Floor Statements

I appreciate it. One of the things--we have got a little old school thing going here too that I ought to mention. But one of the things that I think is very important that everyone I talked to in August, Canfield Fair, St. Mathias, Slovak Festival, Irish plans, Italian-American Festival, every single time people were understanding the fact that they are paying for all of these uninsured people right now.

They get it. They know this $1,800 a year increase they are going to get next year is because there are going to be another 50 million people going to the emergency rooms. Doesn't make any sense. But I think one of the things too that we need to remember when we were talking to seniors about Medicare is that we have this population, especially, I think, in the industrial Midwest where people are 55, 60 years old, have lost their jobs, lost their insurance. Maybe they are still working, but the insurance company or their employer is not going to pay for their insurance anymore.

We have a very unhealthy segment of our population going into the Medicare program. And so if you are living in northeast Ohio, and if you are 55 or 60 years old, you lose your health care, a lot of people are saying to themselves, I am going to wait until I get into Medicare to get my heart surgery. I am going to wait until I get into Medicare to get my hip surgery. Or I am going to wait until I get into Medicare for you name it.

And so from 60 to Medicare age, a lot of things go wrong that you probably could have managed better. So we have this very unhealthy population going into the Medicare program.

So what our seniors need to know because our friends on the other side who don't want any kind of health care reform at all are saying, well, they are going to cut Medicare. Well, it's nice to see a few Republicans stand up and actually have some concern about Medicare because Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist and these guys are talking about letting it wither on the vine and those kinds of things.

But it's going to save Medicare money if we have this 50-, 55-, 60- year-old population getting the kind of preventive, manageable care so that they don't all of a sudden say, I am going to wait until I get into Medicare. And then you go into Medicare and you need something that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars more. That's what is hurting our Medicare system more. So we need to bring some of those costs down.

It may sound good to say if we just fix this or fix that, fix this and fix that, we will be okay. The problem we have now is we have this patchwork system that we just have been constantly patching up, and it is not addressing one of the main problems, and that is we have got all of these uninsured people. Some people say it is 10 million, some people say 15 million, so it is probably somewhere in between.

But the bottom line is, Mr. Meek, all these people are going to the emergency room. That makes no sense to anybody. So you go in with your insurance card, you are paying for the person who is walking in there. What we are asking people to do in this reform package is for people who are now using the emergency room as their primary care doctor, that they will have to pay something now. They will have skin in the game. They will have a copay, they will have a premium. You are going to get something out of them.

That is how we are going to help build this new system, is by having people who are now getting something for nothing will have to pay and have skin in the game and take money out of their own pocket, Mr. Meek, and pay for their health care, and that will help everybody.

I want to say two things and then I will be done for the night, too.

There was this interesting article in Newsweek this week. It was about a book about William F. Buckley and about the battle between the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and the William F. Buckley National Review kind of wing, and there was this little battle post-New Deal.

But it's interesting to note that right after Roosevelt got in, there was this extreme reaction, very similar to what we're seeing where every critique of what Roosevelt was doing was socialism, communism, and all of these fancy names. But there were also these vigilante minutemen who would show up at these events carrying their guns, and it was amazing, because that's exactly what we're dealing with here.

There's no solution. There are just these critiques of how the train is moving down the track. The American people want to go in another direction.

But I wanted to share this story because I think this is what we're all talking about.

I ran into this woman at the Canfield Fair. I stood outside the Democratic Party tent. This is one of the biggest fairs in Ohio over Labor Day. I stood there for 4 hours, 4 hours, just south of Youngstown, Ohio. I had two people out of all the entire time come up to me and say, What are you doing with this socialist--and they're also against the energy bill, so it was totally the right wing talk radio crowd that was like inundating them with this stuff. Two people came up against this.

But what this one woman said, she's 35 years old, married, kid. Husband just lost a job. They made about $58,000 a year when he worked. They now make $32,000 a year. She is working. He, after

he lost his job, is going back to school. No income, trying to better their life. The daughter was in the stroller there.

This woman is telling me this story. She has a condition. She's got to take medication. It's very expensive. She can't afford it. Now they're paying out of pocket. She makes $32,000 a year, down from $58,000 because the husband lost the job. And she said, Do you want me to go on welfare and go on Medicaid? Because that's what I'm forced to do.

Now, if there's any value we respect here in America, it's somebody that wants to work. She wants to work. She wants to provide for her kids, her husband. She wants to have a nice family. She wants to have the dignity of work. And the system now is set up that that really may be the best decision for her and her family is to go on Medicaid and take welfare benefits. That's not what we want.

And what we're saying is why should this woman who's working her rear end off, her husband is going back to school to get retrained, those are the people we want to help. That's what this whole thing, the whole thousand pages that everyone keeps talking about, that's what this whole thing is about. It's about helping that woman, her husband, and that kid.

And that's why, Debbie, as you said, the stakes are high. Kendrick, the stakes are high, and we need to pass this thing.

Madam Speaker, I rise this evening in recognition of Mr. Ralph J. Infante of Niles, Ohio. Mr. Infante passed away May 26, 2009. Mr. Infante was a life-long resident of the Mahoning Valley. He leaves his wife, Angeline Ragozine Infante, whom he was married to for 60 years. He also leaves 4 sons, 2 daughters, a sister, 2 brothers, 14 grandchildren, 5 great-grandchildren, and many friends from around the valley.

Mr. Infante worked for many years in the Mahoning Valley. He graduated from Niles McKinley High School in 1947 after serving in World War II. Mr. Infante was a Veteran of the United States Navy, who served in the South Pacific Theater during World War II. He received an Honorable Discharge from the Naval Service of the United States of America on the 29th day of April, 1946 at the U.S. Naval Personnel Separation Center, Great Lakes, Illinois. He served with honor and distinction during his time of service in the U.S. Navy.

Mr. Infante was employed as a die setter at Faull and Son Tool and Die Co. for 26 years. He was also employed for the City of Niles as a Municipal Court Bailiff and worked for the waste water treatment plant for 15 years, retiring in 1990. He was also very active in local politics, serving as Niles 3rd Ward Councilman for 5 years.

Mr. Infante was truly a great part of the community. He was an honorary lifetime member of the Niles Men's Democratic Club and the Italian Fraternal Home of Girard. He was a charter member of the Italian American War Veterans Post 39 in Girard and The Bagnoli Irpino Club, as well as a lifelong member of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church in Niles.

Mr. Infante was an avid Cleveland Browns fan and enthusiast of The Ohio State University. Although his beloved wife, Angeline, was a Cleveland Indians fan his beloved team was the New York Yankees. His six children would be split down the middle (3 New York Yankee

fans and 3 Cleveland Indian fans) which made for interesting family dinner conversations and game day exchanges. Some of their biggest disagreements came when the Yankees and the Indians played each other.

Mr. Infante will always be remembered, as his high school yearbook proclaimed, ``Never Failed a Friend and Never Feared a Foe.''

Thank you, Mr. Boccieri.

I was reading an article--and I was telling the Congressman from Virginia this. There was an article in The New York Times today, because a lot of people in our districts are like, Well, you know, China is not going to abide by this, and India is not going to have to deal with this, and we're out on our own here, and we've got to compete against these people.

There are actually provisions in the bill on steel and paper and some other things that do control imports coming from these other countries; but today in The New York Times, there was an article about this town in China where there was a big factory that was poisoning the people who lived within the area of this factory, and these people were going to the hospital. They were sick. They were nauseous. It was a bad scene. It was because of the pollution that was coming out of this factory; 400,000 people a year die in China because of air pollution.

And at some point, based on China's long history, they have these uprisings among the people, the government squelches it and tries to fix the problem. So if you have 400,000 people a year dying in China, at some point those people are going to want clean air. At some point.

I say this. Let China sleep for a couple of years. Let us get ahead of the curve. Let us make these investments and then produce these products, and finally we can export products to China that they're going to want because their people are demanding it.

So I wanted to come down and join this chorus because I think this is an opportunity for places like Youngstown, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; Canton, Ohio; northeast Ohio, where we have a manufacturing base in Virginia or New York or wherever the case may be to finally export things. Eight thousand component parts to a windmill, four hundred tons of steel. Solar panels have all of these complex components. We can do this. This is opportunity. Let's see it like it is.

And I tell folks back in our district, we have a Lordstown plant, a Lordstown General Motors plant, that is going to make this new car, Chevy Cruze. Why are they putting it at Lordstown? Why are they building the Chevy Cruze? Forty miles to the gallon. That's why. It's a green car.

Let's read the tea leaves here. This is where the country is going. This is where we need to be. We can finally be at a point, Mr. Boccieri, where we export products to China and we make money and create jobs here. That's what this is about. And we can talk about clean air and climate change, and I believe in all of that and I think it's great, but the bottom line is this means jobs for northeast Ohio.

And I think the more we talk about that, the more we recognize that, the more we plug our businesses in. Mr. Boccieri got a $30 billion amendment in to help the auto industry convert over to alternative energy. Those are the things we need to do, and those are the things that are in this bill.

So I yield back, but I think this is opportunity, and if we see it as opportunity, it will work for us.

That's exactly the point, that if we do nothing-- which is what our friends on the other side of the aisle want us to do is nothing. We know that over the last 8 years, $1,100 increase in energy costs. So keep doing that, you know what you're going to get.

What we're saying is we can't afford to keep doing nothing. We have to do something. And what we're doing is reducing our dependency. Give us control over what we're doing. We have no control in many ways when we're depending on sheiks in the Middle East. So, to your point, we've got to take control of this issue.

We're Americans, for God's sake. And you know what? When have we started in this country to be afraid of doing big things? Let's wrap our arms around this energy issue and take control of it

and take it under the umbrella of the United States of America and stop all of these problems. You're exactly right. If gas is $4 a gallon this summer, we would be getting calls from our constituents, What are you doing? And you know what? If it wasn't for the recession, it probably would be. So next year, there will be $4-a-gallon gas, and hopefully we're moving along to fix this problem.

Mr. Speaker, we are here to discuss the health care reform proposal that is now being discussed in Washington, D.C., and really throughout the country.

We are going to use tonight's hour of our 30-Something Working Group to talk a little bit about what is in the bill--what is actually in the bill, not what is being said on talk radio or from some Internet site that is basing their comments and their critiques of this bill on really things that don't exist. And we want to do that.

It is interesting that tonight the 30-Something Working Group will be articulating this, and then over the course of the rest of the week and into the fall, to discuss this critical piece of legislation for the American people because one of the previous speakers was talking a little bit, and it reminded me, as I heard some of the rhetoric, they were talking about health care savings plans and all of these accounts, a couple of things came to mind.

The origination of this 30-Something Working Group was the creation of then-Minority Leader Pelosi to discuss Social Security privatization. That is how this whole thing originated 4 or 5 years ago with Congressman Meek, and then Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz and I, and then later on Chris Murphy from Connecticut. And we were discussing all of these issues, but one of the issues was Social Security privatization.

So before we get into this bill, I think it is critical for us to remember that our friends on the other side who are now so critical of what we're trying to do here were in charge of the House, of the Senate, of the White House. They had President Bush, they controlled the Senate, they had this Chamber--Tom DeLay was running the show--and they didn't do anything for health care costs. So I think it's important that that's out there. And if they wanted to pass some kind of comprehensive health care reform, they should have done it because we are still dealing with the problems that they failed to solve when they were in. And this is a problem facing millions of Americans, millions of small businesses that we need to help address. So that's why, as we talk today, this needs to be in context.

The Social Security privatization, I mention that because, let's imagine where our country would be today if our friends on the other side had their wish and privatized Social Security. Can you imagine where this country would be today if President Bush and Tom DeLay got their wish and privatized Social Security? I know in my district we're dealing with all kinds of pension issues--Delphi salary, Delphi hourly, UAW, steelworkers have all lost their jobs, their pensions in many cases are in jeopardy. Thank God for the PBGC to help cushion the blow. But can you imagine the cost to this country if the Republicans had been able to fully implement their economic agenda? They did the tax cuts, they did most of their economic agenda, but fortunately we were able to prevent privatized Social Security. So it's important for us to realize that as we begin to debunk some of these myths.

I would just like to suggest, Mr. Speaker, as we go through this, and I have encouraged my constituents and

would encourage all Members of Congress within an earshot to base their critiques on what's actually in the legislation. Don't we at least owe that to the American people? This is big. This is comprehensive. This is complex, multidimensional. Every chip you move moves another chip on the table. But we owe it to the American people to have an honest, mature discussion.

The rhetoric that is being fed to the American people is outrageous. I want to start with one, and I will go through some others and we will talk about the bill a little bit. But one of the commercials about how much it will cost--and my friend from Texas mentioned it a few minutes ago, and I would love to talk about that and the CBO scoring. But one of the things that I'm hearing from people who listen to Fox News or listen to talk radio is this plan is going to cover illegal immigrants.

How dare you drive up my health care costs. I have to lose my pension, but you're going to spend the American tax dollars covering illegal immigrants. It is clear, right here in section 246, ``No Federal payment for undocumented aliens.'' ``Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.'' Black and white. Can we move on? Can we now move on and talk about how much health care is costing our country, that it may bankrupt our country? Section 246, ``No Federal payment for undocumented aliens.'' Right here. So now let's have an honest discussion about what's in this bill as we start to knock down some of these.

First, the cost of doing nothing, which has happened over the last 13 or 14 years. We haven't done anything since President Clinton tried to move health insurance reform in the early nineties. We know that if we do nothing, that there will be an $1,800 increase for a family of four every single year. That's what happens if we do nothing.

There has been a 4 percent increase in property insurance and an 11 percent increase in health insurance year in, year out; year in and year out. We can pull out boards and say it's going to cost you this and cost you that, but the biggest expense is the cost of doing nothing.

Look at this system. It's atrocious. To even call it a health care system is ridiculous because it's not. Why would you possibly be okay with a system that doesn't try to prevent sickness? Why would you be okay with a system that waits--we don't want to prevent you from getting sick, but gosh, once you do, come right into the emergency room, we'll take care of you because we're a compassionate country. And we are a compassionate country, but let's be a smart country. Let's be a wise country. And true compassion would be not waiting until someone gets deathly sick and shows up at the emergency room. God gave us a brain, too, and he wants us to use that brain. And we are all in agreement here, as we use the gift that God has given us to use logic and process information, that if we take some of this money that we are spending in the system, and instead of waiting and being reactive and rescuing people, we spend a fraction of that money on the front end and we make sure that everyone has some preventative coverage.

This is not a Democratic idea, it's common sense. Talk to the CEOs of hospitals. I've got one in my district. He is a Republican CEO. He says, Please, Tim, whatever you do, give me the opportunity to give this person a $20 prescription instead of having this person show up in my emergency room and costing me $100,000. This is not brain surgery that we're trying to perform here.

And the fear tactics and the fear tactics and the fear tactics that are coming from Members of Congress, they're coming from talk radio, they're coming from Fox News about illegal immigrants are going to be covered under this plan. And as I read earlier in section 246, they're not. They're not. Section 246, ``No Federal payment for undocumented aliens.'' ``Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.'' I'm going to say that to every single person I meet who brings it up because this debate has more to do with the well-being of all of our citizens than to try to be demagogued and try to alienate people.

You look at our plan, and it covers 97 percent. Why doesn't it cover 100 percent? Well, for the reason I just said. And it is already in law where illegal immigrants can't be covered under SCHIP, they can't be covered under Medicare, they can't be covered under Medicaid. And from the employer-based system that we already have, an employer is not allowed to hire an illegal immigrant, so how could you cover them under this plan, if you're under an employer-based system, when an employer is not allowed to hire an undocumented worker? So let's put this aside and let's have this discussion. The American people want us to have a mature discussion here. Small business owners want us to have a mature discussion.

I got a call today in my office. I periodically pick up the phone and chat with my constituents who call, and the concern was about seniors on Medicare being hurt by this plan. It's important for our seniors to recognize--our friend said, it's $9,200 a family. And I'm happy to pay my share because I remember when my grandparents were in their last months, weeks, years of their life, they had health care because of the Medicare program. So all of these folks who want to not have the government involved in health care, you know, tell your parents and your grandparents to give back their Medicare. Give it back. You don't want it. The government's involved in that. Give it back. No Medicare. Of course you're not going to say that. Of course you're not.

And to have this discussion--honestly, we would say we could save money in Medicare. We should. Not on the backs of our seniors, but there are a lot of overpayments, in Medicare Advantage, for example, that we can squeeze out of the system. One of the costs to Medicare is the fact that there is no previous care for a lot of people. So if you're 60 or 61 or 59, you see the date coming where you're going to be Medicare eligible and you don't have health insurance coverage or you don't have a good plan or you have a preexisting condition in which you can't get health insurance, you have heart disease or you have cancer and it has not been in remission long enough--I had this woman come to a round table I had the other day. She had cancer. She got kicked off her plan, got cancer, and then could not get on any other health insurance plan because she had this preexisting condition. Her cancer wasn't gone for 10 years, so until it was gone for 10 years no one would pick her up. Tragic in the United States of America. But a lot of people do that. And so they wait. Instead of getting health insurance, they think, I'll be on Medicare in a few years, so I will just wait this out. And that leads to some chronic issues, chronic disease issues. That leads to, again, not preventing things from happening. Maybe cancer is spreading, maybe breast cancer, maybe cervical cancer because they failed to go and get preventative care. So they get into the Medicare program, and costs blow up because they've waited. So part of squeezing some of the fat out of Medicare is adding this element of prevention.

And this is what our grandparents told us growing up. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Don't get yourself into trouble. You get in a fight, well, I was right, he was wrong. You should have not gotten in the fight, then you wouldn't have all these series of events that happened that you now have to deal with. Prevent yourself from getting in these situations.

That's what we're trying to do with this legislation. It makes a great deal of sense. Another myth that has been forwarded by our friends on the other side is the cost that CBO gave a week or two ago in their analysis that the trillion dollars that we are saying needs to be spent in this plan is actually $2 trillion or $3 trillion. I don't know exactly what the exact number is from the Congressional Budget Office.

Now, this is the point I want to make. The Congressional Budget Office is nonpartisan, so they deal a blow to the Democrats and then they deal a blow to the Republicans, but, you know, we have an opportunity--they're not partisan. They've slammed everybody. But what we want to say, and what needs to be highlighted is, in the

CBO analysis of the health care plan, when they factor in the cost and they try to do the long-term costs and the long-term analysis, they do not factor in prevention.

So as I mentioned with the CEO of the hospital the other day, you know, if you're not factoring in this person who shows up at the emergency room with late stage cancer, when you maybe could have given them access to an OB/GYN or a mammogram or regular prostate checks, I mean, these are the kind of things that will prevent that. So if you're just adding what if this person doesn't have health care and shows up in the emergency room and the long-term cost of that person, without factoring in the preventive side, that cost would balloon. But common sense will tell you that the prevention will lower the costs. And that's what CBO has not factored in.

So this prevention can save the system a heck of a lot of money. Now, the CBO, one of the other myths is that the CBO, or our friends are saying, Well, this is going to dry up the employer health care plan or the employer-based system. And it's going to put--everyone's going to go into the public option and they're not going to stick with their employers. And so CBO did an analysis of this. So, as I said a couple of minutes ago, CBO blasted the Democrats. We have a response to that, saying that they failed to factor in the preventative aspects of our bill. And so the next myth is that our friends are saying that this is going to destroy the employer-based system. So I'd like to read an excerpt from the CBO letter analyzing this. Over the weekend they did this.

It says there will be an increase in employer-sponsored insurance coverage. This is a quote, We estimate that about 12 million people who would not be enrolled in an employment-based plan under current law would be covered by one in 2016 largely because the mandate for individuals to be insured would increase workers' demand for insurance coverage through their employer.

So they're saying that 12 million people who would not be enrolled now would be covered by one in 2016. So an increase of the employer- based system in 2016 by 12 million, largely, because employers want to give their folks a benefit. And under this plan, they will be negotiating with millions of other people, as opposed to, in the instance of a small business, just being out there on their own with five, 10, 15, 20 people trying to piece this whole thing together. And we'll go through the cost of doing nothing for small businesses.

It's incredible. So they see this as a real opportunity to leverage their business with others and therefore, increase the amount of people who will be covered under the employer plan.

Third-party validator, Congressional Budget Office, not always in agreement with the Democrats, says that that's just false; Medicaid coverage does not crowd out private health insurance. CBO does not anticipate a substantial shift from private insurance to Medicaid. Specifically, we estimate that about 1 million people who would otherwise have employment-based insurance or individually purchased coverage would end up enrolling in Medicaid in 2016. So very small numbers.

One of the things, too, there's been this Lewin Group's analysis about the public option and people going into the public option. CBO knocks that down. And it's good to know, I think, I'm trying to remember, I think it was United Health who, yep, the Lewin Group, who did this analysis saying everybody's going to leave employer and go to this public option. That study was funded by United Health Care and requested by the rightwing Heritage Foundation. It's been widely discredited for its flawed review of the House legislation. So it's important, again, that we base our analysis on what the facts are and what's actually in the bill.

So the CBO refuted this Lewin group estimate, quote, For several reasons, we anticipate that our estimate of the number of enrollees in the public plan would be substantially smaller than the Lewin Group's, even if we assume that all employers would have that option.

So CBO's projecting 10 to 11 million people would maybe go into the public option, a very, very small number. And it's important for us to remember that. So, again, another myth, that there's going to be a decrease in employer-based health care. Not true, CBO, nonpartisan, actually an increase of 12 million people by 2016.

Also, stated by our friends on the right, that this is going to drive people to this public option. CBO, again, nonpartisan, saying that's just not true; that that just won't happen.

One of the other things that I think's important to remember, again, doing nothing costs, will cost you or your family next year $1,800 for a family of four, a $1,800 increase. And that is not just next year and then it ends. As people know, it keeps going.

And so there's a business in my district, I was talking to the gentleman who owns the business. He happens to be on both sides of the insurance industry. He's a provider, but he also has 150 people who he employs. And over the course of the last 5 years, he's had an increase, aggregate increase of, I think, 42 percent in his health care costs for his company. And then he's on the provider side, so he gets paid by insurance companies, and with a 42 percent increase on health care for his folks, but yet, he got no increase for the services that he was providing to the insurance company.

So you see again that we need reform in the system where you can't just continue to increase costs, not pay your provider, and deny coverage. And that was really one of the messages that was hammered home in our townhall--it wasn't a townhall, it was a roundtable that we had this weekend in Niles, Ohio, at Vernon's Cafe, that a lot of people are very, very concerned about this preexisting, being denied for a preexisting condition. And with all the money that we have in this system, for us, as a country, to say, Oh, no, you have cancer. You're on your own. You're not eligible for Medicare yet. You're not poor enough to be on Medicaid yet. And you've got to go out and try to get COBRA coverage or something else is completely outrageous and needs to be dealt with in this country.

And I feel like this is a moral issue for our country, for people to have to have that level of suffering that is unnecessary. There's enough suffering already with the cancer or with the issues that, the health issues that people are dealing with. We don't need to add to it. There should be a level of security within the system that we know everybody will get taken care of.

One of the issues that we have to deal with and tried to be helpful with, is this issue of cost. Now, this is a chart of our expenditures up to 2006. As you can see, the United States is in red. France, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom are in a shade of blue. And this line here is life expectancy. So you can see that we're all pretty much in the same realm of life expectancy, give or take a year and a half, 2 years, which, if it's you, that's a very important distinction. But on the average, we're pretty much around the late seventies, early eighties.

And the cost, as you can see, of health care for Americans goes through the roof. Goes through the roof. So you can see how much we are paying per individual in 2006. It's close to almost $7,000 a person, when France is spending a little over $4,000 a person. And we all have the same life expectancy. What's wrong with this picture here? So, to say that we're going to let this continue, that for a family of four, $1,800 increase next year, $1,800 increase in 2011, another 18, these are compounding on top of one another. Play it out. We bankrupt the country.

You want to talk about small businesses being innovative, being able to compete against China, India, and all of these other countries, which is a whole other issue, but we've got to make these folks cost- competitive. And small businesses? A 129 percent increase for health insurance since 2000. Want to just keep going down that road? We know how it ends. It don't end pretty. We can just keep going.

And that's what many people on the other side of the aisle want to do, they want to say ``no.'' They want to nitpick and make things up to try to put the kibosh on this because they know, as has been stated in a memo from a top Republican consultant, that if they destroy health care they knock the legs out and they kneecap President Obama. This is a political issue for some people, and it shouldn't be, because the people that I met with at Vernon's Cafe want change.

An independent small business person was sitting right next to me, Neil. He had to close his lawn and garden business because he couldn't withstand the health care bills that he was getting. And he was supportive of Barack Obama's plan because he couldn't sustain his business. 129 percent increase since 2000? You want to talk about a tax increase on a small business? You know what? We're going to do it again next year. We're going to put more on next year, another couple of thousand next year per employee, another couple of thousand the next year and the next year and the next year as your energy costs go up, as your health care costs go up, as manufacturing continues to decline in the United States because we don't make anything anymore. On and on and on and on.

And you know what? This is about leadership, Mr. Speaker. This is about leadership. And sometimes some people just aren't going to like you. And sometimes people are going to try to use and score political points to try to prevent progress from happening. We need to do something, Mr. Speaker. We need to do it for the people who are out there suffering. We need to do it for the people whose costs keep going up. We need to do it for small businesses who recognize that this can put them right out of business in every single way.

These small businesses, I tell you, have really gotten the shaft in this whole health care deal. They don't have much bargaining power. And I think part of the magic of this approach that we've been working on and will continue to work on over the course of the next days and weeks is to allow small businesses who now have to go out into the market and try to find something on their own, will now be playing with millions of other people, and that ability to use the buying power, the partnerships through this exchange that's being created, will reduce costs for them.

I mean that's common sense. If you're a small business and if you have 10 people and if you've got to go to a major insurance company and try to strike some kind of deal because you want to provide health insurance for your employees, then you're on your own.

What we're saying is let's pool everybody together and give you an opportunity to go into these different plans, but if you like the plan you've got, you can keep that, too, and that will help drive down costs for these small businesses. It will finally put them on a level playing field.

So there has been a 129 percent increase for small businesses since 2000. Their premiums are 18 percent higher for a small business than they are for a big business. So they get it on that end, too. The percent of premiums that deal with administrative costs are higher for small businesses--25 percent as opposed to 10 percent. Yes, it does make sense. They're a small business. This is a bigger business. There are going to be more administrative costs. Yet, if we allow them to join together, to pool together, then they will begin to reduce some of those costs.

This is a winner for small businesses that are already covering their employees, because they're not going to see that 8, 9, 10, 12-- sometimes higher--percent increase. What's great about this plan is that there are limits. We've talked a bit about preexisting conditions. So you get into the plan, and you may be sick, and you may have cancer or heart disease or a variety of other illnesses. What this plan does is it limits and caps for catastrophic coverage. So, if you're an individual, you can't pay more than $5,000 a year for catastrophic coverage. If you're a family, the number now is about $10,000 a year for catastrophic coverage. That's still a lot of money, but the bottom line is it's not going to bankrupt most people.

When you look at what is happening today in the United States, half of our bankruptcies, Mr. Speaker--half--are caused by health care, by a health care crisis. Imagine this: In 2009, in the United States of America, you could have a health care crisis in your family, and you might have to file bankruptcy. Is that incredible? Are we okay with that as a country? I'm not, and I think there are millions of other people who aren't either. This is a problem that we need to solve, to share together and say, hey, wait a minute. What are the values we have in this country? Liberty and freedom. You know, there are a lot of different phrases and words we have, but what do we really believe? Our actions and our policies should be in line with those values that we have. What we're saying is that that is unacceptable.

So our friends on the other side, who had control of the House, of the Senate and of the White House, didn't do anything about it. You want to take the small piecemeal steps? You could have taken that one. In fact, you passed a bankruptcy bill that made it worse. They passed a bankruptcy bill that made it worse. Fifty percent of bankruptcies are health care-related. Unacceptable.

If our friends on the other side found it necessary and found it in line with their values to end denial for insurance coverage due to preexisting conditions, it could have happened. They had control of the House. They had control of the Senate. They had control of the White House, but it didn't happen. So now we've got some Johnny-come-latelies with a piecemeal plan here or there which doesn't solve the overall problem. We've got to bend the cost curve here. We've got to bend it. You don't do that with piecemeal actions. You do that with bold actions that will help bend the cost curve. Ultimately, that's what we're trying to do here.

Also, there is the preventative side here. There are no copays for prevention, so there will be an incentive for us to be assured that people will go to the greatest extent possible to get preventative care.

Let me add this: We can only do so much with the system. People, average Americans, need to do a better job of keeping themselves healthy, too. It's not all us. The government is not going to do that. The insurance industry is not going to do that. Yet, if we tilt the system towards prevention, if we tilt the system to create incentives for it with doctors--and there is a component in here that gives more say to the doctors and to the patients to keep that relationship sacred between those two to make sure that the doctors get rewarded and paid based on quality, not quantity--then there will be an incentive in the system to make sure that our docs are able and willing to provide the most quality care, not having to worry about a variety of other issues. They will deal with the patient. It will be patient-centered.

Barack was at the Cleveland Clinic, which is just about an hour north of my district in Cleveland. He was at the Mayo Clinic. You hear what these top hospitals do. Every time you hear what they're doing successfully, it's patient-based, not insurance-based. You know, it's not ``Some doctor has got to call somebody at the head office and ask, `Is it okay for me to do this for the patient? Is it paid for? Is it not paid for?' '' That's ridiculous. We're going to weed that out of the system and let the doctor make these decisions, not the insurance companies.

This brings me to another point--again to our friends and to right- wing talk radio, you know, which is at this point pure entertainment because I find very few facts issued out of the right-wing talk radio station as of late. It's the issue of rationing. People are saying, ``Oh, my God. This big, you know, socialist system is going to be in place.'' It's not true at all. This is not Canada. This is a blend of what works here in America to make sure that we can bend that cost curve. This is going to be very uniquely American, which it should be. It maintains competition. It gives choice. You can keep what you've got, but you also have these other options which you may want to choose, including a public option, which should be there, I think, to keep people honest as a component of this whole system. You're able to shop around and to get what you want or to keep what you have and have choice and help contain costs.

What our friends keep saying is the government is going to come in and ration health care. If you don't think health care is being rationed right now, you have not talked to anybody who has been breathing for the last decade. The insurance companies are rationing health care right now. As a nurse said, who was at our town hall meeting this week, The government couldn't possibly ration more than the insurance companies are. We deal with it all the time.

A person will call his Congressman or Congresswoman, and say, Hey, can you help me? My God, this insurance company denied me. I thought it was in my policy. They wouldn't let the doctor do this or that. They're not going to reimburse. They're not going to pay for this.

The insurance companies are rationing right now. They've been hiring people to knock people off the rolls. Their employment has gone up. Their coverage has gone down because of rationing by insurance companies.

What we're saying is you can't do things like deny someone coverage for a preexisting condition. There will be a basic plan. Ninety-five percent of employer plans right now already meet the standard for the basic level, but there will be a basic plan on which people will be covered.

Ultimately, as I've said before, this is going to save us a lot of money, and it's going to help bend that cost curve. Ultimately, by doing that, which we fail to, I think, sometimes incorporate into this discussion, when you insure and assure people that they will have coverage and that they will have preventative coverage and that their kids will have coverage, there will be a level of anxiety that obviously goes away, which is very helpful.

This is going to increase the level of productivity in the United States because people will be healthier. There is a tremendous investment here to make sure that our docs and our nurses have the proper incentives for student loans to go to high-risk areas and practice and make some money so that their loans don't keep them from, maybe, wanting to be helpful in a community that they want to be helpful in. We need to make sure that we deal with the nursing shortage. It's all of these things. It will increase the level of productivity that we have because we're going to have more people who are healthy who are participating in this economy and who are contributing.

There was a story a couple of weeks back--I think it was in the Wall Street Journal--in which there was a kid--not a kid. He was probably in his twenties or early thirties. He wanted to go out and start his own business--I think it was a computer technology business--but he couldn't because the job that he held had insurance. His wife was sick with cancer, I think, but he knew, if he left and tried to get insurance for his wife, that she wouldn't be able to qualify because she would have had a preexisting condition.

How many stories are like that all across the country where you want to leave and want to start a small business and want to create value and grow your business but can't because someone in your family may be sick? So you don't because you have to stay put. How many times does that happen?

We have, really, the gem of Youngstown, Ohio. In the Mahoney Valley, we have the business incubator, the Youngstown business incubator--a great place. Our district office is actually located on the third floor of the business incubator. Last week or 2 weeks ago, Entrepreneur Magazine said that Youngstown, Ohio, was one of the top 10 places in the country to start a business. It was really cool. They had the cover. It read, ``Top 10 Places to Start a Business.'' In parentheses underneath, it read, ``Youngstown, Ohio, anyone?''

So here we are in Youngstown, trying to convert our economy over from manufacturing steel and, just down the road in Akron, rubber. Communities like ours have started this incubator where we have all of these business-to-business software companies that are incredible companies as is the level of talent that works in this incubator. There are, I think, 300 people who work for the company. The average wage is $58,000 a year. Companies from around the country now want to move there.

You can begin to see why we need to do this, because you want these young, bright, intelligent, creative people to feel like they can take a risk, can take a chance, can start a business without having to worry about the burden of health care. This is going to unleash a generation full of young, smart, creative people to get out in the marketplace and to create wealth for us and to hire people.

And especially with the green revolution coming, we're not really sure what's going to happen. There are so many nuances to green technology with solar panels and windmills and biodiesel plants and batteries, and we don't know.

But wouldn't you want, wouldn't it be smart to say, Don't worry about health care. You're going to have to pay some. This is not going to be a free ride. There is going to be shared responsibility here. Everyone's got to do their fair share. No one's going to get on board for free. There is going to be a ticket price here and everybody is going to have to pay something.

But wouldn't you want these young people to feel secure to be able to create the next generation wealth? I know we need it. I know when you're looking at places in the Midwest like Youngstown, we need these young people to feel unleashed and let their creative juices flow as they come out of engineering schools and they want to take a chance and be in an incubator and grow a company or start a company. That's what we need here. This is what America needs right now.

And we're trying to compete, Mr. Speaker, in the United States of America with 1.3 billion people in China, 1.2 billion or 1.3 billion people in India, and we only have 300 million people.

So we're spending all this money on health care, and we're not getting anything out of it. Let's spend this wisely. Half of the money to pay for it gets squeezed out of the current system; $500 billion of the trillion gets squeezed out of the current system. And that's young people and the Youngstown business incubator and incubators like it all over the country and young people like them all over the country. Let's fuel that fire. Let's throw some coal on it. Let's get it nice and hot. Let's let it burn. Because we don't have the same luxury that the Chinese have where if 300 million or 400 million people fall off the side of a cliff, they still have got a lot of people to contribute. We don't have that luxury.

So what we need to do is take the wealth that we have, invest it strategically in this country. And one of the biggest burdens for people to be creative and to start new businesses or for small businesses to grow is the cost of health care.

So our friends on the other side who say they're pro-business are going to allow an $1,800 tax go on the backs of a family of four next year through inaction.

There are acts of commission and acts of omission. And there are taxes of commission and taxes of omission. And through inaction, there will be an $1,800 tax put on the backs of families next year and small businesses next year. How can you say you're for small business development when your inaction allowed health care costs to balloon 129 percent since the year 2000? That is strangling small businesses.

Let's let them compete and pool their resources and get into the exchange, bend the cost curve. Let's have a uniquely American health care system. I mean, not what we got now. This is ridiculous. We're going to keep this system that we got? It stinks. It's not working. We're not okay with keeping it like it is. We want it to change. We want something different. We want it to work for the people. We want it to represent our values. We want it to unleash the creativity that the American people have.

The artists in this country in many ways are small business people. They take risks. They take chances. They go out in the public and they sell their products. They make it happen. That's an art form, and it takes a lot of courage. Let's help them. Let's not sit and turn our head, bury our head in the sand and hope problems go away. That's not what the people voted for. They didn't vote for us to stand by and watch. We're not on the sidelines. We're players in this game. We're supposed to do things. And inaction--and you can argue, Mr. Speaker, they can continue to argue inaction. Keep the government out. Don't do this, don't do that. That's bad. That's bad. No, no, no, no. That's all we've been getting here, and the American people don't want it.

We've got to go out and explain this to the American people. We've got people running around--they're so afraid of this happening, the only argument they think they have, which isn't even true, that oh my God, this is going to cover undocumented illegal immigrants. That's your health care debate

in 2009 in America. That's what you're telling your small business people? That's what you're telling this country? We can't do it because it's going to cover illegal immigrants, when in section 246 it says, No Federal payment for undocumented aliens? That's all you got? That's it?

2009 in the United States of America in Congress and on right-wing talk radio, all you've got is this is going to cover illegal immigrants, when it's not even in the bill?

Come on. American people deserve better than that. This is not what they signed up for.

Running ads. We've got politicians running ads about how this is going to cover illegal immigrants. What are you talking about? Stop it. American people don't want to hear that. I mean, it's continuing--it's very consistent with what President Bush started off fear-mongering to the American people: if we can't beat them, we scare people. If we can't beat them on the merits, we try to scare people. And it's just-- it's not right.

And so over the course of the next few days, weeks and months, we're going to go out and we're going to talk to the Americans. But we want to hear what they think this is, what they want, their concerns.

But I can guarantee you one thing right now. I can guarantee you one thing right now, Mr. Speaker, that there is not any level of fear that can come out of right-wing talk radio, that can come out of FOX News, that can come out of the Republican conference, that can come out of the Republican Senate conference, that can come from Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich and everyone else. There's not a level of fear that they could manufacture that will meet or be able to compete with the level of fear the American people feel under the current health care system. They can't meet it, and we are going to try to the best of our ability to alleviate that fear for the American people.

And our friends on the other side have not produced an alternative plan.

Now, as we're wrapping up here--and I'm almost done--but the Republicans have not produced an alternative. They have not produced a plan. Because their sole goal is to destroy this one.

And so, Mr. Speaker, I think it's important that we continue to ask the American people to look at the facts, look at what's in the bill. If you have questions, that's legitimate. This is a big deal. We should have a conversation about this, about what's actually in here. What's the subsidy level? What are the tax rates? Who's getting taxed in this whole deal and who is not? Who's going to get coverage, and what level of subsidy are they going to get? What's Medicaid going to look like? What's Medicare going to look like?

This bill, through the savings that we have here, fills the doughnut hole in Medicare. It fills the doughnut hole through the savings that we squeezed out of the system here. We filled the doughnut hole for the Medicare prescription drug bill so that seniors won't drop off after a certain level and not get covered again until their bill goes up to $5,000 or so a year. That's what we're doing here.

So, Mr. Speaker, it's important that we all ask the American people during the course of this discussion to remember that our friends on the other side who had their opportunity for health care reform, had their opportunity for energy reform, controlled the House, Senate, White House, didn't do anything. Now they're coming to us saying that we're doing it wrong.

But it's important to remember that their top Republican strategists issued a memorandum to the Republicans in the House of Representatives that they have to be against health care because if they defeat health care, they defeat Barack Obama and they bring him down.

Now, when you're listening to the debate on the issues, when you hear unsubstantiated rumors, Mr. Speaker, it's important that the American people hear that and see that within the context of this memo in which the Republicans have been instructed to march down the line of destroying Barack Obama's health care plan, you can keep the plan you have. You will have more choice. This will bend the cost curve, be uniquely American, save us money that we can reinvest so that our small businesses can compete.

Doing nothing will continue the cost curve on small business up 129 percent since the year 2000. If we do nothing, a family of four will see an $1,800 increase in their health care bill next year, if that. And if we do nothing, people will still be denied by insurance companies who will say to them, We won't cover you because you have cancer. We won't cover you because you have heart disease. Those days need to be over.

And let's muster up the courage to communicate to the American people, to have a mature, adult discussion about health care in 2009 in the United States of America.

Since when did Americans get afraid to do big things? This is what we do. We've built transcontinental railroads, we built the interstate highway system, we make sure we lift millions of seniors out of poverty with the Medicare program. We do civil rights. We do big things in America. And this is the next great challenge for us.

And we've got to meet this challenge. Not for the sake of me going home and saying, hey, we met this challenge or Speaker Pelosi saying it or anyone else, but because this is what the American people want. This is what they want us to do.

So the next few days and weeks are going to be talking about this quality, affordable health care, health insurance reform, and we're going to do this. This is going to happen, and this is going to be another landmark achievement in the history of the United States.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 12 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, July 29, 2009, at 10 a.m.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, there have been a lot of people saying: Why are we rushing? Why aren't there more amendments? Why isn't there more debate?

We have an obligation to the American people to get these budgets done. The fiscal year starts at the end of October, and we need to get our job done.

I want to commend Chairman Obey for making sure that we are going to get all of these House bills done before we leave in August. Given all of the tactics that our friends on the other side have used, I think it's going to be quite an accomplishment. It's important for us to remember that our friends on the other side had control of the House, had control of the Senate, had control of the White House, had control of the Supreme Court, had a chance to implement their health care policy, their energy policy and their overall economic policy. That's the world that we're living in right now. They had control of everything, and we're trying to fix it.

The $1,100 increase in gas prices per family over the course of the last 10 years and the increase in health care, going up 120-some percent over the last decade for small businesses--that's a tax. We're trying to fix it. If we do nothing, gas prices are going to continue to go up; energy costs are going to continue to go up; health care costs are going to continue to go up. We are trying to rein this in, and we are trying to fix it. I think this bill does a lot of what we need to do.

This eliminates 28 programs; it cuts $1.3 billion out of the bill; it funds community health clinics so that 17 million patients can have some access to health care; it increases the Pell Grants since Democrats have had an opportunity to move in; there is a $1,500 increase, a 37 percent increase, in charter schools.

There is $256 million for helping start up 1,300 new charter schools; there are investments into the NIH for cancer research.

These are the investments that we need to make. This is the situation we've been given, and these are the cards we've been dealt. I think this bill goes a long way in trying to clean up this mess. It's not going to happen overnight. It took 10 years of Republican leadership to get us in the worst economic situation we've been in since the Great Depression. It's going to take a few years for us to get out. The current system cannot continue. This bill, the energy bill and the health care reform are all opportunities for us to change the direction in which we're going.

Well, we have in Youngstown, Ohio, we have a Youngstown business incubator, and we've had some debates on this floor about a variety of issues, earmarks, different things. And one of the issues that I have been pushing, and I know a lot of Members, is reinvestment back into communities in the Midwest that were once steel or rubber or industrial cities to invest in new technologies.

And we have been doing that in Youngstown, Ohio. We have a great business-to-business software incubator there. And recently in the latest edition or latest issue of Entrepreneur magazine, you may or may not be able to read, the 10 best cities to start a business, and down here in parenthesis: Youngstown, Ohio, Anyone? So we're in there with some major metropolitan areas across the country who have been doing great things, but in Youngstown, Ohio, in the Mahoning Valley we're emerging, I think, from years and years of steel-making into advanced manufacturing and business-to-business.

It's great. To the gentleman from Connecticut and the gentlelady from Maryland, this is the best issue of Entrepreneur magazine they've ever put out. And I commend to you this issue and read with great excitement, as we have.

And we have a local convention center there that's doing great and has made money for the first time in the second quarter and they're doing tremendous. We have got a lot of great shows. We've got downtown living. Anyway, it's happening like a lot of cities in Connecticut, I think, that have made comebacks.

So I wanted to just plug our local business incubator, thank Jim Costner who runs the incubator; Michael Brokerage who ran the company that was highlighted in here and look forward to our health care discussion as well, so that these small businesses can prosper in the future because we have a sane health care policy going here in the United States.

Absolutely. Whatever you need, it's all in here.

This is ``the'' issue. In fact, they may just wrap it up and say we're never going to have a better issue than the one we just issued so we're done.

Will the gentleman yield?

I want to accentuate that point a little bit. We tried to provide 10 million kids health care coverage through the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and President Bush vetoed it twice, with the support of a lot of people who come to this floor tonight and are fabricating things about this bill, talking about we're going to cover illegal aliens and this is a government-run operation that we're trying to promote here, that we're trying to drive small business out.

This bill doesn't even start until 2013. What we pass, no matter what it is, doesn't even get implemented until 2013. And there's no coverage for illegal immigrants in this bill. That's why it doesn't cover everyone. It only covers 97 percent of folks here, and there may be an argument about that.

But the fact of the matter is there is institutional support to undermine and sabotage health care reform, and someone's going to win and someone's going to lose. And who's been winning have been the big insurance companies, the people who like the system just the way it is, and the people who have been losing are the men and women and children that the gentlelady from Maryland was speaking about a few minutes ago.

So, yes, this is a big fight. This is a pretty big deal that we're having. But the scare tactics--and it's funny, because our friends on the other side of the aisle, they're like a stable full of one-trick ponies, man. If there's not fear coming out to scare you, to make you so afraid of what is happening, but

the problem they have now is everyone's already afraid. Everyone's already scared. Everyone's already anxious about their kid and the middle of the night, if something happens, they've got to go to the emergency room because they don't have the kind of coverage that we want to provide here.

So they can keep coming with the fear, but what we want to do is provide a little bit of hope for the American people and some sanity, and this chart, itself, shows it.

We pay twice as much per person for health care in the United States than they do in France and Germany and in Canada. We have a lower life expectancy. We continue to spend more and more and more and more and not reap the benefits of it because we don't spend the money in the right areas.

We need to put the money in the front end so that we have prevention and we stop a lot of these problems from happening in the first place.

If you look in the United States from 1995 to 2006, we had an 83 percent increase in health care spending. Public, private, all health care all together, 83.64 percent increase in health care spending; that is not sustainable. It goes on the backs of the small businesses. It goes on the backs of the individuals. We just can't continue to do it.

We do have a chart of the Republican health care plan. You may be able to see it from where you are. But it is a series of question marks with arrows pointing in all kinds of different directions because they've had no plan. So it becomes very easy to come down here and be critical and scare people about what the Democrats want to do. But the one key statistic that everyone needs to remember is from 1995 to 2006, per person, there was a $3,000 increase in health care spending per individual in the United States of America. An 85 percent increase under the do-nothing plan.

Our people did not elect us to come down here and just continue to let problems compound and compound and compound. We're trying to do something. We all know the problems. We all have the uninsured in our communities. We all have the underinsured in our communities. In my district almost 1,600 families go bankrupt just because of health care. How do you go back and say, Well, you know, we couldn't really get the political muscle to push something through? How do you tell this to these families in America today?

And with all the changes going on in the economy--and earlier I showed communities converting from industry to high-tech businesses. There's a lot of unseemly transition going on here from people who have worked in the auto industry and steel industry that eventually will get retrained and may eventually work their way into a newer part of the economy--hopefully the green economy that we tried to deal with a couple weeks ago. But shouldn't we say in America that you at least have some basic level of health care, you at least don't have to worry about that as you go about getting retrained or your kids are in college or your kids are in school?

When you look at what we would save--we went back and we did a little research--if we spent on health care at the level that France spends, we would save $805 billion a year. That's how much we would save. And we could take a portion of that savings--which is what we want to do, which is how we're paying for half of this to begin with, savings in Medicaid and Medicare--and put it on the front end so we have preventive care. That's why these other countries are saving money, because people don't end up in an emergency room, costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have some card so they can go or some plan so they can go and get a prescription. That is common sense. That is basic common sense.

Our plan is very uniquely American. It takes the best of what happens around our States and our communities, blends them together, and makes them work by driving down costs, focusing on prevention, and making sure if something happens to you and you have heart disease and you lose your coverage and then try to go to another insurance company or another plan, who say, Whoa, you've got heart disease. Sorry, you can't come in here. Oh, you have got diabetes? Sorry, you can't come in here. Cancer? Sorry. Too bad. You can't come in.

That's not right. So what we're saying is, everyone will be covered. Everyone. And we have a lot of the money within the current system that we have now to do it. When you look at the statistics in all of our own districts with the doughnut hole and a lot of other things, this bill is going to be in

the best interest at the end of the day for businesses in the United States of America. They're going to have a more healthy, more productive workforce and, quite frankly, when you talk to some of these--and I just want to share one story.

I was at a wedding last week and was talking to someone who employs about 150 people, but he was also a provider. He does equipment and different services, so he sees this from both sides. His insurance rates went up over the past 5 years 42 percent. So the insurance companies were making more money off him. But on the provider side, he got the goose egg for any increase. So he felt the insurance companies raise his rates on his 150 employees; but they didn't say, Okay, we're raising your rates, but here's a little bit more reimbursement for you. That's not how it works. They squeeze the providers; they increase your rates; they make a lot of money at the expense and on the backs of a lot of the American people.

I yield to my friend from Maryland

If the gentlelady would yield.

We hear a lot about this--run your government like a business. That's exactly what we're trying to do here, which is to make a decision as we look at the facts as they're presented to us, as we look at the costs that have gone up 84 percent over the last, you know, 10 or 12 years. A businessperson looking at this would say, Hmm, we wait until someone gets really, really sick. Then we provide universal health care as opposed to saying, As a businessperson, if I just spent a little bit of money up here on the front end, we would save all of this money on the back end.

Look at all of these hospitals, whether they're in the cities or whether they're in the rural communities, that spend enormous amounts on charity care. Somebody is paying for that. We're paying for that. Taxpayers are paying for that already, and that's the problem here.

Everyone says, Well, why are you asking the rich to pay for it? It's the top 1 percent that we're going to ask to pay a surcharge. The rich are already paying for it. They're already paying. These people don't have health care, so they show up in the emergency rooms, and they get public money to help the hospitals so that the hospitals don't go belly up.

So what we're trying to say with the business mind is let's put a little bit of money up here and give these people preventative care, and let's make sure that they get prescriptions instead of ending up in the emergency rooms a week later and costing everybody $100,000 or $200,000. Let's make sure you have a mammogram instead of ending up, you know, in the hospital after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Let's make sure you have a cervical screening so you don't end up with cancer weeks or months later because you don't have preventative care.

This is common sense, and I think that's what frustrates the American people. It's like get your act together, and get this done. We can do this.

As you said, there will be more choice with a public option, and the public option will then, as it competes, drive costs down. When there's a public option hanging out there, Blue Cross-Blue Shield will not be able to get away with a 32 percent increase. It just will not happen. People will flock somewhere else. So, inherently, this public option will drive down the costs of health care.

Again, the idea of doing nothing, which basically has been the case over the past 10 or 15 years, and of saying we hope this all just goes away and that we hope the free market works, has led to an 85 percent increase from 1995-2006 per person, almost a $3,000 increase. We can't sustain it. We are going to build the political coalition here and exercise the political muscle necessary to make sure that our small businesses that can thrive under this plan get the kind of benefits that they deserve, and the people and the increase in productivity will increase, too, in the United States.

I would be happy to yield.

I think it's important to know that one of the major endorsements is the AMA. The American Medical Association has endorsed this bill.

If you go back 40-50 years when we tried to do something, they'd put the kibosh on it. You talk about health care reform in the early 1990s. The docs did not want anything to do with it. They have endorsed this bill. It has gotten that bad.

I would yield to my friend.

If I could add one thing.

So the American people, every time our friends on the other side sold something to the American people when they were in charge, it was fear- based. You know, it was fear. We have to implement this policy. Here's the fear, we have to implement this policy. Here's the fear, we have to implement this policy. And so the only play in their playbook they have is to try to scare the American people. And now they're trying to do it again.

Big government-run health care plan. Not true. You're going to lose your choice. Not true. You are going to have more choices. Everyone is going to be forced, 100 million people forced into this public option. That's not true. Even the CBO, which is nonpartison, says maybe 10 million people will access the public option. There will be an increase in the employer-based. All of these things aren't true.

So I think it's important, as we close out, to say when you hear the fear, you know some bad policy is tracking right behind it.

I want to thank the gentlemen from the Pittsburgh area.

This is a great investment for our community to pull these two, Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh corridor together.

And I would just like to remind the gentleman from Arizona, as I have before and will continue on every amendment, his congressional district, Mr. Chairman, wouldn't even exist. You in Arizona, it's a desert. All of the water lines, all the sewer lines, the $7 billion Central Arizona Project was paid for by the taxes of the steelworkers in Pittsburgh. We helped build the West, our area, and now we're saying we need to retool our economy.

And I think it is imperative for everybody in this House to know, we're all Americans here. And so to take investment during the 1950s and 1960s to build the West and then have a Member of Congress come before us here living in the largesse, spreading water into the desert so they can have nice golf courses, and come tell two Members of Congress from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that are trying to retool their economy that somehow this is a bad use of Federal money, I have an answer for this.

Why don't we send the State of Arizona a bill for the $7 billion that built the Central Arizona Project, that sent all of these water lines and sewer lines and public investment out there. Maybe we should ask for that money back and put it towards deficit reduction.

I appreciate it. I want to take off on what the gentleman from Virginia was saying. I was reading an article the other day. In China, 400,000 people a year die from air pollution. And if you look at the history of China, you will see that they have periods where there is a very tumultuous uprising within the country. And if you can read the tea leaves here, you will see that at some point China and the people of China will demand clean air. There's no question about it. And they're using dirty coal. I mean, it's dirty. And those of us who have been there recognize--with the Olympics especially--how many months ahead of time they had to stop letting people drive cars into the city and everything else.

So the point that the gentleman from Virginia was making is that this is an opportunity for us. And some people say, Well, China and India aren't going to do this, so why are we going to do it? Let them not do it. Let us jump ahead. My goodness gracious, it would be like saying, you know, the Soviet Union is not going to continue their space program back in the Sixties. Great. We'll jump ahead of you.

That's basically what we have here. And we have an opportunity to seize this moment and then begin to develop this technology, invest this money, get our manufacturing going here in the United States, and export--things we have been talking about in our district for a long time.

When are we going to manufacture? When are Americans going to make things again? When are we going to export? This is the opportunity. And the same people that call on the talk radio that say, When are we going to make things again, are the same people that are against the cap-and- trade bill because the dots aren't connected here.

This is the opportunity. Take the $700 billion that we're shifting abroad, focus it on the United States, revitalize manufacturing, and export this stuff, because China at some point is going to recognize they're wasting a lot of energy, their people aren't as healthy, their people are dying because of this, and they're going to want them to be healthy. So that's one point I wanted to make.

The other point I want to make is, Congressman Boccieri and I, Mr.

Speaker, were on a radio show a few days ago and a gentleman called in who had some business issues, other issues, but he says, I like the alternative energy stuff.

So I asked him what he did. He makes the technology, manufactures the products that go into the scrubbers that go into the power plant and go into the steel mills to keep the air clean.

And here is a businessman in Youngstown, Ohio, who had, I think he said, 70 employees, who's manufacturing these scrubbers that were a result of the Clean Air Act. Because of the Clean Air Act, there's someone in Youngstown making these products.

I think it's important for us to let everyone know this is opportunity for us. These are jobs that are going to be revitalizing communities in all of our districts.

You're so lucky. Do you have any idea how lucky you are?

What does that have to do with anaerobic digesters?

If the gentleman would yield.

I don't know if anyone followed when Barack Obama was in Russia, but there was a deal made and struck where--Exxon is, obviously, doing business there, and they are opening up a refinery somewhere in New England to process the oil coming back from Russia.

So this is what we're trying to get away from. This is what this energy bill is all about. We can't get in the position where, yeah, it may be over the next 5 to 10 years where this is something that needs to happen for the transition. This is an example of the road we don't want to go down, the road relying on Vladimir Putin's Russia for oil for the United States. You know, the American people don't want that. That's not good geopolitics. That's not good for our manufacturing base. That's not good for a variety of reasons that are all pretty obvious to anybody who has blood running through their heads right now. You know, this is pretty basic stuff here. We don't want to rely on Russia for our oil.

The other point is, whether it's in Cincinnati, in Virginia, in Canton, in Akron or in Youngstown, we have these manufacturing facilities that are just sitting here. In my district, there's a company called Parker-Hannifin. It's a big company in Cleveland and in Youngstown. They have 1,000 workers, steelworkers. They make the hydraulics that go into the back of, you know, waste management--you know, garbage trucks. They do the hydraulics. These same hydraulics go into windmills.

We have a specialty steel company called Thomas Steel, in Warren, that has about 300 workers. They make a decent wage. Their specialty steel goes in the solar panels. We have a company called Roth Brothers in the Youngstown area. There's a new wind cube

that you can put on top of big buildings in downtown areas that will generate wind. You plug it right into the building, right into the grid, to generate energy that can turn and face the wind and that can really harness all of the wind no matter what the direction change. This is right in Youngstown. They said, If this wind cube takes off, we'll hire 100 people like that.

So we have it here. It's not so much new business--although, there will be a piece of that. It's also about the businesses that we already have, those that can grow and that can manufacture. They're good-paying jobs. They're steelworkers. You know, they're people who can make some money and who can revitalize the middle class again.

If the gentleman would yield, if you just think about the history of this country--and I don't want to get corny--but there has never been a scenario where we have said as a country, we want to do something, and it's not happened. I mean, let's be honest. Because of the system of government that we have, because of all the DNA that happens to be in our great country, because of people having the courage to get on a boat with no money, and all that DNA, all that courage that it took to get here is here now; and it's been replicating itself. There is something special about whether it's World War II or it's storming the beaches of Normandy or it's going to the Moon or it's getting out of the Depression or it's that we need to be educated or the number of patents that we get. Whatever it may be, we have the ability to do this. And I think when you look at this policy in particular, the energy policy, the more I read about it, the more I like it. And when people say, Well, how is it going to work? I get excited about explaining it to them because here we are in northeast Ohio where we have all this manufacturing, and it has been dead for 30 years. We've not had any opportunities coming down the pike, like clean energy, in 30 years. This is something that is so exciting for so many people because they recognize that--I think it's 400 tons of steel that go into a windmill or 8,000 component parts that go into a windmill, and the Midwest being the Saudi Arabia of wind, and the Southwest being the Saudi Arabia of solar. My goodness gracious, what an opportunity. We can't let this

slide by. We capture it. We take advantage of it. We make it work for us. That's what we do as Americans, and this is an opportunity for us to do that and to grow all of these companies. Putin, be gone. Chavez, be gone. Middle East sheiks, be gone. We're going to take care of our own business here.

I would just like to say, I don't think anybody here is anti-nuclear. I think we all recognize how important this is as a part of our portfolio. There is no one here who is against coal. We represent Virginia and Ohio and think it's a good way to do it. That's why there's $180 billion in here to figure out how to make it clean and make it work for us. We're not saying that there's only one specific way to do this. We recognize you may need to drill a little bit, you may need to take advantage of nuclear and coal and all this. But look at the advantage. We have $700 billion going to these other countries that could be coming here, revitalizing the United States of America, and I think that's important for us to remember.

And lastly, because I think we're winding down, and I want these guys who are a lot smarter than me to be able to talk, our friends on the other side, who have been so critical, had control of this government, had control of the House, had control of the Senate, had control of the White House. Their energy policy was nonexistent. It was more subsidies for oil companies, more subsidies for the big power companies, and got us to where we are today. Which means over the last 8 years, an increase of $1,100 just in gas prices for the average family. And the same group of people who thought that cutting taxes for the top 1 percent was somehow going to be to the benefit of all hasn't worked. We've got two wars going on, and a war our friend has served in here. That's $1 trillion dollars, $3 trillion when you factor in the costs of the veterans' health care. That's not a good energy policy of us having to go over, getting into the middle of the desert and getting ourselves in this sticky web of politics in the Middle East. Why are we doing that?

We don't have to do that anymore. And that is what is at the heart of this bill, and I think that is the magic of this bill, rely on the innovation, the spirit of the American people and reduce our dependency on all those other countries.

I just want to add, the answer that our friends on the other side have given when we said, increase the Pell Grant, no; increase minimum wage, no; change the energy policy, no; change health care policy, no; add a stimulus bill that is going to keep people working, no.

That is not leadership, and this is bold stuff that we are trying to do. We are trying to lead the country. At the end of the day, that is going to pay off for everyone. I yield back.

Madam Speaker, I am submitting the obituary of man that contributed much to our community and did so in so many ways. He was a friend, a supporter and an example to all of us.

NILES--Donald K. Allen, 79, Niles, died at 6:15 a.m.

Friday, March 28, 2008, at the Hospice House in Poland,

following an extended illness.

Mr. Allen was born Feb. 4, 1929, in New Martinsville,

W.Va., a son of the late Harold Roy and Ruby Mason Allen.

He was a graduate of Magnolia High School, where he was a

four-year football letter winner and captain of his 1946

football squad. He recently received the Magnolia High School

Alumni Life Achievement Award, honoring student athletes from

their era. Following high school, he went on to Youngstown

College on a football scholarship. He also attended

Northwestern University.

Donald served in the U.S. Army as a sergeant during the

Korean Conflict, and went on to serve in the National Guard

for 17 years.

He was employed at the Niles Police Department in 1954 as a

patrolman. Donald was the owner and operator of Associated

Research Consultants as a Licensed Polygraph Operator. He

then went on to work at Republic Steel in the Production

Planning and Transportation Department. He continued to serve

for 20 years as the president of the office and clerical

Union Local 6824. Donald proudly served under Mayor Ralph

Infante's administration since 1992. First serving as safety

director and presently as service director for the City of

Niles.

His memberships include: Past member of the United Way

Charity Committee; former member of the Niles Football

Frontliners; 58-year member of the Niles McKinley Lodge 794

of Free and Accepted Masons, where he was a 32nd degree

mason; Past worthy president and 47 year member of the Niles

Eagles Aerie 1476, where he was given the honor of the Golden

Eagle; Ben Lin Club member; Charter member ITAM Post 39;

American Legion Post 106; 40-year member of the Niles Moose

Lodge 627; and Niles Moose Legion 87; past commissioner for

Niles Youth Baseball League; lifetime member of the Niles

Men's Democratic Club and Former Trumbull County Democratic

Central committeeman for 28 years.

His loving wife, Edna Mae Sheets Allen, whom he married

Dec. 1, 1951, passed away after 46 years of marriage on Nov.

14, 1997.

Survivors include a son, William, and his wife, Karen

Infante Allen of Niles; two granddaughters, Jennifer and

Melanie Allen.

He was preceded in death by his parents; two brothers,

Bruce and Robert Allen; three sisters, Wilma Games, Maxine

Tackett, and Beulah Hawkins.

Funeral services will be held 1 p.m. Monday at Lane Funeral

Home, Niles Chapel, 415 Robbins Ave. Calling hours will be

from 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at the funeral home. Burial will be

at Niles City Cemetery.

Memorial contributions can be made to the Hospice House,

9803 Sharrott Road, Poland, Ohio, 44514.

I thank the gentlelady.

Mr. Chairman, as my colleague said, this loan application is critical for thousands of jobs in Ohio and throughout the country.

I would hope that the Secretary of Energy and other departmental leadership will provide the loan guarantee office staff with the necessary guidance and leadership to address this issue in the immediate future so that a conditional commitment can be issued on reasonable terms.

Will the gentleman yield?

Because we have, hot off the presses here, a copy of and a chart of the Republican health care plan. And it has been the Republican health care plan for a good many years now, and it will continue to be the Republican health care plan, and it looks very similar to the Republican energy plan. Not quite sure exactly what it is. Lots of question marks. No real solutions for the American people. And as you, I think, articulated a few minutes ago, this is a major issue for real people all over the country, for people who have lost their jobs because of the downturn in the economy, for people who come from communities who have been dealing with the global restructuring, with the loss of manufacturing jobs.

Many people from my district for the last 30 years, whether they were in the rubber industry in Akron or in the steel industry in Youngstown or in the auto industry in Warren, have had to deal with this tumultuous change in our economy. This is prior to Wall Street's pulling the rug out from the national and, really, from the global economy, and this is prior to the bad policies over the past, you know, 8 to 10 years that our friends on the other side have consistently pushed.

You know, from a lot of the people who do have some criticism, maybe, for what's going on, I don't hear anyone saying the answer is to cut taxes for the top 1 percent and to get defense spending kicking. We've been doing that. Prior to the Democrats' coming into office a couple of years ago in the House and then prior to President Obama's getting elected, we had a policy where there were tax breaks for the top 1 percent, and they were supposed to invest all of that money into our economy. It never really happened.

I think what happened over the course of the last couple of years was that the Reaganomics--supply side economics--cut taxes for the wealthiest and then hoped the crumbs fell somewhere in Youngstown, Ohio, for some of the workers to maybe get a bite of. It has not worked. With the deregulation of Wall Street, we saw what happened there. It has caused a global recession almost to the likes of the Great Depression. The only things I feel are saving this from being a Great Depression are the Great Depression programs--unemployment insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and the health care tax credit that we increased from 65 percent to 80 percent in the stimulus bill. Those are the only things preventing people from being on the streets. They've lost their homes, and they have no health care. If it weren't for these basic safety nets that we've set up, there would be cheese lines again. Let's be honest about it. No one wants to admit it.

So what we are trying to do here with energy, quite frankly, and now with health care, is to shift what's going on in our country. It has taken us a long time. Since 1980 this supply-side economic policy has been happening. What we are trying to do is to shift 30 years of this nonsense that has been implemented and to restructure our country, to unleash the power, as Mr. Murphy stated earlier, of the American people. Those people in our districts who don't have health care or who have lost their jobs and who are scared in America need to be helped. I make no bones about it, and I don't think anyone else does, because the top 1 percent has been fine. They will be fine.

What we are trying to do is to restructure the system. We are trying to take health care as it currently is, Mr. Speaker, and squeeze the fat out of it, squeeze the special interests out of it, take the savings to help cover everyone, and invest at the front end by making sure that we don't have co-pays for preventative care, to make sure that no one will lose their insurance or will have to go bankrupt because of their health care issues. To me, this is basic common sense.

The security for the American people is what we are looking for so that they can confidently go about their business, so that they can create wealth, take chances and be entrepreneurs. That's what this is all about.

If you take these two pieces of legislation, the health care and the energy, you are talking about unleashing the potential, the innovation, the entrepreneurship, the talent, the intellect, and the skill of the American people.

I would be happy to yield.

I thank the gentleman.

These numbers are from 2004, but they illustrate the point, and we'll get them updated.

The United States in 2004 spent $6,100 per person on health care with one's life expectancy to be 77\1/2\ years. In Canada, France and Germany, they spent $3,000 and a little bit of change, and their life expectancies are 3 years more than ours, 2 years more than ours and 1\1/2\ years more than ours. We're spending double. So what we're saying to our employers is that the status quo can't stand. We are being wasteful with our health care dollars. We are wasting money in this system.

So, if you're a conservative, if you're a businessperson and if you're standing in the halls of Congress and if you have to look at and analyze the health care situation, you will come to the conclusion that it is better for us as a country to put money upfront toward preventative care and to save money on all of these costs that happen down the line.

We have universal coverage now, but it's through an emergency room, Mr. Speaker. That's no way to run a health care system. Don't come to us, you know, unless it's an emergency. Then come to us. Then we'll take care of you. No business would run that way. You would put money up front. We'll give you a prescription. We'll help you with your wellness. We'll help you deal with your stress reductions. We'll help you deal with mental health. We'll help you deal with a lot of these issues so that you don't come to our emergency rooms as often for health care.

I have a CEO in my district who talks about his hospital. He has said to me more than once, Give me the opportunity to get that person and to give him a $20 prescription instead of my having to deal with him when he comes to my emergency room where it costs me $100,000. That's what we're trying to do here. That's what this whole health care reform is all about.

I want to yield to a friend of mine. We have worked on a variety of issues together and will continue to. He is a great Member from Rhode Island, and he is a very dear friend, Mr. Langevin.

If the gentleman would yield, one of the reasons is the projection for costs. If we do nothing, this plan here, if we implement or just let the Republican health care plan continue, that means an $1,800 increase next year and down the pike. So the reason Mr. Langevin thinks about this before he goes to bed and when he gets up is because we know the cost of inaction. We don't have to explain to people in the heartland what the cost of inaction is. It's an increase of $1,800. It's more people being knocked off the rolls, more people calling our offices saying, Hey, can you help us? I just got denied coverage. It says in my policy I got covered, but now I'm not getting covered. All of this happens, and it is a cost to all of us. So I think the reason we have to act now and why it's so important is because the cost of inaction is an $1,800 a year increase.

That's the money that we reinvest back into those cost-saving measures, that we reinvest back into preventive care so that kids will have dental, kids will have oral, which could be the same thing. Kids will have hearing checkups. All of these things will be included for young kids. Vision. These are all things that, as we save this money and steer it back into the front end of this program, we are going to have healthier citizens.

Now I was reading an article last night that hit me about energy, and it also makes a good point about health care. We are in a direct competition, Mr. Speaker, with China. I don't think anybody will deny that. I think we all know that we are in a direct competition with Asia and with China. In China they lose 400,000 people a year, who die because of the air pollution in China. So the point on the energy bill is, they are clearly not doing enough. At some point those people are going to say, We want clean air. And once we jump ahead in the energy field and start making these products and exporting them to China, we now have created a massive export market. But the philosophy is different because we are saying that our values, our priorities here are about putting the money on the front end, making sure everybody's covered. This chart here, the difference in the $6,000 that we spend per citizen and the $3,000 and some change that Canada, France and Germany spend and have a higher life expectancy is because they cover everyone. They allow people to get preventive care so they're healthier, so that they can go to work, so that they don't miss weeks at a time of work. They get the prescription, and they can go back to work.

I mean, we heard a lot over the last decade or two about family values. What is a deeper value than the health of your kids and the health of our families? There is not one. Because if you don't have health, you don't even have happiness. There are very few unhealthy happy people. When you are unhealthy, you are unhappy. So this is fundamental to the values that we have as a country. It will unleash a level of productivity in this country. All of the anxiety that people have will be channeled and unleashed into more positive endeavors and at the same time begin to move us in a direction where we are not going to bankrupt the country. We are going to make the country healthier, more productive, create more wealth and at the same time contain our health care costs, which will probably end up saving us a lot of money in Medicare. I mean, one of the things that people forget is, all of these people who don't have health care that are older, that think, I'm going to wait until I get on Medicare; and then once they get on Medicare, the problem is exacerbated. The cancer has spread, and a variety of other problems ensue. So this is an opportunity for us to say that as we try to compete in a global marketplace, we have the opportunity to enhance the intellect, the productivity and the health of our citizens.

And when you look at the company you were mentioning, no co-pays on prevention, no rate increases for preexisting condition, there will be a big sigh of relief in this country when this is passed. An annual cap on out-of-pocket expenses, and we are saying to people in America, in 2013 or whatever the date is that this gets implemented, you will not go bankrupt because of a health care condition that you may have or a member of your family may have. It is said and done. That is what this bill is about.

Exactly, and flip their families and send them out of their homes and the whole ripple effect that happens. And there is another point to this that is in here but it is not in here. As we talk about prevention, and there's great sections in here about community health clinics and different preventative measures that are going on and that we are going to continue to promote preventative medicine and public health training grants and those kinds of things that I think are very, very important to what we are trying to achieve here.

It is sending a signal, and I think President Obama has been sending a signal, people have got to take care of themselves as well. This is not just, okay, you can now do whatever you want and you're going to be covered. Like Congressman Murphy said, Mr. Speaker, each citizen will have skin in the game, and their health care decisions at some level will affect what they pay. But what we are saying is, we will be helpful, you will contribute, there will be shared responsibility here, and at the time you have to do what you need to do to take care of yourself.

And we all have that responsibility now as we have the demographic train

coming down the pike with baby boomers going into Medicare, going into Social Security and all of these issues. We have got to be a lean, mean, productive economic force in the world so that we can drive our economy and help pay for a lot of this debt that has been accumulated over the course of the last 8 to 10 years and move us forward.

But, again, we know the cost of doing nothing. We know exactly what will happen. Health care bills will go up another $1,800 on average next year and as far as the eye can see. Again, this is not a plan. This is our friends on the other side; this is their Republican health care plan, a bunch of lines going to a bunch question marks and back again and maybe, you know, at some point, maybe off the chart somewhere there is a solution there. It hasn't worked.

They had an opportunity here when they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House to implement whatever it is they come up with. Maybe they have a couple of these squares they can fill in. But whatever it is they came up with, they had a chance to implement it. And now it is Johnny-come-lately, and we are going to get this done. And I think the President is committed to this; we are committed to this.

Every time I go home, I meet thousands of Delphi employees who have been left behind in the GM bankruptcy, both salaried and union, and steel workers who have lost their jobs and had their pensions cut in half, those in the PBGC, lose their health care. This is what this is about. Those are the people that will benefit from this, Mr. Murphy.

I want to thank you as we wind down here for the opportunity to do this. We will be here tomorrow and possibly Friday and next week, day in and day out, because it is that important for us to pass this. I really believe that the health and welfare of our country depend on it. And I think that the energy bill and with this, I think this is transformational for us and I think a great opportunity for places like northeast Ohio.

And I yield back to my friend.

Madam Speaker, I submit the following:

George F. ``Butch'' Buccella, 68

Mineral Ridge.--George F. ``Butch'' Buccella, 68, of 812

Carson Salt Springs Road, died at 9:32 p.m. Tuesday, June 9,

2009, at Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren.

He was born Jan. 31, 1941, in Youngstown, the son of Frank

and Betty Cutright Buccella.

He was a 1958 graduate of Niles McKinley High School.

Butch owned and operated Buccella and Sons RV Sales for

nine years, was a Weathersfield Township trustee for 16

years, where he served as chairman and vice-chairman, co-

owned A'Lenzio's Pizza in Mineral Ridge with his wife Judy

for 14 years, and was a staff representative to Congressman

James Traficant for 17 years until his retirement.

After his retirement, George worked for Western Reserve

Limousines and at the Joseph Rossi and Sons Funeral Home in

Niles as a hearse and limo driver.

He was a member of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Niles and

served on its parish council, was a member and past King Lion

of the Niles Lions Club, and involved with the Niles

Democratic Club, the Trumbull County Fair Board, and the

Jolly Boys Monday Night Gang.

He was also a member of the Niles Area Chamber of Commerce,

where he served as president, vice president, and secretary

and received its Outstanding Citizen of The Year Award and

its Small Business Advocate of The Year Award.

He was on the Fairhaven Workshop Board of Trustees, Niles

Churches for Housing, and the Jefferson Democratic Club.

He enjoyed NASCAR as he was an avid Jeff Gordon fan. He

built and raced stock cars at the Canfield, Expo, and Sharon

Speedways for 28 years, and also enjoyed bowling.

Butch, who was always known for saying ``one day at a

time'' will be deeply missed by his wife, Judy Sheldon

Buccella, whom he married Dec. 8, 1962; a son, Jeff Buccella

(Dawn) of Austintown; a daughter, Tracie Fynes (Dan) of

Garretsville; a sister, Suzanne Miller of Florida; and five

grandchildren, Eddie, Kyle, Miamee, Jordyn and Lillie.

He was preceded in death by his parents.

Friends may call from 5 to 8 p.m. on Monday at the Joseph

Rossi & Sons Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Niles

where the Niles Lions Club will conduct prayers at 7:30 p.m.

Friends may also call from 10 until the 11 a.m. funeral

service on Tuesday at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Niles

with Pastor Beth Ferne Johnson officiating.

Burial will be at Kerr Cemetery.

Arrangements are being handled by the Joseph Rossi & Sons

Funeral Home and Cremation Service Inc. in Niles.

I thank the gentleman.

And just as all of you do feel, this is such a critical issue for our country. And we started coming to the floor in 2002, Congressman Meek from Florida and I with the 30-something hour, and we were talking about at that point Social Security privatization and just a reminder of what the world would look like today if we would have privatized social security and if Democrats weren't here to prevent that from happening, where we would be now.

But with what's going on, my district is in Akron and Youngstown, Ohio, northeast quadrant. Very industrial. Just a bit north from my friend in Kentucky.

And when you look at what the problems that communities and families are having to deal with there--an example of steel companies that have closed, people, their pensions have gone to the PBGC, some lost their pensions altogether, some lost their health care altogether. Now we are dealing with, as the new GM moves forward, a lot of the old Delphi folks weren't included in the new deal. So now they're left on the outside whether they're union workers or salary workers that had put just as much time, effort, and intellect into developing Delphi and General Motors over the course of the

years and now finding themselves left behind with a $14,000 or $15,000 health care bill.

So what we are talking about here--why you're coming to the floor, why I'm coming to the floor, why President Obama is so forceful in persuading the American people that this has to happen now, why Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid are all on this issue is because this is an issue that the American people want. They know that they are paying too much for their health care. They've experienced the fear of having a pre-existing condition and trying to go out into the market and trying to get somebody to cover them. They deal with this every day.

So I don't want to get too much into the weeds because I think over the course of this next 3 weeks as you come down here and the 30- somethings comes down here and we all get ratcheted up and we all lean on the doctor here to tell us, you know, how this works once it hits the ground, but I think it's important to know that some of the principles here are that no one--once you get your health care--that with these new plans that you will be able to get into--your health care situation will not bankrupt your family; your health care system or your health care plan will not bankrupt your business. You will have coverage. You will have some place to go.

Now, that to me doesn't seem like too big of an ``ask'' in America today with all of the money that is in this system. And I think that's the beauty, looking at the draft plan and knowing it has to go into all of the different committees and get worked through, I think the magic of what's happening here is that a lot of the costs are going to be squeezed out of the current system that has been inflicted because everyone gets their little piece of the action. And we are saying we squeeze it and reinvest that money.

And in many ways we look--we have some kind of universal coverage now, but it's through the emergency rooms. That's no way to administer health care, Doc. No way to do it. It's more expensive.

So what we're saying is with the preventative proposals that are in here is that there's no cost share to go check-up; there's no cost share to participate in any kind of the preventative measures that a specific plan may have that's going to make you healthier, that's going to make sure that you get a prescription instead of end up in the emergency room a week later and cost the whole system $100,000 when it could have been taken care of for a $20 prescription. That's what we're talking about here.

And I'm sure there are going to be a lot of TV ads.

I will be happy to yield to my friend.

There is no question about it, and our economy is in shambles now in part because of the burden that's placed on a lot of the businesses.

I remember about a year ago I was in a roomful of about 15 or 20 businesses, primarily manufacturing businesses in northeast Ohio, 50, 100, 200 people; and we were talking about health care, and they were all talking about how their health care costs went up 15, 20, 30 percent depending on the situation of the people that worked at the factory. And when asked if they would somehow be willing to pay more and get health care off their books completely, would they be willing to do that, they were all like, Sign me up right now. You mean I don't have to deal with this anymore? I can focus on making this product that I make?

And part of what we're trying to do here is to say get all of this waste out of the system, put it on the front end where we can have prevention. Let's stop all of this stupidness of saying you don't get any health care because of whatever reason and you end up with the emergency room costs. Put it up front. Let's squeeze the fat. Let's bring in PhRMA and take some of the savings from there and help fill that donut hole the gentleman from Tennessee was talking about earlier, and let's get ourselves healthy.

And I yield back to my friend.

If the gentleman will yield.

Just for an example for Medicare Advantage. Fourteen percent overpayment on average for Medicare Advantage, that is over what Medicare pays. That is wasting the taxpayers' dollars. That's the money we're talking about that we can shift from that current program into what Mr. Murphy was talking about earlier, these kinds of cost savings that we need.

About 2 years ago, I heard a number, and I think this is roughly correct, where the insurance industry had increased their employment by maybe 5 or 6 or 7 percent, and they decreased the amount of services that they were providing by, like, 25 or 30 percent. So they were taking this money, hiring people to knock people off the rolls, to not cover, to make them jump through these hoops. I call, I got denied. Well, I'm sick. I need to go now, call. I get denied. Call, you get denied. Then eventually maybe they call us and maybe we make a call and who knows what happened, you get lucky, you get somebody.

But to your point, that person who's hiring people, growing their business at the expense of all of these other people is not the way this is going to keep going because America is better when all of these people together are healthier and more productive and participating in the system.

And I want to yield to my friend from Tennessee because he caught me

before my friend from Wisconsin, but there was an article yesterday that was brought to our attention about people in technology businesses that, for whatever reason, want to go out and start their own business but can't because someone in their family or they have a preexisting condition, so they need to stay in their current job because they don't have the coverage when they could be out in the market using what's best in America, the entrepreneurship, to generate new employment.