Rob Andrews

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank the gentlelady. What we should be doing is coming together, Republicans and Democrats, to cut spending, to find ways to sensibly cut spending. Many of us on the floor, for instance, 2 weeks ago voted to not send $1.5 billion to Iraq to fund their police department. Many of us voted not to spend a substantial amount of money for the Brazilian Cotton Institute. Many of us voted to say that if you make over a quarter of a million dollars a year as a farmer you shouldn't get a crop subsidy. These are areas that we agreed upon to reduce spending. Let's work to sensibly reduce spending but let's not cut education and let's not undermine jobs. By all means, let's bring to the floor a bill that says to my friend that runs the music production company, we will help train the workers that you need; that says to my friend that wishes he were a homebuilder, we will talk to these banks that have record amounts of money in their balance sheets and get them lending money again so people can buy a home; and says to our friend that's running the small biotech company, you don't have to worry that there's going to be gaping cuts in the research budget of the National Institutes of Health, we're going to fund them, and they're going to continue to pay people to be the best and the brightest and find cures to diseases, and you can hire those two more people. Ten weeks, no jobs bill, no jobs plan, no cooperation to produce an environment where small business and entrepreneurs can put America back to work. Let's put aside our differences. Let's get to work on solving the real problems of our country.

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank my friend for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I want to agree with the gentlelady from Illinois who just spoke, who said what the American people want is jobs. I agree with her. And when we assess the record of the new majority on this issue, I think we have to assess that it's found very wanting. This is the 10th week of the new majority. In 10 weeks, they found a way to shut down women's health clinics by defunding Planned Parenthood. They've found a way to essentially repeal 30 years' worth of protections for our drinking water and our air and our land. They've found a way to pass a budget that cuts education, that saps strength and energy from our job creators in this country, but they haven't found one bill, 1 minute, one debate over a plan to work together to create jobs for the American people. I believe, Mr. Speaker, that the American people want Republicans and Democrats to come together and figure out an environment that will encourage entrepreneurs and small businesses to create jobs for our country. The majority has, frankly, done everything but that. And today is yet another bill that I think is a wasted opportunity in that regard. I view today's debate through the eyes of three constituents I interacted with at home this weekend. One was a gentleman who runs a music distribution company. They produce CDs for people who have written and recorded music and don't have a label yet so they can get their music out to the rest of the world. He employs 500 people, and he wants to grow. And in order to grow, he needs people who are facile with various software and other technologies that will help his company grow. He depends upon graduates from our community colleges and our 4- year colleges and universities. And he didn't understand why the majority wants to cut the maximum college scholarship under Pell Grants by $845, thereby taking employees away, conceivably, from him by taking them out of school. It's the homebuilder that I met who really can't call himself a homebuilder anymore because he's not building any homes, and he wonders what we're doing to try to restore faith and confidence to the real estate market so that Americans will feel secure and confident enough to buy a home and put him and his workers back to work. He wonders what we're doing. It was the gentleman I met yesterday who runs a biotech company that has two employees, and he depends on contracts from the National Institutes of Health to do research on various pharmaceutical products. He wants to double the size of his company, put just two more people to work, but he won't hire them as long as the threat of a government shutdown is imminent. This is the wrong bill at the wrong time on the floor.

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank my friend for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I have great respect and affection for my friend from Texas. He's a valued Member of this House and someone who cherishes this institution and represents his constituents well. I would like to respond to two of the points that he's made. First, he makes reference to this 800,000 job loss as a result of the health care act. There was a prediction made before the final version of the act was put together, very early in the process, by a group that frankly is rather ideologically to his side of the aisle, that predicted that 800,000 jobs would be lost. In fact, most economists have argued that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be gained, but more importantly, Mr. Speaker, than predictions is reality. The health care law was signed into law almost a year ago, and I wonder if anyone on the majority side could tell us how many jobs the economy has lost in that year. How many jobs has the economy lost since the health care bill was signed into law?

Mr. ANDREWS. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. ANDREWS. Reclaiming my time, the answer is that the economy has added over 1 million private sector jobs since the health care law was signed into effect, so predictions of great job loss have turned out not to be the case. Secondly, the gentleman made reference to the sort of great opposition to this law around the country.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank the gentleman. And, frankly, as far as the price of health care is concerned, if they succeed in repealing the health care bill, the price of prescription drugs will go up for people's moms and dads, not down. Jobs. Ten weeks. No plan. The cost of education. Ten weeks. A bad plan that raises the price of education. The prescription drug problem for seniors. Ten weeks. A bad plan that raises the price of prescriptions for seniors. A lot of Americans would probably say they don't like the idea of paying $4 or $5 a gallon for gasoline at the gas pump. No plan from the majority. So we'll have a debate on the merits of this bill; but with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, this is the wrong bill at the wrong time. The American people want us to work together to create jobs, make education affordable, and make health care affordable, particularly for senior citizens in this country. The majority is 0 for 10. Let's make this week the one that we break their losing streak and work for the people of our country.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. I would ask the gentleman what the sales tax rate would be on his fair tax proposal on American families for buying something?

Mr. ANDREWS. What is the sales tax rate?

Mr. ANDREWS. Twenty-three percent on every purchase.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker and ladies and gentlemen of the House, let's take the next 2 weeks to try to work together to do the right thing for the American people. I believe that the right thing for the American people is to come up with a budget plan that sensibly reduces spending but does not put American jobs at risk. What do I mean by this? What do we mean by this? Let me give you an example. I think that a policy that says that oil companies, which made $77 billion in profit last year alone, can drill on federally owned property that's offshore and not pay anything in royalties to the American taxpayer is wasteful, and we should stop it. I think provisions that say that there are tax loopholes for companies that outsource jobs out of our country are wasteful, and we should stop them. Let's get rid of those things from our budget. But let's not follow the reckless plan of the majority that says in education, let's cut funding for 10,000 reading tutors and math coaches. In education, let's cut funding for 7,000 teachers of autistic children, children with a learning disability. In border security, let's cut funding that's used to pay the people who board ships and inspect containers that come into this country to make sure they don't have dirty bombs in them. In public safety, let's not cut funding that will lay off police officers and firefighters in towns around our country. In health care, let's not cancel hundreds, if not thousands of research grants, where our best researchers are working on cures for cancer, or dementia, or diabetes. These are reckless cuts. The problem with the Republican plan is not just that it disrupts the United States Government; the problem with the Republican plan is it disrupts the United States economy. And this is why the leading economist for John McCain's Presidential campaign of 2 years ago says this plan the Republicans are offering will cost 700,000 jobs. That's why the largest investment bank in the country, in a nonpolitical way, says that this Republican plan will cut in half the economic growth the country is counting on for this year. Let's not disrupt jobs in this country. Let's cut wasteful spending. Let's go after corporate welfare, not special education. Let's go after oil company giveaways, not Head Start. Let's get back to the business of debating job creation in the private sector in our country, not defunding Planned Parenthood.

Mr. ANDREWS. There are 15 million unemployed Americans as we meet here this afternoon. Let us resolve in the next 2 weeks to put their interests first, to sensibly reduce spending where we can, to invest in education and health care where we must, and get on with the people's business.

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank my friend for yielding. Madam Speaker, I hope that we are beginning to usher in in the next 2 weeks a season of compromise on this very important question before the country. I hope and I am confident that Chairman Rogers and Mr. Dicks are capable of striking a very sound compromise for the people of our country. Here is where we are. When the fiscal year began on October 1, there were a series of resolutions that said let's live under the budget that spent what last year spent, and we have lived under that budget until this time. That budget saves $41 billion below what the administration asked for last February. The majority, about 10 days ago, passed a bill that said it wants to spend $100 billion less than what was proposed by the administration last February. Now, logical people would say that we are very well on the way to a sensible compromise. We are on track to save $41 billion below what was requested. The majority wishes to spend $100 billion less than that. I am certain that talented legislators like the chairman, like Mr. Dicks, left to their own devices and leadership, can find a way to have us strike a middle ground for the rest of the fiscal year. I am hoping that this is the last one of these temporary extensions we have so that those who rely upon the continuing funding of government departments-- vendors, employees, and institutions--will be able to do so. I think it's fertile for a good compromise, and I certainly hope the House reaches it.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank my friend for yielding. For 15 million Americans, this is another Friday night without a paycheck. And instead of working together to create jobs, here we are again relitigating the health care bill, the bill we talked about last year, last month, last week, yesterday, this morning. Here we are. We should be creating jobs, but here we are. Now, the exchange does three things. It says that small businesses and families and individuals can get the same purchasing power that big corporations do when they buy their health insurance. It says you can choose among private competitors, insurance companies, and see who makes the best offer to you. And it says you make the choice that you want. This should sound very familiar to the Members on the other side because it's exactly what they have as Members of Congress in the Federal health insurance program. So I would think that the Members on both sides would want their constituents to have the same health care opportunities that they do. If you believe that's the case, then the right vote on this amendment is ``no.''

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on the Administration to stand with Israel and veto the proposed anti-Israel United Nations Security Council resolution. Any compromise in our support for the State of Israel would be detrimental to efforts to bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East. The United States should veto any resolution that endangers our allies in the region and threatens the future of the peace process. We must stand with Israel and veto this resolution in the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. If I could just get the attention of the gentleman who is the author of the amendment, Mr. Chairman, I wanted to yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. ANDREWS. The gentlelady from Connecticut's point of order should be sustained, and, frankly, the chairman's arguments are deficient in two respects: First, he notes that the chairman of the Budget Committee's opinion is that the point of order should not be sustained. Although I realize that the chairman of the Budget Committee's opinion by custom is given some sort of special gravity on these kind of questions, with all due respect, the Chair is the Chair. The Chair is the authority here, and the Chair's responsibility is to follow the rules of the House which very clearly state that a piece of legislation that has a net increase in budget authority is out of order under these circumstances. Secondly, the chairman makes the argument that this is not a change in substantive law. One first would wonder why it's then being offered. But secondly, it seems to me that if agents of the executive branch have a responsibility and that responsibility includes discretion as to how to carry out a certain law, prohibiting them from carrying out that responsibility and limiting their discretion is, in fact, a significant change in substantive law. On those grounds, I would urge that the point of order be sustained.

Mr. ANDREWS. The question was: What about someone who is in the doughnut hole? What happens to him under your amendment?

Mr. ANDREWS. I would ask her, at the appropriate time, to yield for an answer. Here is my question: Let's say we have a person who is on Medicare who has $100 a week on drug costs and they hit the doughnut hole in August of the year. The way the law works right now is they will get help to continue to pay for their prescription drugs in the form of either a cash rebate in the past or a discount in the future. I wonder if the gentleman could explain to us what will happen to those Medicare recipients when they hit the doughnut hole if his amendment becomes law. I would ask the gentlelady to yield to him for an answer.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I wish to be heard on the point of order.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, all across the country this morning, millions of Americans got up for another day of searching the job search Web sites or looking at the want ads, enduring another day of courtesy interviews, pointless discussions with potential employers, and dreading the arrival of the letter carrier today because he is going to bring one more credit card bill or dunning letter for a bill that they can't pay. Life has become a nightmare for 15 million unemployed Americans--and here we are in the House of Representatives. I don't think many of them got up this morning and said, I really hope that Congress for the second time in a month debates the repeal of the health care law. I think what our constituents said was, Why don't they get to work, working together to create jobs in this country? Instead, the Tower of Babel that the House of Representatives has become this week has produced yet another meaningless debate on the repeal of the health care law, which followed on the heel of defunding Planned Parenthood last night. Now, it's not bad enough what this bill doesn't do in having us work together to create jobs for the American people; it's bad in what it does do. It's very important that the Members understand the real-world consequences of the chairman's amendment. If his amendment passes and if the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes wake up one day to discover that an insurance company won't sell their son or daughter insurance because that child has juvenile diabetes or that an insurance company will charge them four or five times the amount of the premium because the child has juvenile diabetes, the person at the Department of Health and Human Services who can step in and stop the insurance company from doing that won't be able to, because this amendment says, let's tie the hands of the people here to enforce the law. If an insurance company says to a family who is grappling with a malignancy or a brainstem injury for their son or their daughter, ``You've run out of coverage. You've hit your lifetime limit. Too bad, so be it,'' the person who would be in a position to do something, to require an insurance company to pay those hospital bills, won't be able to do that because this is happening. With all due respect, we've had a debate about using names this morning. I think we're using the wrong name for this amendment. This should be called the ``insurance company bill of rights'' because what it says is, anything any insurance must do at any time, so be it. The American people deserve better than this. Members of the House should vote ``no'' on the Rehberg amendment and get back to the business of putting Americans back to work.

Mr. ANDREWS. With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, it is not unclear at all. What would happen under the gentleman's amendment is the prescription drug price of this senior would go up dramatically, and he would have to pay the entire cost of that prescription until he hit, I think, the $5,100 limit. This is substantive legislation, the effect of which will dramatically raise prescription drug costs for America's neediest seniors. I thank the gentlewoman for her time.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment because I believe it's based upon two false premises. The first is that evidence shows that contracts performed under PLAs are not as efficient. The data simply don't exist that show that. And second is the implication that this is somehow a politically connected decision by governments to reward building trades unions. First of all, it doesn't have to be a union contractor. And second, and I think most importantly, all kinds of nongovernmental users use PLAs: the Disney Corporation, Inland Steel, ARCO, Boeing, Harvard University. These are all institutions and companies that use PLAs because they believe they are a good, sound business judgment. Why should the Federal Government of the United States be precluded from exercising a similar sound business judgment? This is a poorly thought-out amendment, and the right vote is ``no.''

Mr. ANDREWS. Members of both parties should oppose this amendment because it rests on three misjudgments. The first misjudgment is that the wages established by this Davis- Bacon practice are union-imposed wages. The fact of the matter is they are prevailing wages which are determined by a survey of the local marketplace. The second misjudgment is that it always raises the cost of a construction project. The fact is quite the opposite. When the productivity rises, the value rises; and if you have better performance and fewer errors and the faster completion of a project, productivity rises, and you get more value. But I think the most important misjudgment is that it is, one more time, the wrong issue at the wrong time. There are a lot of Americans awake at this hour. Thankfully, for them, they're probably not watching this debate, but they're awake at this hour because this has yet been another day and another week and another month with no paycheck, no job and no hope. What they want us to do is to work together to put them back to work. Yet what we have seen in the last 24 hours is a debate over whether to defund Planned Parenthood, a debate over whether to repeal most of the environmental protections that have taken 40 years to build up in this country, a debate over whether people have the right to know if they're buying safe toys, and now a debate over whether to repeal a successful labor-management partnership. It's the wrong amendment at the wrong time. Vote ``no.''

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I join a strong coalition of Democrats and Republicans in urging a ``yes'' vote on the Kline-Hastings amendment. I do so because I believe that every student should be guaranteed the right of knowing that he or she is going to get a high quality education for every tuition dollar they spend and because every taxpayer should be guaranteed that not one dime of Pell Grant or student money goes to any school under any ownership or management that does not properly spend the public's money. This is a goal that I believe is shared universally by each speaker on each side who has spoken here tonight. Our difference is not over whether we should guarantee students and taxpayers high quality and gainful employment. Our difference is over how to accomplish that. Here is my concern about the rule that has been proposed thus far. It is both under-inclusive and over-inclusive. To understand that, consider two schools. The first school successfully places 50 percent of its graduates in the job for which it's training people. So let's say it's a job in medical records technology and 50 percent of the students from that school are placed successfully. That school has a tuition that generates a rate so that 7 percent of the graduate's income goes to pay back their student loan. The second school successfully places 90 percent of its graduates in the medical records technology field, but its tuition generates a repayment rate of 10 percent. So again the first school only places half of its graduates in the job for which it's training people and the second school places 90 percent of its jobs for which it's training people. Under this rule, the first school survives and the second school is thrown out of the program. Let me say this again. The school with the 50 percent placement rate continues to get taxpayer dollars, but the school with the 90 percent placement rate doesn't. This doesn't make any sense and it is the basis for our bipartisan objection. What should we do? If we're going to measure gainful employment, let's come up with a proposal that measures gainful employment. Let's ask the question that when students graduate from a school, whether it's for-profit, nonprofit or public, whether those students in fact gain employment and whether that employment raises their income and, therefore, is gainful. Let's measure what the law actually says. Finally, I think there is the issue of whom should make this decision. As Chairman Kline pointed out, as Mr. Hastings pointed out, as others have, the statutory phrase ``gainful employment'' has been with us for a very long time. But this Congress has never chosen to define it. So the issue here is a separation of powers issue. Who should determine what gainful employment means? Should it be an administrative agency or should it be the duly elected representatives of the people? I think it should clearly be the duly elected representatives of the people. So I would urge my friends, both Democrat and Republican, to vote yes for a procedure that will correct this rule, let us join together, Republicans and Democrats, and do a bill, work on legislation that will give us the kind of outcome that we should really have here. Now why are we doing this? We're doing it so the person with three jobs gets fair treatment here. You all know her. She's the person who works 35 or 40 hours a week on her feet, and that's a full-time job; she's raising children, and that's a full-time job; and she's going to school, and that's a full-time job. Let's not put the additional burden of taking away or jeopardizing the quality school that she has chosen for herself. Everyone in this Chamber, I believe, supports high quality career education. Instead of a rule that subverts that principle, let's write a bill that advances that principle. Let's vote ``yes'' for the Kline-Hastings amendment.

Mr. ANDREWS. I move to strike the last word.