Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I just want to say how honored I am to join you this evening for what is such a contrast to what is being offered on the other side of the aisle. The calm and reasoned and logical and thoughtful approach that you and others have taken I think is just so wonderful and heartwarming, frankly, to all Americans to know that there are individuals that are as thoughtful and logical in their approach to, truly, the challenges that we have.

Before I begin, I do want to make a comment about what has seemed to become a nightly ritual, which is a level of personal attacks from the other side that frankly does a disservice to the discussion and the debate, and it really is a shame to see.

We have really a once-proud party on the other side of the aisle that has degraded into what may be known as the ABC game, which is accuse and blame and criticize, really with no positive outlook and no positive proposals for the future.

When they do offer alternatives, as my colleague from Texas just mentioned, what their alternatives do is significantly increase the tax burden on Americans, significantly increase the size of government and the scope of government; and as was mentioned, they have offered some significant increases just of late. So I would like to share with the Members, Mr. Speaker, a couple of graphics that will demonstrate that.

This demonstrates if the other side had their way, just so far this year in their proposals, for the next 5 years the amendments that they have offered would have added an increase in the amount of spending of over $67 billion. This is actually out of date a little bit because we have not got another bit to share with the Members something that happened today in committee, but $67 billion of increased spending.

What about the increase in taxes that they have proposed? As was mentioned, the only alternatives that they truly put on the table are an increase in the amount of spending and an increase in taxes, which certainly increases the size and scope of government. The amount of increased tax revenue that they have recommended to date, $392 billion. Even in Washington, that is a lot of money, and many of these taxes obviously come out of small business and other business, which means jobs.

I think it is important that people recognize and remember what happens daily here and what has happened during this session alone.

We had a really very lean budget that was adopted by Congress, without a single vote, without a single Member of the other side, the Democrat Party, voting in favor of that budget. In fact, they were instructed by their leadership not to support it, and one of the members of their leadership bragged, I guess in essence, quote, they will not get a single vote on this budget. Now that is the kind of leadership that they are offering.

The level of change that we have to fight for here, although it is significant because it is moving in the correct direction, is really not huge, and there is a great graph that I have. This graph I think says so much. Pictures really can say so much more than just words.

This is the proposal for Medicaid changes that we have recommended, the savings in Medicaid, frankly, that increase and empower individuals; but you see the blue line here is without reform. The reform measures that we adopted and recommended you see are the red line. That is the difference over a 5-year period. That is what their screaming is all about. That is the hyperbole that they refer to when they talk about the kind of reform that we offer.

Today, in the Committee on Education and the Workforce, we were struggling with how to provide appropriate moneys to allow the 300,000 students who have been displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita the opportunity to go to school wherever they may now find themselves. The proposal that we put on the table had about 7 to $9,000 per student, which is relatively consistent with the kinds of moneys being spent around the Nation. The Democrat proposal that they put on the table in our committee, and it was defeated, but the Democrat proposal was to spend over $26,000 per student, adding literally billions to the cost of government. I do not know anybody that believes that that is a reasonable amount to spend on something that is as needed; but certainly, we do not need to increase the size and scope of government to do so.

The record of fiscal responsibility of the Republican Caucus and this Republican government really is very, very strong. What that fiscal responsibility has done is cut the budget significantly.

This year alone, the fiscal year 2005, which is already done, this is not projection, this is already done, cut the budget by nearly $100 billion, cut the deficit by nearly $100 billion, from $412 billion to $319 billion. So it is a remarkable demonstration of the resolve that we have.

When we have the challenges that we have had with the hurricanes and the like, I think it is important for people to appreciate that the Republicans always return to principle. Always, and first and foremost in the area of government spending for our side, as a principle, is that the taxes that Washington collects are not government money. They are the people's money. So we need to be absolutely as responsible as we can be with that.

As I mentioned, we decreased in 2005 the deficit by nearly $100 billion. What other results are there that we can point to that demonstrate that fiscal responsibility? Nondefense, nonhomeland domestic discretionary spending this year in the House is on track to be below last year's level, and that is for the first time since the Reagan administration. That is true fiscal responsibility.

House Republicans have passed legislation trying to find 35, and hopefully 50, billion dollars in savings in the mandatory programs. This is the first time since 1997. House Republicans have recommended zeroing out the budget, the funding, for 98 Federal programs that are wasteful, that duplicate services, and that are out of date. Anybody in America, if they were to look at the kinds of programs that are offered, I am certain would agree that there are government programs that are certainly wasteful, that there are government programs that offer the same thing that another program does, and many, many programs are out of date.

We have identified 98 of those Federal programs, and we are trying to make it so that we zero the funding for that so those programs are no longer on the books and no longer have that government waste. These savings themselves would save about $4.3 billion.

For the first time since 1994, Congress has temporarily funded the government at the lowest level that is possible by law as we complete our work on the budget process; and last year we held the growth in nonsecurity discretionary spending to 1.4 percent, less than inflation.

So that is true, I believe, fiscal responsibility; and the record is clear. The record shows that the party of fiscal discipline is the Republican Party.

You say, well, what kind of results are we seeing in the economy with those kinds of policies? The gentleman from Texas alluded to many of the positive items that we are seeing in the economy.

Real GDP grew by 3.8 percent in the first quarter of this year, but what we are seeing is the strongest growth performance and one of the strongest growth performances in the past 20 years.

Payroll employment, that was mentioned, is up by nearly 3.7 million jobs in the past months. That is 3.7 million people that have employment that did not have it before.

The unemployment rate is down to 4.9 or 5.1, depending on the month, over the last quarter. We used to learn in economics that an unemployment rate of between 5 and 6 percent was full employment because you have got folks that are either moving or they are changing jobs or the like, make it so that 5 percent unemployment is essentially full employment. That 5 percent is less than the average for the decade of the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. Again, fiscal responsibility and true results from that kind of responsibility.

Manufacturing industrial production is up 3.4 percent over the past year and by 9.5 percent in the last 2 years.

Real business equipment investment has increased by 13.5 percent at an annualized rate over the past 2 years. That is the best sustained growth in over 6 years, truly a remarkable performance, and the economy is the beneficiary of the programs that have been put in place by this Republican Congress and this Republican administration.

One of the things that I think is so incredibly important, when we look at how does it get down to the community and down to those people on the street, what we are seeing in terms of personal homeownership, it is at an all-time record rate, 70 percent or thereabouts. That record rate stretches across all demographic categories of our society. So the results of this fiscal responsibility are very clear.

The results of the policies that have been put in place by this Republican Party, this Republican Congress, and this Republican administration have demonstrated clearly there is greater success for greater numbers of people.

So I am proud to stand before my colleagues tonight and to participate in this discussion of what is truly fiscal responsibility in a thoughtful and a reasoned and calm manner, and I commend the gentleman from Texas for organizing this hour. I look forward to being back to talk about these issues and more.

Madam Speaker, we are at a financial crossroads. My Republican colleagues and I are committed to fiscal responsibility, while Democrats merely propose slogans and catch phrases to hide behind their tax-and-spend policies.

Over the past 3 years, Democrats have offered amendments totaling tens of billions of dollars of additional spending and $392 billion in additional taxes. That is more taxes.

A lot of these proposed spending increases were to be financed by raising taxes on small businesses, which means fewer jobs. Earlier this year not a single Democrat House Member supported the lean budget that passed Congress, not one.

Before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, our economy was surging, and deficits were shrinking. Fact: The budget deficit shrank last year from $412 billion to $319 billion, a decrease of nearly 25 percent. We had 25 straight months of job growth, falling unemployment, and strong growth in the economy.

Madam Speaker, Americans deserve and expect us to work together. I urge my Democrat colleagues to move from slogans to solutions. We would welcome their productive contributions. The American people are waiting.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Deputy Sheriff Patrick Neal of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department. He was recently named the Top Cop by the National Association of Police Organizations, and yesterday I had a chance to meet this hero. His exemplary actions took place in August 2004 when he tracked a wanted felon to a suspect's neighborhood and found him standing by his truck.

The criminal took out a pistol and opened fire on Deputy Sheriff Neal from nearly point-blank range. In the exchange, Deputy Sheriff Neal was shot six times. The criminal was shot four times, falling to the ground, causing him to lose his weapon. However, he tried to crawl and gain his gun again, determined to kill Deputy Sheriff Neal.

Having been struck in the face and nearly blacking out due to blood loss, Deputy Sheriff Neal mustered everything he had and fired one last time, ending the confrontation for good.

Mr. Speaker, modern-day heroes are very rare. Deputy Sheriff Neal is as close as they come. His selflessness and courage under fire epitomized what it means to be a public servant hero. On behalf of my constituents, I thank Deputy Sheriff Neal for his dedicated service to his community, our State and our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Price-Miller resolution, which we have introduced today, to require the President to submit to Congress a plan for the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq in the wake of the October 15 constitutional

referendum, beginning with an initial drawdown.

This is not a requirement I propose lightly. As many in this Chamber and in my home State know, I have been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, and I voted against giving the President authority to invade Iraq, regarding it as an abdication of congressional responsibility.

I have supported funding for troops in the field and for Iraqi reconstruction, while calling for an exit strategy, including benchmarks to which the administration should be held accountable, and major policy changes that would increase the probability of achieving at least some of our goals.

But there is no evidence that President Bush has heeded anyone who does not accept his glib assurances and his stay-the-course rhetoric. As a result, the mistakes that have marred this effort from the beginning, poor or nonexistent planning, for example, and weak international participation, have been compounded.

Such failures must not become a rationale for extending our occupation of Iraq. In fact, our presence itself is a target of the insurgents and a magnet for international terrorists. And it may be encouraging some elements of the Iraqi leadership to defer essential decisions and compromises that are necessary if their country is to assume responsibility for its own future.

So we must leave. How we leave does matter: in a away that spares the lives of American troops and Iraqi noncombatants, in a way that minimizes the chance that Iraq will descend into massacres, ethnic cleansing or civil war, and in a way that maximizes the chances for Iraqi self-defense and self-government.

But we must end the occupation, and the approval of the Constitution offers us an opportunity to begin that process. It is an opportunity we must seize. There are no guarantees in this enterprise. Iraq could rise to this challenge with the Kurds and the Shia more fully accommodating the essential interests of Sunnis in changes to the Constitution early next year, based on input from a newly elected Sunni Parliament after December, or Iraq could further descend into sectarian violence.

Our country cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility for creating this quagmire, or for helping avoid the worst-case possibilities going forward, but we must understand, and the President must tell the world we understand, that a sustained American military presence is not part of the solution. It is not feasible. In some ways it exacerbates the difficulties, and it must be ended.

Our resolution draws in concept and content on one introduced in the Senate by Mr. Feingold on June 14. It updates that resolution by taking explicit account of the constitutional referendum and proposing an initial immediate drawdown of troops.

Mr. Speaker, we should never have started this war. We should have and could have utilized other means of containing and controlling whatever threat Saddam Hussein represented. No ideal option is available to us now in ending it, but the October 15 vote offers the best opportunity we are likely to have to begin the process of withdrawal credibly, and hopefully to turn the responsibility for Iraq's future over to the Iraqis themselves, and to repair the diplomacy and foreign policy from which the invasion of Iraq has been such a tragic departure for our country.

Mr. Speaker, with the recent hurricanes on the gulf coast, it is heartwarming to witness the unity and the outpouring of support from all Americans.

It is a unity of purpose from all, except one group: Democrats in the House of Representatives. That is right.

Our Republican leadership is working valiantly to find resources to provide help for the displaced residents. The way to do that is to reopen the budget and identify savings elsewhere to pay for those new costs, and the Democrat leadership says, They won't get one Democrat vote.

Now, that is leadership. How sad.

Mr. Speaker, the American people expect us to work together to solve problems. Democrats are stuck practicing the tired, old, petty, partisan politics of the past; and this is disappointing and irresponsible. America deserves more than obstruction from a once-proud party.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the leadership allowing me the opportunity to speak this hour and talk about a number of issues. We are going to discuss an important issue of health care. But before we do, I thought it would be appropriate to correct some of the misinformation that we have heard over the past hour. And the misinformation is truly remarkable, and so I have been joined by one of my colleagues here to address a couple issues and I will do the same as well, and then we will get into the discussion about health care. But I am pleased to be joined by my colleague from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), who is going to tell the rest of the story.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for her leadership and really stalwart stance on the issue of budgetary reform and fiscal responsibility. She is one of the champions here as it relates to that.

I just wanted to mention a few other items that we have had presented by the other side of the aisle over the last hour; and again, I think the misinformation that is being presented is truly astonishing. It does a disservice to the American people. It does a disservice to the debate because if folks are not interested in being honest and open about the debate, then you cannot have a real debate; and when you are dealing with folks really who want to distort things so incredibly, it is phenomenal.

My colleague from Tennessee mentioned that the Democrats were concerned because they had not been invited to participate. Let me tell you what their leadership said when we discussed the possibility of opening up the budget that we agreed to in the spring in order to find savings to cover the costs for the displaced citizens down in the gulf coast after the hurricanes. What the Democrat leadership said, well, you may do that but you will not get a single Democrat vote. Now, there is leadership for you. There is leadership for you.

We also heard from the other side recently, just earlier today, that they looked for third-party validators, some objective body that would say, yes, what you are saying is absolutely correct. As an example of the third-party validator, they brought an editorial from the Washington Post. Folks in my district, if you had a microphone in their living rooms right now, you would hear them guffawing. To consider that the Washington Post editorial is a third-party objective body is just phenomenal, but it is the backdrop for all of the discussion that they have, and that is, to distort and to give a lack of credibility to those things that are truly occurring here in Washington.

I want to point out this chart right here because this is a chart that talks about the percentage of Federal personal income tax paid by different sectors of our society. All the time you hear the other side talking about the wealthy are not paying their fair share and it is all on the backs of the poor and on and on and on. Sometimes the picture is worth a thousand words.

What this chart shows is that the top 1 percent, this column right here is the top 1 percent of our population in terms of income. The top 1 percent of our population in the United States today pays 34.27 percent of the total taxes, 34.27 percent by the top 1 percent. So you tell me whether you think that is the right amount or the wrong amount. I do not know. All I do know is they are certainly paying their fair share.

The column way over on the other side, way over on the other side is the lower 50 percent of income individuals in this Nation, and the amount that those individuals are contributing to the total revenue is 3.46 percent. You see the difference, the lower 50 percent, that is half, 50 percent, that is half, compared to the top 1 percent, 3.46 percent, 34.27 percent, 10 times as much by the top 1 percent as the lower 50 percent.

As I say, you may say that that is not the right amount, but you certainly cannot say with a straight face that the individuals who are in the top 1 percent are not paying their fair share. That is just nonsense, and really, makes it so that you have to be suspect about every other word that comes out of their mouths, especially when it is talking about budgets.

So I would hope that what they would do is to engage productively, to engage in the process and come with positive solutions and positive discussions and not just a just-say-no attitude, which is what their leadership has told them as it relates to budgetary issues.

Let me shift gears a little bit because I did want to thank, once again, the leadership for allowing me to participate in this hour and wanted to talk about one of the most important aspects and areas of every single citizen's life, and that is the area of health care.

Few things are more important to any individual's life than health care; and certainly, the decisions that an individual makes about health care are some of the most personal ones that one will make. I am joined today by one of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), my good friends and colleague, who is going to discuss a little bit about individual responsibility as it relates to health care; and then we will talk about some other items as they relate to Medicare and other issues and health care.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway) and ask my colleague to talk a little bit about individual responsibility in health care.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments, because they are just so appropriate, and I think it is a shame, but they are visionary, that it ought to be the system that we currently have in terms of personal responsibility and an opportunity to select the kind of health care that we have. But, sadly, that is not the case. We will talk a little bit about that and how we got to where we are today in our health care system.

But let me mention, once again, why I think it is so incredibly important that we discuss health care. It is a significant portion of the Federal budget but, more importantly, it is without a doubt the area where the most personal decisions are made. And as we talk about health care, I think it is important that we always try to remember who is making those decisions, or who should be making those decisions may be a better question. Who should be making those personal decisions as they relate to health care?

My passion for this is, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway) mentioned, I am a physician, I am a third generation physician. My grandfather and father were physicians as well. My grandfather graduated from medical school in 1908, so he saw a transformation in the field of medicine that was absolutely incredible. He practiced for over 30 years nearly without any antibiotics at all. When you think about that as being a different kind of world, it really was a different kind of world, a different kind of health care. He practiced medicine until he was 94 years old. So I remember well when I was a young boy, some of my first memories are of visiting my grandfather and going on what were rounds with him, and rounds at that time meant house calls. Some people remember those, but we would get in his car or walk through the neighborhood and visit patients. And one of the things that I remember so well is the love that was poured out when he would come to a house, because it was a very personal relationship, the relationship that the patients had with their physician, then my grandfather.

My father was a physician as well and came and practiced during the 1960s and the 1970s, and it was a different time then also. It was a time of great transformation for health care, in a direction that has kind of led us to where we are right now. He initially practiced internal medicine and then moved into becoming one of the first professional physician groups of emergency care. He worked in an emergency room in a hospital, and that was part of the transformation that medicine was going through, to try to answer some of the real challenges of caring for people with new technology and a

new society that was having challenges in the way that people were accessing health care. Many suffered from trauma, which had not been the case in the past, primarily related to the automobile and the kind of traffic that began sprouting up in so many urban areas across our Nation.

In the 1960s, we saw the changes that came about with the institution of Medicaid and Medicare. And when we talk about health care in the United States, it is impossible to talk about health care without talking about Medicare, because Medicare has truly transformed, for better or worse, the whole method of how we deliver health care in our Nation. The vast majority of private insurance products today as they relate to health care are tied in some way to Medicare. Most folks do not talk about that, many do not know that, but it is why the discussion about Medicare is so incredibly important.

There are a couple charts that I have here that I would like to share with the body that kind of bring some of that into perspective. This first one comes from the Center for Health Transformation, and that is an organization that has come about in the past couple of years. It is headed by some wonderful people. Speaker Gingrich is leading this charge. He recognizes that the aspects of health and health care and the costs of health care to our Nation must be transformed in the way that they are being delivered right now. And this information comes and demonstrates the national health care expenditures as a percent of gross domestic product.

So how much are we in this Nation spending on health care as it relates to the entire domestic product that we have? How much money do we have and how much are we spending on health care?

In 1965, that amount was about 6 percent. In 1965, that amount about was about 6 percent. It happens that 1965 was the year that Medicare began. And there are a variety of reasons for why we see the curve go up the way it does, but suffice it to say that we have significantly increased the amount of our domestic product that we are spending on health care, now to about 13 percent, and the projections are that in the relatively near future, we will be at 17 percent. Some of that is, I would suggest to the Members of the House and folks who are watching, some of that is as a result of governmental involvement, and we will talk about that some. Some of that is a result of technology, no doubt about it. But the trend is disturbing. The trend is disturbing, because we cannot go too much further, and we may be at that point now, where we are not able to provide for other priorities that the Nation has. So we have gone from about 6 to 13 percent as a percent of gross domestic product.

Now, it is also important to look at who is paying. I often talk about the golden rule. Most folks know the golden rule. There are a couple golden rules. The finest one is the golden rule that says do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but in Washington the golden rule is he who has the gold makes the rules. And this chart demonstrates clearly one of the challenges that we have as it relates to health care.

This chart shows the percentage of health care expenditures that are privately paid or paid for by the government. And one of the dirty little secrets that is not really a secret is that whenever the government pays for anything, whenever Washington pays for anything, there are all sorts of rules and regulations and requirements that are in place that go along with that. Sometimes they are good and sometimes they are not, but they have to be complied with. Otherwise, you do not get the money.

Now, in 1965, remember that other chart that we had, which showed the amount of money that we were spending on health care. This chart shows in 1965 that government paid for about 25 percent of all of health care expenditures in our Nation. And the private sector, individuals and the private insurance, paid for about 75 percent. So about 3-to-1 private sector to government.

Over a relatively short period of time, we are seeing a significant change in who is paying for what. Right now we are in a situation where the government is paying for about 45 percent, and it continues to tick up, of health care expenditures, and the private sector or the private market is paying for about 55 percent. That is important not just because this side is oftentimes on the backs of hard-working Americans, but it is important because remember that golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules.

Washington, when they are paying for health care, make rules that may and oftentimes may not be to the benefit of the system. When I say ``the system,'' I do not mean the folks providing the care; I mean the folks receiving the care. This system is set up not to serve patients, and that is the problem. This type of graph demonstrates that those individuals who are most, remember, the most personal decisions that we make are health care decisions, and this system is set up to not be one that is the most helpful to patients.

My colleagues may say, well, can you give an example of that? Well, there are all sorts of examples of that, but what I would like to talk about briefly is an example that clearly points out why Washington is not the place to make these decisions. We are about to begin a new part of the Medicare program on January 1 of 2006, it is part D Medicare program which will start January 1, and that program is a program that for the first time since 1965 when the program was instituted, for the first time will cover prescription drugs, will cover medicines.

Now, one thinks of a health care system that has incredible ramifications for the entire health care system of our Nation, and it has been in place for 40 years, and it has not covered a single medicine, not one antibiotic, not one drug for diabetes, not one drug for hypertension or high blood pressure, not one drug for cancer; it has not covered any of them. That is the way that Washington works; that is, slowly and with a lack of perspective on who is being affected by the decisions.

Remember, patients are the ones that are affected by the decisions that we make here in Washington as it relates to health care all across the spectrum. And we have a system in place that is not changing; that is, the structure of the bureaucracy in the government, that is not nimble, it is not nimble like the private sector. So we have a Medicare program that for 40 years has not covered a single drug.

Now, thank goodness we are moving in that direction. There are some challenges I think we have in that program. But we have a system of government in Washington that cannot respond to the remarkable changes that we have had in the area of progress in science and technology. The private sector is so much more adaptable, so much more flexible, so much more nimble. So when patients need improvements, they ought to be able to look to the private sector for those improvements, because they come about so much more rapidly. But the sad story is, they have to look to Washington.

So I think what we need is a transformation of our health care system so that patients can make those kinds of decisions.

The health care model that we have right now really harms people, because it is not responsive to the needs of patients. It is responsive to a bottom line. It is responsive to a bottom line. In fact, the individuals way back in 1965 who wrote Medicare, the Medicare law, in this body knew that. They knew that Washington could not be responsive. They knew that it ought not be in charge of health care. And how do I know that? I know that because what they wrote in the law at that time, and this is a quote from the changes to the Social Security Act which put in place the Medicare program: ``Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal officer or employee to exercise any, any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided.''

Did you hear that? Nothing shall be construed to authorize anybody in the Federal Government to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided.

Well, I say to my colleagues, I will tell you, and you know this, that all sorts of things that Medicare does and all sorts of things that we do specifically, specifically, either supervise or control the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are

provided. We violate this law all the time, all the time. And why do we do it? We do it because we are not patient-sensitive or quality- sensitive as it relates to health care. Washington, by its very nature and by its very being is bottom line sensitive, it is bottom line sensitive.

So we have a model that is in place that cannot, I would suggest cannot provide the kind of services that are needed for the patients.

Think of the contrast. If you think about the ways that our society has changed over just the past 20 or 30 years, the way that we do so many everyday things, and if you compare that to how health care is provided now and how it has changed or not changed, then you have a very clear idea I think about the challenges that we have in the area of health care.

Some common, everyday things: buying gasoline at the gas station. Now, regardless of what it costs, the way that we used to purchase gasoline is that you would pull up at the pump and you would roll down your window and somebody would come out, and they would say, would you like us to fill it up? And then they would go ahead and put the amount of gasoline that you wanted in your car, and you would pull out a dollar or two or more and you would pay for that gasoline. Now, how do we put gas in our car? We pull up to a pump, we never see anybody, we take our credit card out of our pocket or purses and we put it in the pump, we select the gasoline, we pump the gasoline, and many of us, I am told almost half of us, do not even ask for a receipt any more because we trust the system.

Because we trust the system. It is easy. It is more efficient. It is a system that has changed drastically over the past 20 or 30 years. And if you compare that to health care, that is stuck in a paper society that is no longer existent in so many aspects of our society.

The same is true of travel right now. If you want to purchase an airline ticket, an increasing number, in terms of percentage of folks, are now going online. They can go to their home computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They pull up the site of the airline that they want to utilize, or they can go to something like Travelocity and it will pick the different airlines for you.

You plunk in the starting city where you are going to leave from; you plunk in the designation city. It will send back to you, in a matter of seconds, seconds, what kind of flights there are, how much it costs, whether there is a seat, and then you can purchase your ticket right there.

And you can, within 24 hours of your travel date, you can sit at your home computer or at your office and print out your boarding pass. The efficiency of that, if you think about it, is mind-boggling. It is incredible.

You as an individual are interacting with the entity that can provide a service that allows you to do what it is you want to do in terms of travel.

Now, why is it that in health care we do not have any of those things? We do not have any of those things. Think about what happens when you go to your doctor. What happens is that you walk in the door, and what are you met with?

You are met with a pile of paper. You are met with a pile of paper. And you read through that paper, or most folks go right to the back end of that paper, and you sign. And you wait and you get into the clinic room or the exam room, and your doctor comes in, and he or she has what in their hand? A chart. A paper chart.

That may have the last notes from your office visit. It may not. It is a system that is antiquated. It is a system that is inefficient. It is a system that is unresponsive to the needs of patients in a way that the rest of our society has transformed completely.

So health care is stuck in the past. It is stuck in the past century. It will take a significant length of time to just catch up to where we are, not get into the 21st century, but to catch up to where we are.

Now, how do we progress from here? What do we need to do to move forward and transform health care? I want to talk about some principles, and I want to talk about a resolution that I have introduced, H. Res 215. It is kind of a 30,000-foot view of health care.

What it says is that we ought to move as a matter of national policy from a system as it relates to health care of defined benefits to a system of defined contribution. Now, what does that mean?

Right now most individuals get their insurance through their employer, or their previous employer, or through the government, though Medicare or through Medicaid. And all of those systems, by and large, have what is called a defined benefit plan.

That means that somebody, in the case of Medicare and Medicaid, some government employee, bureaucrat, has gone through and decided what ought to be included in that insurance plan, in that package, and what you can be treated for and where you are treated and by whom you are treated and how are you treated, often times.

What diseases are covered, what diseases are not covered. Somebody else has decided all of those. That is a defined benefit. There is a defined package of benefits that are provided to the patient. This is true for individuals receiving their health care through Medicare and Medicaid. It is also true for most employer-provided health insurance.

Someone else, the human resources officer or someone in the company is deciding what ought to be covered in terms of health care. And what that does is remove the patient from that decision-making process. It also sets up a system whereby the patient, if the patient is frustrated, oftentimes that is the case.

I heard a statistic the other day that I found fascinating. Four percent of the public is accessing the health care system at any point in time. Four percent of the population is accessing the health care system, having some interaction with the health care system.

Half of those folks are frustrated in some way. So you say, well, why has the system not changed? Well, if only 2 percent of the population is mad at any point in time, it is a small amount. It is a small amount.

But what that defined benefit system has in place is a system where patients cannot be the ones who are affecting insurance plans easily. Because, you know, my colleagues know and patients around the Nation know that when they dial up the insurance company and say, hey, this plan is not working for me, I cannot get this disease treated, or I cannot go to the doctor that I want to go to, or I cannot get the medicine that I want, the insurance company says, well, you will have to talk to your boss. Right? Talk to your human resources officer. Or if you are a Medicare patient, you cannot even get through on the phone most of the time. But what happens is that the patient is removed from that decision-making process.

Now, that is not right. These are the most personal decisions that people make in their lives, the most personal decisions; and they are removed from that process. So moving from a defined benefit system to a defined contribution system says that whoever is paying the cost for the health insurance, whether it is the Federal Government through the Medicare program or the State government through Medicaid, or the employer through employer-provided health insurance, or the individuals, regardless of who is paying for the insurance policy, the patient owns the policy.

The patient owns the policy. And that is a sea change, because what that means then is that patients can vote with their feet. If they do not like what one insurance company is doing because they own the policy, they can change to another insurance company. And if they do not like what that company is doing, they can change to another. It also makes it easy so that when the patient gets on the phone with the insurance company, the insurance company has to be responsive to the patient. Why? Because the patient has power. The patient has control and ownership of the insurance policy. It changes the whole dynamic for health care.

It will not change anything overnight; but over a period of time, what it will do, if we are bold enough to transform health care in this way, it will allow patients to have the power over the kind of insurance policy that they have.

Now, this Center for Health Transformation is really doing some incredible, incredible work. And what they have done, I think in a very succinct

and appropriate way, is to identify kind of the principles of our current system of health care, and compare them to what a 21st-century health care system would be.

And I would like to just touch on a few of these. The current system is provider-centered, or I would say more correctly, it is insurance- or government-centered. Remember that the patient is outside of the control process, outside of the power process for this. The system is price-driven.

What that means is that it is more interested in the bottom line than it is interested in quality, or, said another way, it is more interested in money than it is in patients. And that ought not be a system that we tolerate. That ought not be a system that we tolerate.

Medicare is a classic example. Remember, I mentioned that Medicare is important to talk about as it relates to health care, because so much of our entire health care system, even in the private sector, is driven by the decisions that are made in Medicare. Medicare has a system that they compensate or pay physicians and other providers with. It is called an RBRVS, or a Resource Based Relative Value Scale, RBRVS. And what that means is that Washington, the Federal Government, decides how much money it is going to spend on health care for seniors.

It decides what that pot of money is going to be. And it may or may not bear any resemblance to the amount of health care that needs to be provided, so that when patients go to their doctor, they may or may not be able to get at what they need because the decision-making is all based on cost; it is not based on need. It is not based on quality of care. It is based on how much money we have.

That is a model that is fraught with problems and, frankly, fraught with extreme difficulties for patients. So a price-driven system just does not work. It ought to be something completely different. That has been defined by the Center For Health Transformation as values-driven. We will talk about that in just a minute.

The current system is knowledge-disconnected. There is not a good way to get knowledge between those folks providing the care, slow diffusion of innovation. It takes years, literally, for a new drug that is out to come on the market, to get to the market. It takes an average of 5 to 7 years, 5 to 7 years from the time when a new procedure or a new type of treatment for a specific disease is described in the literature, in the medical literature, to get to be used in the clinic or exam room or in the operating room. Five to 7 years.

That means that the kind of health care that we are receiving right now the individual who described the new innovation did so 5 to 7 years ago. That is not a system that is responsive to patients. It is a system again that is not patient-oriented. The current system is dysfocused, instead of being focused on prevention and on health.

The current system as we talked about is paper-based instead of utilizing the technology that is available today. The current system is a third-party controlled market, and that is a fancy way to say that the patient is out of the loop.

Remember, the Federal Government or the State government or the employer, by and large, is making decisions about what kind of health care is being provided, not the patient. The process is focused on government. As I mentioned, it is the government that is making these decisions has limited choices.

You know this, Members of the House and all of our citizens know this, that often times if you get sick, what is the first thing you do if you have not been to a doctor in a while? Well, you do not do what you ought to do, what you ought to be able to do, and that is find the highest quality physician you can.

You open up your book and see who you can see. Someone else is making that decision about who you can see. That is not a system that provides the greatest amount of choices appropriately for patients.

The current system is a predatory trial lawyer litigation system. The lawsuit system, the lottery system of the courts that we have as it relates to health care right now is driving up the cost of medicine. It is making it so that folks are receiving all sorts of tests and the like that they frankly do not need.

And the problem with this is not the malpractice insurance costs that doctors are having to pay, although that is a minor portion. The bigger problem is what is called defensive medicine. That means that your doctor, when you go see your doctor, he or she often times is ordering a test or doing a procedure or something in order to make it so that they are less likely to be sued and cover themselves, not necessarily because you need them. And you say, well, that is crazy.

But it happens all of the time. I am an orthopedic surgeon. When someone comes into my office with back pain, almost regardless of their complaint, if I have not seen them before, every one of them gets an x- ray. Now, they get an x-ray because if I did not do an x-ray and they went out of the office, and they went to another physician and that individual took an x-ray and on that x-ray was found to be something astronomically wrong, then I could have been sued for not picking that up at that very first office visit.

You say that is probably the right thing to do. Well, 90 percent, 90 percent of individuals with back pain, standard back pain, will get well within a period of 3 weeks. They did not need an x-ray. But everybody gets one. Everybody gets one. So you make it so that that 3 weeks is not lost for the minimal percentage of individuals who have a significant problem.

The legal system is just phenomenal as it relates to health care, and it drives this practice of defensive medicine to an incredible degree.

Overall cost increases. We have not seen the kind of savings in health care we ought to see. You remember the graph that showed the increase in percent of GDP that we are spending on health care? It was 6 percent in 1965. Now it is 13 percent, soon to go to 17 percent. We have not seen any of the savings in health care that we have seen throughout all other sectors of our society.

What is a 21st-century system? It is centered on the patient. It is values-driven, knowledge-intense. It allows for a free flow of information between physicians and other providers. It is prevention- and health-focused. Electronically based. It gets away from that paper system that frankly results in more errors and more problems because it is a paper system.

The Center for Health Transformation calls it a binary mediated market. What does that mean? It means that the patient is in charge, the patient and the provider are the ones making decisions.

Outcomes focused on government. Increased choice. That is exactly what needs to happen. The patient needs to be in charge. And a new system of health justice. All of these things would result in a significant decrease in the cost of the health care and making it so that the quality of care and quality of life is increased all across the Nation for all, frankly, because of a transformation in our health care system.

So what we need is a new vision for health care, one that has more choices, more control by patients resulting in higher quality and lower costs. And I look forward to working with so many of my colleagues in the House on both sides of the aisle who are interested in positive solutions, productive solutions, making it so that those personal decisions as they relate to health care are able to be made by patients and individuals.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be joined now by one of my colleagues, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry). We thank the gentleman so much for coming, and I look forward to the gentleman's comments as they relate to health care.

I thank my good friend from Nebraska for joining us today. I want to thank him for pointing out health savings accounts and also the incredible importance of this discussion to small business.

When I go back to the district and I visit businesses all across the district, one of the things that they say, Whatever you do up there in Washington, please, please, make it so that we can afford to provide health insurance for our employees.

So many of the things that we are doing right now as it relates to the model in which we are delivering health care make it more difficult for them to be able to provide that. So I thank the gentleman for his perspective and for joining us today.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take a very, very short period of time and just close by saying that the model that we currently deliver health care under in this Nation is one that is not patient friendly; it is not efficient; and it does not spend anybody's money, be it tax money or personal money, wisely.

We need a new model, a new model for health care. A transformation of our health care system is what is needed: more choices, more control by patients, higher quality and lower costs. What that does is make it so that we would have better care, more patients in power, and more responsibility and opportunity for patients to receive the kind of care that they so richly deserve.

Again, I would like to say that I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the aisle who want to work positively and productively to bring about a system of health care in our Nation that allows patients, that allows patients to be the ones making decisions that give the highest quality of health care that they need and that they deserve.

Madam Speaker, if the Democrats were in charge, as they would like, they would increase our spending this year by tens of billions of dollars. In fact, over the last 3 years Democrats have attempted to bust the discretionary budget by more than $60 billion.

Where would we find the money for their additions for this astronomical amount? You know the answer because it is their answer to every single problem, higher taxes.

However, Republicans are looking for savings from other programs, not raising taxes on hard-working Americans. Being fiscally responsible is the only answer, not just spending more money. We have an obligation to the American people to restrain spending. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle had their way, they would spend billions of dollars on programs that sound perfectly wonderful; but, frankly, that is what would be fiscally irresponsible and immoral.

My Republican colleagues and I realize the importance of fiscal restraint and financial responsibility, and we are working to find a solution that will not bury our children and grandchildren under mounds of debt. I urge my colleagues from across the aisle to join us in this responsible and moral initiative.

Mr. Speaker, when I am at home and speaking to groups, I oftentimes ask them, the constituents that I am talking to, have you heard any good news lately on the radio or heard any good news on television or have you read any good news in the newspaper? Most often the silence is deafening.

But we do not have to look far for good news, either here at home or around the world. Much of that good news is directly related to the actions of Americans. That certainly has been true with the outpouring of support and relief for our fellow citizens who have been victims of recent hurricanes and other natural disasters, and this past Saturday the world witnessed not just good news but great news. The election in Iraq this past weekend was a phenomenal event, a remarkable step toward an independent, sovereign, democratic nation. What good news this is.

This is a momentous event, a huge step forward, and toward the approaching day when we will be able to bring home our service men and women.

Did you hear the good news, Mr. Speaker? Listen to some of the voices.

Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan in Baghdad said: ``Nationwide security was a resounding success, with all of the 13 recorded attacks aimed at election targets failing.''

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, talking about TV coverage, said: ``I have seen pictures of citizens who are proud to be shown on camera having voted. There were no such pictures from these places in the last election. The victory for Iraq is that they are voting.''

Listen to the voices, Mr. Speaker. Abdul Hussein Ahmed emerged from a polling station in the southern city of Najaf with his purple ink- stained finger raised aloft and he said: ``Five members of my family were killed by Saddam and his people but now with this constitution everyone is equal under the law.''

Listen to the voices, Mr. Speaker. Razifa Hussein Abdullah arrived at the polling station with tears in her eyes. Her husband, Hussein Salim, leaned on her for balance as they walked. They had returned several months ago from exile in Iran where they had fled during the Iran-Iraq war of the eighties. ``We suffered a lot,'' she said, ``and today I came to get revenge for all of these years I stayed away from my country to feel that I am an Iraqi again. It was a dream to get rid of Saddam and today is another dream come true,'' she said.

There is the quote from this poster, Mr. Speaker. Listen to the voices. ``I voted then for Saddam, of course, because I was afraid, but this time I came here by my own choice. I am not afraid anymore. I am a free man.''

Some editorials have finally recognized the importance of this occurrence. The New York Post said, ``The referendum results vindicate U.S. policy and are a giant step toward regional peace.'' The New York Times, yes, the New York Times, said, ``What we know already and can't fail to be impressed by is that large numbers of Iraqis of all persuasions turned out in defiance of terrorist threats to decide their constitutional future. They have exercised a basic democratic right that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.'' Even the New York Times.

Mr. Speaker, oftentimes we are too close to the happenings of the day to appreciate their gravity and I think we are just a little too close now. This past Saturday was a red letter date in the history of the world, and the naysayers notwithstanding, this is a day and a time to celebrate and congratulate. I am proud to be an American. I am proud of and humbled by the selfless acts by so many of our fellow citizens in Iraq. In the 1800s, de Tocqueville said that America is not good because it is great, it is great because it is good. It is that goodness that continues to strive for liberty for all. What a momentous time we are in as we celebrate and witness that march of liberty around the world.

Mr. Speaker, it is good news. Let's spread that good news.

Mr. Speaker, while all Americans have shown compassion for the victims of recent natural disasters, we must exercise this compassion in a fiscally responsible manner. We in Congress have an obligation to respond to these natural disasters, but we must not give future generations an IOU of billions of dollars that they will have to pay off.

How do we do this? Many of my colleagues have looked for savings and prioritizing programs, and that is a great start and I am sure many more ideas will come forward as we discuss this issue. We must focus our efforts only on spending that which is essential to the American people, just like a family budget. In the past we have reduced spending when needed, and now is such a time. The American taxpayers want Congress to be fiscally responsible.

Mr. Speaker, it is important to compare the government's budget to a family budget, and it is simple: When you spend more in one area, you must find savings in another. My colleagues and I should do just that. Now let us finish the job and show the taxpayers that Congress is able to act as responsibly as they would in their own life.

Mr. Speaker, illegal immigration is a huge concern to the vast majority of Americans. Some States are welcoming illegal aliens with driver's licenses, in-State college tuition, and access to social services. One has to wonder how can this be. It appears to many that we are rewarding those that break the laws.

Whoever said crime does not pay must not have been talking about those who enter our country illegally. Crossing the border illegally is a criminal act; however, we give these people access to everything you can imagine. Lax enforcement of our immigration policies is making every day payday for illegal aliens.

States other than Texas, Arizona, and California are now more burdened than ever picking up the tab for illegal aliens, with Georgia, my home State, ranking in the top 10 with illegal alien populations.

Hospitals and others are being forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel to look for money, money that should be spent on American citizens and those here legally.

Mr. Speaker, not tomorrow, not the day after that, not next week, not next month, but today, today is the time to stop illegal immigration. H.R. 3693 will do just that.

Mr. Speaker, what a distinct privilege and honor to come before you today to introduce our guest Chaplain, the Reverend Henry Holley. As Members of Congress we are truly blessed with the opportunity to meet and get to know many wonderful Americans from all walks of life, many of whom have dedicated their lives to the betterment of the human race. Henry Holley is one of Georgia's and America's greatest treasures and a man who has given all and then some in his work on behalf of a grateful nation followed by his glorious affiliation with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Following service in World War II in the Pacific, Reverend Holley continued on active duty in the United States Marine Corps until 1966. He then joined the Reverend Billy Graham, ultimately becoming ordained into the gospel ministry by the Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in my district in Marietta, Georgia.

He has literally given his life to further outreach and evangelism. Reverend Holley has organized 10s of crusades worldwide, many attended by literally millions. The Hong Kong crusade in 1990, for example, extended its message of hope and faith to over 100 million people with the gospel, an effort directed by Reverend Holley.

He has served as a special assistant to Dr. Billy Graham on projects and missions too numerous to count, and has recently lent his talent to Reverend Franklin Graham. Reverend Holley is the embodiment of love and compassion and humility. He has been supported in his life work by Betty, his dear wife of 56 years, who joins us today. For the past 33 years they have made Georgia their home. They have three children and four grandchildren. Reverend Holley has brightened and made more meaningful so many lives, and I am privileged to have been able to add my name to that list. I appreciate the opportunity to share him with the House today.

Mr. Speaker, over our recent break, I visited with various groups of seniors in my district, and we provided information and education about the biggest change to Medicare in the 40-year history of the program.

Beginning this January, for the first time, prescription drugs will be covered under Medicare, and over 40 million senior Americans will have the opportunity to receive their needed medications through a new program designed to assist them with payment. This is an exciting and hopeful time for these citizens.

As a physician, I understand the importance of providing appropriate medications and the imperative of preserving the physician-patient relationship and being certain that decisions about which medications are needed be made by patients and their doctors, not decisions made by Washington bureaucrats.

This new program holds great promise but also has potential difficulties. I urge my colleagues to assist in educating all seniors about the upcoming Medicare reforms. Their familiarity and knowledge about these changes are imperative if we are to have a successful program, one that follows the medical model of first doing no harm.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join my colleagues tonight on an issue that is very important. And I found many of your comments so apt and so very pertinent.

I am an orthopedic surgeon, at least I was before I came to Congress; and I have a number of friends in the orthopedic surgery field who practice in Pennsylvania. They are clamoring for young orthopedic surgeons to come to Pennsylvania. My understanding is that there are no orthopedic surgeons under the age of 35 in Pennsylvania. None. And if that is the case, as it is, I think, in that specialty and in others, this is a crisis that we have that will take a generation or more to solve, unless we act now. So I thank the gentleman for the information that he gave.

As I mentioned, I am an orthopedic surgeon, and I am also a third- generation physician. So as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) mentioned, the old time country doctor, well, that old time country doctor was my grandfather. Some of my earliest memories are of going with my grandfather on his rounds on the weekend. And rounds for him did not mean going to the hospital and seeing patients. They meant going to patients' homes. And I will never forget the wonder and the faith and really the love that was communicated to him as he visited so many of those patients' homes. My grandfather never thought about malpractice insurance or liability insurance. They never dreamed of it. Never had to.

My father practiced for a number of years and saw so many changes, and I saw him lament those changes over a period of time. And I guess now the question is not as physicians across our Nation, it really is not whether they will be sued, it is when. It is when they will be sued. And when you think about that as a matter of policy in our society now, when will physicians be sued, a physician being sued, and you think about that man or that woman who is doing their doggonedest just to take care of people, and you think about what they have to deal with every single day, when they are thinking about the next time that they will be sued, or if they will be sued or when they will be sued, it changes how they relate to patients. It changes how they relate to their job. It changes how they relate to their commitment to the work that they do.

And so we have a situation that must be addressed. And it is imperative. The citizens of our country know that it has got to be addressed. Here is some polling that was done by Harris earlier this year. It says 78 percent of Americans express concern that the skyrocketing medical liability costs could limit their ability to get the care when they need it. And I think, as my colleagues have said, the question really is not the cost of malpractice or the cost of liability insurance to the doctors. The question is the access to quality care for patients. That is the consequence of all this. It is not that there is more money, although it is important that there is more money going into something that really is not resulting in any better care for anybody.

But the real question is we are limiting the access of quality care for patients across this Nation. You say, well how does that happen? Well, I want to share with you a couple of examples, as we all have. My good friend from Georgia was an OB-GYN doctor for years and years, and delivered, I think, 5,000 or more babies. And right now we have more counties in the State of Georgia and more counties, frankly, in the Nation that have no coverage by an OB doctor, no coverage to deliver babies, greater in more counties now than we had 10 years ago.

So we are going in the wrong direction. And you say well, now why is that? Did they forget how to deliver babies? Well, certainly not. That is not the answer. The answer is that OB doctors, in the field of OB, delivering a baby is defined as a high-risk procedure. Delivering a normal baby is defined, for insurance purposes, as a high-risk procedure. And there are more and more, because of the liability crisis, there are more and more OB doctors who no longer do high-risk procedures. Therefore, they no longer deliver babies, which is something that those men and women trained to do. That was their craft. That was their calling, to deliver and care for women during their pregnancy and to deliver those babies. So those women who live in those counties now where there are no OB doctors to deliver babies do not have the access to care that they need or that they had just a few short years ago.

In the field of radiology, there are some things that we do not even know as patients that we are missing or that

we are losing. In the field of radiology, there are a number of instances, the issue of mammograms is important because there are about 40 percent of the radiologists in this Nation who no longer read mammograms, no longer read them.

And so you ask the question, well, did they forget how to read them? No, they did not forget how to read them. They were taught in their training, certainly, how to read mammograms and do as well as anybody could do, given the limits of the test, given the limits the mammogram, which is about, in the best of hands, 90 percent. The best radiologist reads a mammogram correctly 90 percent of the time. That is not because he or she does not know how to read them. That is because that is the limit of the test. That is the limit of technology that we have. And so if a radiologist reads 40 mammograms in a given day, 40 mammograms in a given day, it is likely that he or she will not have the right interpretation on four of them.

Well, I do not know anybody that you can ask to expose themselves to liability on 10 percent of the occasions of the work that they do and expect them to continue to do that work. So the only answer for the radiologists and the only answer for the radiologist and his or her family is to not perform that procedure, not read that or interpret that test. That means that women across this Nation no longer have the kind of access to interpretation of mammograms as they did 10 years ago. The same is true for pathologists and Pap smears. Same kind of numbers.

I want to just give one more example and then yield back because many of my colleagues have talked about it being a matter of life and death, and it truly is. And I want to relate a story that highlights, I think, the imperative for us solving this crisis and this challenge before us because it is a matter of life and death.

People are dying because we have, as a national policy, a court system, a legal system that does not allow individuals appropriate access to quality patient care. And the example goes to the issue that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) talked about, and that is the issue of neurosurgery. And it happens with other specialties, but with neurosurgeons, individuals who take care of problems with the brain, that they are on the front lines for some of those incredible crises in individual's lives, when action is needed immediately. And if action does not occur immediately, then there are severe consequences; and oftentimes the consequence is loss of life.

There was an individual that came to a hospital in the metropolitan Atlanta area, a young man in his young 40s and he had fallen and he had hit his head and he knew that something was not just right and so he drove himself to the hospital. And he arrived at the hospital, and because of the liability crisis, there were no neurosurgeons on call, which means that there are no neurosurgeons that the emergency room physician could call in the event of an emergency or a crisis. They would have to transfer those patients elsewhere.

Well, this patient, this gentleman came to the emergency room, was seen by the emergency room physician, was appropriately diagnosed as having what is called a subdural hematoma, which is a bleed within the brain. It is a blood clot within the brain, and it can put pressure on the brain and it can kill you. The treatment for it is relatively simple. It is relatively simple to relieve that pressure, but it is done by a neurosurgeon. In this hospital there were no neurosurgeons on call, no neurosurgeons available; and so this individual, the patient, had a relatively rapid decrease in his clinical status. He got very, very sick and very ill and his life was threatened, and the emergency room physician recognized that, but his only option was to put him in an ambulance and get him to another hospital. And that patient died on the way to the next hospital. That patient died because of our liability crisis in this Nation, and that death will not show up in any statistic anywhere as being a result of our current tort reform crisis, our system of liability problems right now. Will not show up anywhere.

So access to care is being compromised. Quality of care is being compromised. We have a real crisis. Seventy-eight percent of Americans understand that. And what do they want done? Seventy-three percent of Americans want their elected representatives in Washington to support comprehensive medical liability reform. That is the take-home message, that is the take-home message for our colleagues who have acted responsibly here in the House over and over. It is the take-home message for our friends on the Senate side to make certain that they act on H.R. 5 and act soon, quickly, as rapidly as they can in order to save lives and in order to ensure quality care.

With that, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) so very much, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter), the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) for allowing me to participate in this discussion tonight. We ought to stand up here every night and give this message until this work gets done. Thank you so much.

Mr. Speaker, over the past several years, we have all gained firsthand experience on the effects of America's outdated energy system with gas prices going up and down. Atlanta, my home, has seen gas prices anywhere from $3 to $6 a gallon. The results of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita show all of us how terribly dependent we are on foreign sources of oil.

This is a large and complex issue and not a challenge easily solved. Our recently adopted new national energy policy will put us on the right track, but more is needed. It is critical that we address some of the systemic failures that have kept us dependent on others for energy and kept us from aggressively developing a reliable alternative source. While our economy expanded over the past decades, our ability to refine oil actually decreased. Since 1981, we have lost over half of our refineries. The most dynamic Nation in the world has not built a new refinery in 25 years. We are more dependent now on foreign oil than ever before.

We must move away from foreign fuel sources and move toward a solution that maximizes alternative fuel. Mr. Speaker, energy independence is not just energy security, it is national security.

Mr. Speaker, sometimes you just have to celebrate. Our Nation has seen remarkable challenges placed before it over the last few weeks; but our spirit is strong, our enthusiasm undaunted, and our optimism unwavering, and America's team has done it again.

From their beginnings in Boston in 1876 to their brief tenure in Milwaukee from 1953 to 1965 and now in their rightful home in Atlanta, they are the personification of the American spirit, demonstrating the glory of diligence, persistence, loyalty and unity.

Last evening the Atlanta Braves extended a record unparalleled in all of sports, capturing their 14th straight division championship. Think of the greatest accomplishments of any sports team in history and none of them compare to the length of success by these heroes of America's pastime.

Congratulations to general manager John Schuerholz and to manager Bobby Cox for their remarkable leadership through thick and thin. Congratulations to the players, from seasoned veterans to rookie contributors. All of them have given Atlanta, Georgia, and America, the thrill and privilege of witnessing their wondrous exploits.

You have blessed us all with your skill and passion. Congratulations to the Atlanta Braves.