the importance of the bill by saying, ``The Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education program provides the ability to serve all children through clinical care, research, and public health advocacy, as well as its primary purpose of the training of future pediatricians, pediatric specialists, and pediatric research scientists.'' And this bill, he said, ``means a great deal to our hospital and the future of pediatric medicine.'' That support has really echoed throughout our Nation's Children's Hospitals in terms of the service they provide but also what is needed to keep that ongoing medical education going.

This payment program provides Federal funds to freestanding Children's

Hospitals to support the training of pediatric and other residents in Graduate Medical Education programs. This program compensates for the disparity in the level of Federal funding for teaching hospitals for pediatrics versus other hospitals.

So I would urge all of my colleagues to support this vital and necessary legislation to reauthorize the training for pediatric programs for another 5 years and to ensure that America can continue to meet the health care needs of our Nation's children with high quality.

After September 11th, Mr. Speaker, bin Laden's deputies said, ``People of America, your government is leading you into a losing battle. Remember, your government was defeated in Vietnam, fled in panic from Lebanon, rushed out of Somalia, and slapped across the face in Aden. Your government today is leading you into a losing war.''

And no wonder. Look at our past. November 1979: 52 Americans taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Iran. We had a failed response. April 1983: 17 Americans killed at our embassy in Beirut. We took no action. October 1983: 241 Marines killed, 100 wounded. Our Marines were redeployed. April 1988: 259 killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. We sought indictments. February 1993: Six killed and a thousand injured after the explosion of the first World Trade Center bombing. We took them to court. October 1993: 18 U.S. servicemen were killed and 84 wounded in Somalia. We withdrew our troops. August 1998: 224 killed at U.S. embassies. We fired cruise missiles in Afghanistan and Sudan.

October 2000, 17 U.S. killed and 30 wounded in the USS Cole attack. We took no action.

However, since September 11 we have been much different. We fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, and now we are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, and the U.S. is sending a message to the terrorists and the world, and we are different and we will respond.

Now, there will be disagreements between leaders who are retired and current ones. This is part of history. Witness the disagreements between Lincoln and McClellan, Patton and Montgomery, MacArthur and Truman.

But now we are having success. Our troops are being redeployed outside of the cities of Iraq. We are transferring the battle to Iraqi security forces and their police, and now they have a government where they must face the scourge of al Qaeda, and we cannot let them face it alone.

I wish we could finish quickly, but I know we cannot finish hastily. I think one wounded soldier said it to me, summed it up best, he said, I want to go back and finish the job, I want to fight them there, not in our suburbs.

I know we cannot fight them in our courts. I know we cannot fight terrorists with our police in our streets. I know surely we cannot fight terrorist murderers with diplomacy. Let's finish the job of terrorism, then we bring them home.

I thank the chairman for this. I have worked with you in the committee to move this bill forward. I know it has a number of things that continue to help local franchising authorities to collect the 5 percent of revenues and also allows some other aspects in there, but I want to get to a colloquy about these two specific issues.

Many localities in my district are concerned about their continued management of rights-of-way. In Pennsylvania, such management has been said to include not only the physical, but also the fiscal management of those rights-of-way. Currently, when a cable wire carries multiple services, a Pennsylvania municipality can charge rent based on some formula for the use of rights-of-way.

Do you see the bill having an adverse effect on a locality's income by shielding operator revenue in this manner?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One other question.

In addition to retaining rights-of-way management authority, isn't it true that municipalities would still have the authority to negotiate franchises with cable operators under this bill?

Yes. Is it true that municipalities would still have the authority to negotiate franchises with cable operators under this bill? In other words, they still have the authority to negotiate local franchise agreements.

Thank you, and I appreciate your responses and clarifying these issues, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this landmark mine safety legislation, S. 2803. Mine safety has been on all our minds this year, as Americans mourned the heartbreaking disasters at the Aracoma Alma and Sago mines in West Virginia in January. Thus, throughout the process of crafting this bill, all parties have wanted the end product to strongly improve safety for miners.

In my district in southwestern Pennsylvania, the mining industry has been a central part of the way of life for a century and a half. My great-grandfather was a coal miner, who worked in Pennsylvania mines when carts were pulled by mules and mines were lit by candles. Mining was very dangerous work then. The mining industry has certainly made remarkable strides ever since.

Today is another great step forward for miners in Pennsylvania and across the Nation; therefore, I am pleased to support S. 2803. On March 16, as mine safety legislation was being crafted, I was pleased to testify on the subject of mine safety before the Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. On that day, I expressed many concerns about current mine conditions. For instance, I cited my concern about whether miners are sufficiently employing technology to communicate with one another, especially when accidents occur. S. 2803 requires that all mines provide immediate notification of accidents and regularly update their emergency response plans. At the hearing, I also raised my discomfort with the use of ``belt air,'' which can be unhealthy to breathe and even flammable. Accordingly, the bill before us prohibits the use of conveyor belts to ventilate work areas.

While recent tragedies have dominated the mining industry news of late, I hope we recount the success stories of the mining industry alongside some of the failures. For instance, CONSOL Energy, based in my district, sent their own rescue teams to the Sago mine in January. The CONSOL rescue teams arrived first at the scene, and they have worked tirelessly on many other occasions to help miners throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia, regardless of who owns the mine. They are a success story I am pleased to highlight, of which we should all be proud.

The coal industry has helped fuel this Nation for 150 years, and coal can be used to heat our homes, power our economy, and protect our Nation for at least another 150 years if we continue to use it. We all grieved the tragic accidents in West Virginia in January. This bill will help prevent such accidents in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman.

Many times on this floor I have heard debate talk about how America has lost some of its manufacturing capacity to other nations, particularly at times with talk about defense issues such as strategic metals. Many people lament that if we have lost that capacity at times of problems or national security, national defense issues, where will we get it from? We have to depend upon other countries to import that.

Well, we indeed are in the same situation now with our petroleum products that are refined. We import 2 million barrels a day from other countries, from Western Europe, from Saudi Arabia, from Venezuela, from some countries that are more volatile politically than others. The same thing occurs when we are importing other crude oil from other countries, and we recognize the importance of not having to depend upon other countries that one day may be a political friend, and the next day may do such things as say we are cutting off the oil unless you let us have nuclear weapons.

Here we are in that same situation when it comes to oil refineries. It takes about eight to 10 years to go through the permitting process for an oil refinery, a preposterous amount of time, but it is important that all permits and all environmental needs are met. This bill does not gut any of those.

As a matter of fact, what it does is it appoints someone to coordinate and make sure that that process continues on and there are no delays. Once a permitting takes place, it takes an additional 2 to 3 years to construct the plant. So, if we were to pass this today and the Senate were to pass it and the President were to sign this, it would be perhaps another 10 years, a decade, before products started to flow out of there.

We simply cannot delay this anymore. It increases the demand, it reduces the supply, and I believe if the law of supply and demand is telling us anything right now, America is demanding that lawmakers increase the supply.

We know that studies have been done telling us that price gouging is not the issue. It is a matter of having adequate supplies of petroleum and petroleum products. So, while we are working on conservation, while we are working on getting hybrid fuel cell vehicles, we need to pass this bill so we can get more of the supply here and reduce the cost.

Mr. Speaker, a couple weeks ago, I provided for Members of Congress this document: ``Critical Condition: The State of the Union's Health Care, 2006,'' put out by my office. In that we outlined many programs that would help reduce costs of health care in America.

Let me expand on one of them about Community Health Centers, which are nonprofit centers to provide primary and preventative care for folks who are low income or who are uninsured and underinsured. However, a recent report by the Journal of the American Medical Association said that although these clinics are of tremendous value, there is a shortage of medical personnel at them. A study published by Dr. Roger Rosenblatt of the University of Washington says that there is a 13 percent shortage of family physicians, a 20 percent shortage of obstetricians, and a 22.5 percent shortage of psychiatrists for these positions.

Oddly enough, if a physician is employed by a Community Health Center, they are covered by the Federal liability, but if someone wants to volunteer at a clinic, they are not.

It is important that we provide mechanisms to allow physicians and other medical personnel to volunteer at these clinics. America needs that. The uninsured and underinsured need that, and, quite frankly, it would save a tremendous amount of money.

People can receive further information on my Web site, murphy.house.gov.