Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to follow up by what the gentleman is saying because this may seem to many people in this country to be a very odd result. Why on earth would the Republicans in Congress and the President put pass this kind of complicated plan? Well, remember what they said when they passed it. They said that in the long run, this would help save money, this would be cost efficient. We would have competition between plans and that would drive down costs. Not exactly. Right now, right now, the private plans are being paid 107 percent of the cost to Medicare. That clunky old government-run fee-for-service Medicare program that the Republicans wanted it to get rid of. The private plans are being paid 100 percent more than it cost Medicare to deal with the average Medicare beneficiary. We will pay those private insurance plans $46 billion more than it costs the government-run fee-for-service Medicare plan. In other words, we are paying private insurance companies more than it costs to deliver Medicare to Medicare beneficiaries today and for what reason? Why on earth? Well, the insurance industry knows it is money in their pocket. Not millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars, but billions of dollars. The pharmaceutical industry knows as well.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I want to follow along with what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) has been talking about because just this Monday, the Congressional Research Service issued an important report, and in that report they concluded a couple of things. First of all, they were looking at this issue that was raised by Richard Foster, the Medicare actuary who has testified that he was threatened by his boss, Tom Scully, the head of CMS, that if Foster went to Congress and told them the truth about his projections for what the Medicare bill would cost, which was $150 billion more than what administration was saying, if he went to Congress and told them that, he would be fired. Let us look at this report. This report was just made public on Monday. One point here it says ``Congress's right to receive truthful information from Federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable.'' They go back to say that according to the report, attorneys at CRS said these gag orders have been expressly prohibited by Federal law since 1912. Let me read you one of applicable laws. It is at 5 U.S.C. Section 7211. ``The right of employees individually or collectively to petition Congress or a Member of Congress or to furnish information to either House of Congress or to a committee or Member thereof may not be interfered with or denied.'' But the truth is that the head of CMS, appointed by this President, refused to allow his employee, the Medicare actuary, to tell Congress the truth. So on the night of that vote, Republicans and Democrats believed that the only applicable projection was that this law would cost $400 billion over 10 years, when Medicare program officials themselves knew it would be $550 billion. We have talked about this before, all this money going to the insurance industry, $46 billion more than it cost the government-run program. No wonder it is not cost-efficient. No wonder it breaks the bank. No wonder that it delivers a very small benefit, given the amount of money being spent on it. This report makes it clear: The law was violated when the Congress was not told what the cost of this bill would be, what the projections of the Medicare actuary would be, and that in itself makes it clear, it never would have passed this Chamber if we had been told the truth.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership. It is true, the President is today visiting the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve up at the Laudholm Farms. The gentleman and I went there 2 years ago. We also went up a mountain nearby that is part of a project that people are trying to save some land. Though we appreciate the President coming to Maine on Earth Day, it really cannot hide the fact that his record on the environment is one of probably the worst records of any President in my lifetime. Let me give a few examples. He went today to the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. It is very clear when you look at the budget that the President has proposed, in light of the need for more research funds for marine-related research, he came because his budget proposes to increase funding for this tiny $16 million National Estuarine Research System by 3 percent. That is a 3 percent increase. So, this small program gets a reasonable increase, but it is the exception. The reserve system is an important part of NOAA's Ocean and Coastal Management Program, which President Bush proposes to cut by 20 percent. The National Ocean Service is cut a whopping 35 percent. NOAA itself receives an overall 8 percent reduction. The President proposes to reduce the budget of the EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service. He proposes to seriously underfund the National Park Service. He proposes to slash the Land and Water Conservation Fund that purchases Federal land for facilities like the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. As a result of Land and Water Conservation Fund cuts, the Fish and Wildlife Service received only $10 million this year for lands nationwide. Maine, on the other hand, is investing more, renewing its commitment to bond funding for what we call the Land for Maine's Future Program. A couple of other points. Mercury contamination is now a huge issue in this country. The EPA recently announced that twice the number of infants are born with high levels of mercury in their blood than they thought before. Now, 600,000 infants are born each year. The Maine Bureau of Health has a warning, and it reads as follows: ``Pregnant and nursing women, women who may get pregnant, and children under 8 should not eat any freshwater fish from Maine's inland waters.'' We have gone about the process of restricting emissions from our waste incinerators, and yet coal-fired power plants from across the country still emit 48 tons of mercury every year. It gets up in the air, it runs with the wind west to east, it comes down in the rain, it pollutes our waterways, it gets into our fish and is consumed by human beings. But what is the President's record on mercury? He has delayed full mercury regulation from 2008 to 2030, submitting another generation of Maine children and children around the country to fish they cannot safely consume. We believe that what he has done is illegal under the Clean Air Act. Really, Maine has taken the opposite approach, trying to regulate everything we can with respect to the mercury emissions that are within our control. It is just another contrast. I happen to feel he came to Maine because Maine has a record as an environmentally-conscious State. But it takes more than a visit to my State to make you an environmentalist. I will mention two other things quickly. Ozone pollution, Wells, Maine, where the President visited today has just been found to be out of compliance with the 8-hour ozone health-based standards under the Clean Air Act. Let me tell you, Wells, Maine, is not polluting the air. There is not enough manufacturing activity going on in Wells to pollute Wells or any surrounding communities. This is pollution that comes to our State from outside. The President's action in this regard with respect to ozone pollution has been to undermine the New Source Review court cases filed by the Clinton administration that would have led to the most significant reduction in air pollution in recent memory, and he has issued new New Source Review rules that allow the dirtiest power plants in the country to continue to pollute, even when they expand their capacity to produce electricity. I have always said he has what he calls his Clear Skies legislation, and if I have ever heard of legislation that is a triumph of marketing over substance, it is Clear Skies, because it does not clear the skies, it clouds them. It would not be as effective as the enforcement of existing law. Finally, climate change. Here is an issue, the President made a promise in the campaign. He walked away from it right after he was elected. In Wells, Maine, this estuarine area, this is the kind of area that is at risk from climate change and rising seas. It seems to me once again the rest of the world is concerned about this issue. The science is clear. The President denies the science and simply refuses to deal with one of the growing and potentially horrendous environmental challenges that lie in front of us. There is a better way. We can work together based on sound science with a commitment to improving the quality of our air and water for ourselves and our children for years to come. This administration will not do that, but I know others will. I thank the gentleman for giving me this time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the people of South Carolina are well served by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for the clarity that he brings to this debate on the budget, a far cry, I might say, from what our friends on the majority side of the aisle have been doing. When we start talking about PAYGO rules, it may sound technical and difficult to understand, but it really is not: pay as you go. It is very simple. Everyone should be able to get this. The rules that were in effect from 1990 to 2002 provided if a Member of Congress wanted to increase spending on a certain item, then he would have to decrease spending on another item or have a tax increase to pay for what he wanted to do. If, on the other hand, a Member of Congress wanted to propose a tax cut, he would have to at the same time reduce spending or he would have to increase some other form of taxes. Very simple, pay as you go. It should not be hard, but the Republicans here have done something quite astonishing. They used to claim they were fiscal conservatives, and they still do, but they clearly are not because they have forgotten the basic connection between expenditures and revenues, between money coming in and money going out. Every American knows this relationship. In our personal budgets, we have money coming in and we have money going out. The money that we spend on things, they have to be in balance, or we wind up in great trouble. Everyone who has a business of any size knows you have money coming in and you have money going out, and they have to be in balance. Only here in Washington does the Republican majority suggest that the revenues, the money coming in, do not matter. You do not even have to think about that; all you have to focus on is spending. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has a chart that shows that spending as a percentage of our gross domestic product actually remains low compared to the past; but it is receipts, tax revenues, that have declined so dramatically.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has a chart projecting future years, but one thing that is striking about the first 3 years of the Bush administration is outlays. Spending, has risen from 18.5 percent of gross domestic product up to over 20 percent of gross domestic product. So there has been an explosion in spending. At the same time, there has been a dramatic reduction in revenues. They have fallen from roughly 20 percent of gross domestic product down to about 16 percent of gross domestic product. In fact, today, as we stand here today, Federal revenues as a percentage of our economy, Federal revenues as a percentage of our gross domestic product are at the lowest level since 1950, and there are Republicans in this Chamber who will say the problem is spending, but revenues are at the lowest level since 1950. I would like to close with a quotation from the majority leader. He had a press conference 2 or 3 weeks ago, and he finally revealed in all of its confusion the underlying Republican philosophy and I use the word not information, not evidence, but philosophy. Here is what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) said: ``We, as a matter of philosophy, understand that when you cut taxes, the economy grows, and revenues to the government grow. The whole notion that you have to cut spending in order to cut taxes negates that philosophy, and so I am not interested in something that would negate our philosophy.'' Listen to that again: ``We, as a matter of philosophy,'' not as a matter of economics, not as a matter of information, not as a factual matter, ``We, as a matter of philosophy, understand that when you cut taxes, the economy grows, and revenues to the government grow.'' Not true. CBO has made it clear over and over again that when you cut taxes, you cut revenues. Only in very, very rare historical circumstances, and the Kennedy tax cut may be one of those, only in rare historical circumstances can you cut taxes substantially and have revenues to the government actually increase. But then we have this other statement which is really revealing. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) stated: ``The whole notion that you have to cut spending in order to cut taxes negates that philosophy, and so I am not interested in something that would negate our philosophy.'' Mr. Speaker, I am old enough to remember ``Dragnet.'' I am old enough to remember Jack Webb, the L.A. detective who, whenever he was interviewing someone, said, ``Just the facts, ma'am. All I want is just the facts.'' What the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) is saying, do not bother me with the facts; I do not want to hear the facts because we have our philosophy, and our philosophy says we do not have to pay attention to the facts. Great damage has been done to the country because the Republican majority in this House, President Bush and his Cabinet and members of the Senate, have not made economic sense. They have not paid attention to the simple fact that if we have huge tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this country, we reduce government revenues and drive us into deficit, and that is what they have done to this country. They are funding these tax cuts on the backs of our children because when the revenues are way below the spending, all they do is borrow. They are borrowing from our children in order to give the richest people in this country tax cuts, and nothing can make that philosophy make any sense. It is time, frankly, it was changed.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. The history of the Bush administration when it is written will be a story of three grand obsessions: Iraq, missile defense, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Those who are obsessed with the cause often cannot absorb enough information or focus on new emerging challenges. This Republican budget is the price inflicted on the American people by the Republican obsession with tax cuts for the wealthy. One enormous emerging challenge is the bleeding of the American manufacturing jobs overseas. This administration has no plan to save American jobs. We have lost 3 million private sector jobs in 3 years. Business investment is down. Long-term unemployment is up. So how do the Republicans respond to this emerging crisis of job loss in this country? This budget will follow President Bush's proposed cuts in job training, the President's proposed cuts in vocational education, the President's proposed cuts in SBA programs, including a microloan program that has been very important and effective in my State. We will force a 60 percent reduction in the Manufacturing Extension Partnership which is there to try to help manufacturers, start-up manufacturers, get a foothold in this economy. And this Republican budget at a time of economic crisis in this country will pull the rug out from under small businesses who are trying once again to start up and compete globally in manufacturing. All of this to protect tax cuts for people in this country who earn $1 million a year. It is unbelievable and outrageous that they would do this. Back in my home State of Maine, my State legislature, my governor are struggling with the impact of Medicaid. Medicaid is very tough to maintain, and this Republican budget will lead to Medicaid reductions. This Republican budget will make the economic plight of our State much worse than it is today. And why are we going down this path? Because we cannot possibly even consider, according to the Republican majority, a refusal to continue these tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America. This is the most distorted sense of priorities that I can imagine. And as I said before, this is the price inflicted on the American people by the failure of this Congress to be honest with the numbers that were proposed and put forward in its tax cut last year. This Republican budget will do no good for the American people. By contrast, the Democratic budget will restore investments in manufacturing, health care, and the environment and be a better deal for the American people.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I am here today with the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) and later others of my colleagues to tell a story. It is not the most pleasant story, but it is an important story. It is a story of the threat from mercury emissions from coal- fired power plants around the country to the health of the American people, and it is a story of how the Clean Air Act requires that mercury be regulated as a hazardous pollutant, but this administration has chosen not to do that. In fact, this administration has submitted a proposed mercury rule which in major respects was written by the industries it is supposed to regulate. This story is an indication of what needs to be done to change the direction of the environmental policy of this administration. Let me begin by talking about the Clean Water Act and the threat that mercury emissions pose to people in this country. Three decades ago, the Clean Water Act promised that America would have water bodies that were fishable, that were swimmable and drinkable. Clean water, that was the goal. But today, all across this country there are warnings that particularly women and children should not eat the fish from our lakes and streams and rivers because those fish are contaminated with mercury. Mercury pollution has contaminated 12 million acres of lakes, estuaries, wetlands, 30 percent of the national total. Nearly every State has issued warnings about eating mercury-contaminated fish. Seventeen States have mercury warnings for every single inland body of water, and 11 States have issued warnings for mercury in their coastal areas. This is an extremely serious health issue for people in this country. In February 2004, a new EPA analysis found that about 630,000 children are born in the United States each year with blood mercury levels higher than 5.8 parts per billion, the level at which the risk of poor brain development is doubled. The study found one in every six women of child-bearing age has enough mercury in her bloodstream to threaten the health of her child. Where does this mercury come from? Well, it comes mostly from the burning of coal in electric generating plants; and the mercury goes up into the air, it travels great distances through the air, and then comes down and it gets into the food chain in our bodies of water. According to the National Research Council, effects from prenatal exposure include mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness, and blindness. Adult exposure can produce sensory and motor impairments such as slurred speech, blurred vision, tremors, and memory loss. Members may remember the expression ``mad as a hatter.'' Well, that expression grew out of 19th century England because hatters then were literally driven mad because there was a compound containing mercury that they used in processing the felt that went into their hats. Mercury can be extraordinarily dangerous in those kinds of concentrated forms. Mercury also threatens our loons, our ducks, our mammals. Recent evidence shows that exposure threatens reproductive success, liver damage, kidney damage, and neuro-behavioral effects. Like 41 million Americans, I love to go fishing, but it has changed because fresh water fish in so many instances cannot be eaten without risk of mercury contamination, and that is why our States have so many warnings about the risks of mercury. In Maine, my home State, we have about 26,000 people employed in the fishing industry, and we have thousands and thousands of recreational fishermen. Nationwide, recreational fishing generated more than $35.6 billion in expenditures in the year 2001 and $116 billion of total economic output. It supported more than 1 million jobs. Now, in December the Bush administration was faced with a court requirement that it submit a proposed rule to regulate mercury emissions from power plants. Unfortunately, the rule that they proposed reinterprets the Clean Air Act, I believe, illegally in order to help polluters. It dramatically delays by how soon and by how much plants will have to clean up their act. Under the Clinton administration, EPA concluded that mercury is a hazardous air pollutant that had to be regulated under the strict section 112 entitled ``Hazardous air pollutants.'' Section 112 requires that EPA issue a maximum achievable control standard which would require every plant, here is one of the key differences, it would require every plant to reduce mercury emissions by 2007 to the maximum achievable level. Instead, the Bush administration proposes to regulate mercury, a hazardous air pollutant under section 111, ``Standards of performance for new stationery permits,'' in order to allow the use of tradeable permits. Senator George Mitchell of Maine and the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), and all of the Members of this body who worked together in 1990 to write the Clean Air Act amendments, I know intended for EPA to regulate hazardous air pollutants under the section of the law entitled ``Hazardous air pollutants.'' It is exactly that simple. But the Bush administration proposal delays reductions. EPA agreed in court to regulate mercury emissions by December 15, 2007. This proposal delays any regulation until 2010 and full implementation to 2030. The cap-and-trade system they propose requires only a 29 percent reduction in 2010 and a 69 percent reduction by 2018. So what we have is a weakening of the Clean Air Act in a way that I believe is absolutely illegal. But the EPA has not come to this with clean hands. Their own modeling shows that the 69 percent cut will not be achieved until 2030 because the trading system encourages many power plant owners to delay making improvements. Here is a quote from Jeffrey Holmstead, the assistance environmental protection administrator in charge of air. This is what he says today: ``What our models now show is we won't get there as soon as we expected we would.'' That is what he told the New York Times on Sunday, but the truth is the EPA knew very well that their mercury proposal would take well beyond 2025. The proposal is designed to mirror the President's Clear Skies initiative. Clear Skies is a classic case of chutzpah, a triumph of marketing over substance, if I have ever heard one. In July 2003, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps) and I wrote to President Bush asking him to correct the claim made in the State of the Union address that his plan would mandate a 70 percent cut in air pollution from power plants by 2018. It was not true. In fact, the underlying EPA modeling made it clear that the reductions that the President proposed would not be achieved until years after 2018. We simply asked the President to get back to us and study by what date his proposal would actually reach that 69 or 70 percent reduction. Jeffrey Holmstead responded to our letter for the EPA and he wrote, ``The presence of banking will likely result in some undercontrol for a short period of time after the decline.'' If he knew that the goal was not going to be achieved, that the proposal would result in undercontrol, how could he be surprised today by the agency's predictions that 70 percent reductions would not come true when they said they would? These reductions are really embarrassing. I am going to go on shortly to talk about some of the evidence out there that is absolutely compelling that, in fact, we can clean up, in most cases, 90 percent of the pollution from utilities burning coal with existing technology. We can get very, very close to that standard in a relatively short period of time. What I would like to do is to stop my remarks for the moment, to which I will come back, and thank the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) for being with me here today to discuss the Bush administration's failure to come up with a reasonable proposal to regulate mercury emissions from power plants. I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank my friend from Texas and I appreciate her willingness to engage in this issue and take a leadership role in trying to protect our citizens from the effects of mercury pollution. I want to go back to the issue that we always hear about whenever we wind up talking about new kinds of environmental controls on a toxic pollutant. Industry always says, ``It's too expensive, we can't do it'' every single time. But the reduction levels that are proposed by the EPA are really embarrassing for our country. In February, the Southern Company, one of the largest mercury emitters in the world, announced that recently installed mercury control technologies at the Ernest Gaston coal plant in Alabama are removing about 80 percent of the mercury right now. Right now. They are very, very close to that 90 percent standard that would be the goal. The company's experts noted that this would barely comply with some draft versions of a MACT standard, a maximum achievable control technology standard, but they are complying. They are there. Furthermore, EPA's own data shows that most modern coal-fired power plants can and do achieve greater than 90 percent control of mercury and other toxic chemicals. According to both industry and Department of Energy pilot tests and testimony in front of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, 90 percent reductions in mercury emissions are feasible and economical today. We are not suggesting they should be imposed today. There needs to be some time. But this could all be done between now and 2007 or 2008 and be completely feasible. The data from EPA's interim report on the control of mercury from coal-fired boilers demonstrates that power plants with fabric filters and wet scrubbers are capturing over 90 percent of their mercury when bituminous coal is burned. There are a number of technical ways in which you can actually collect mercury. Carbon injection and a compact hybrid particulate collector baghouse, so-called, is one way of achieving the goal. Other industries like hospitals and city waste incinerators have been required to meet that 90 percent standard for over a decade. In February of this year, the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) and I both wrote to the Bush administration asking that Maine people be given the opportunity to comment on EPA's proposed mercury emissions rules. There is a reason why those of us in Maine are particularly concerned about it. There is four times as much mercury in the feathers of loons in Maine as there is in the feathers of loons in Oregon. The wind blows west to east. It always has and it always will. Coming particularly out of those coal-fired power plants in the Midwest, mercury emissions are traveling east and northeast and contaminating many of our most scenic areas in the country. We do not have a single coal-fired power plant in the State of Maine, but our mercury is coming from other parts of the country. We need help. The gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) and I, as I said, wrote to the Bush administration in February asking simply that we have the right to a hearing, that EPA come to Maine and hold a hearing. They refused. The closest they got to us was Philadelphia. If the EPA would not come to Maine, I decided, well, we would have a hearing there, anyway; I would call the mock hearing, I would invite interested members of the public. And they came, they came in force and their testimony was compelling, both as to the health risks of mercury and the inadequacy of the Bush administration proposal. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the testimony given at that hearing in Maine as a part of the record of this proceeding here. Testimony of Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe on Standards Proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency for Mercury Emissions From Power Plants Good afternoon. Thank you, Congressman Allen, for the opportunity to present these comments on a matter of great importance for the State of Maine and its citizens: the need for strict federal mercury emission standards for power plants. My office formally requested that EPA hold a public hearing on this proposal in New England, but that request was denied. With that in mind, I especially appreciate your being here today to draw attention to this matter. Regrettably, EPA's recent regulatory proposals under the Clean Air Act tend to fall into two categories: (1) those that would degrade air quality, and (2) those that would prevent air quality from improving. The agency's New Source Review regulations are a notorious example of the first category. As Attorney General, I have vigorously opposed EPA's efforts to gut New Source Review, a part of the Act that requires the nation's worst polluters to install modern control technology when modifying their plants. These rules would cause Maine's already serious ozone pollution problem to worsen significantly. We sued the agency in federal court to prevent these reforms from going into effect, and won a major victory on Christmas Eve when the court issued a stay until the case is decided on the grounds that the rules appear to violate the Clean Air Act. EPA's proposed mercury rule falls into the second category: a new program that will prevent us from realizing the reductions in mercury emissions that the law promises. This is not a bold new environmental initiative, but a giveaway to the owners of coal-burning power plants. Atmospheric mercury deposition is a serious public health and environmental problem. Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that accumulates in the body. EPA's own studies show that over 600,000 babies born in this country each year may be exposed to levels of mercury in the womb so high that it can affect their brain development. Maine and 44 other states have issued fish consumption advisories because of mercury levels found in our freshwater fish. Mercury is also poisoning the wildlife that feed on those fish. Loons in northern New England, the classic symbol of our wilderness lakes, have the highest levels of mercury in the country. Mercury emissions from power plants to our south and west are a major source of deposition in Maine, and we desperately need strong federal regulation to address this problem. Despite the need for strict federal mercury emission standards, and the fact that such standards are legally required by the Clean Air Act, EPA fails to deliver in this proposal. As a matter of policy, this proposed rule is flawed for two basic reasons. First, the levels of reduction in mercury emissions are far too low. The proposed reductions not only are insufficient to protect public health and the environment, but they are considerably less than what can be achieved through available control technology. Second, the proposed ``cap and trade'' program is inappropriate for regulation of a toxic substance like mercury. This approach allows some sources to accumulate large quantities of ``pollution credits'', which in turn allows them to continue to pollute at high levels. The result is ``hotspots'' of deposition in areas downwind. While a cap and trade program may make good sense for regulating a non-toxic pollutant like carbon dioxide, it is unacceptable for a hazardous pollutant like mercury. As a matter of law, EPA's proposal is defective in several ways. Three years ago EPA formally concluded that mercury is a hazardous air pollutant, and therefore it is ``appropriate and necessary'' to regulate its emissions from power plants under Section 112 of the Act. However, EPA has now tried to reverse course, and has announced that mercury may not be a hazardous air pollutant after all. Instead, the agency suggests that it may be able to regulate mercury under Section 111 of the Act, governing New Source Performance Standards. This idea flies in the face of the plain language of the statute, which requires that EPA conduct a formal ``delisting process'' before it can decline to regulate a substance under Section 112 that it has concluded is a hazardous air pollutant. EPA's proposal to summarily rescind its prior finding that regulation of mercury is ``appropriate and necessary'' under Section 112 has no support in the law. There are numerous other legal defects with this proposal, and we are describing them in detail in written comments to be submitted to EPA. For our purposes today, it is enough to observe that the Environmental Protection Agency is once again failing to fulfill its responsibility to adopt standards that protect the public health and environment. Instead, the agency seems committed to re-interpreting the laws it administers in an attempt to avoid that responsibility. If this proposal is finalized in its current form, we will likely be forced to file another lawsuit in federal court to force EPA to do its job. I sincerely hope that will not be necessary. Thank you.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) for his remarks, and I appreciate his leadership on this issue. And he is exactly right. That group of distinguished scientists was saying that this administration over and over again manipulates science to serve the ends of their policy. I am going to yield to my friend from Maryland in just 1 minute, but just to pursue this question of who is writing the regulations, we have already pointed out that the EP professionals were shut out of the process of doing scientific studies of this proposed mercury rule and that Latham & Watkins, a Washington law firm, wrote part of the rule. There is another group involved. This is West Associates, a research and advocacy group representing 20 power and transmission companies in California and other Western States. The proposed rule contains exact language requested by West Associates, and the West language suggests a standard for determining likely mercury emissions at power plants. In other words, a provision that was enormously beneficial to the power plants was put in this proposed rule, an EPA rule, word for word. So part of it came from Latham & Watkins here, a law firm here, and part of it came from West Associates in California. How can the public have any faith that their interests, their health interests, are being protected by an administration which routinely violates the Clean Air Act in developing its regulations, all as a way to try to reduce expenses for the coal industry and the utility industry, both big contributors to Republicans and to the administration?

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the problem continues. Justice Scalia today issued a statement that he would not recuse himself from a Supreme Court case involving the Cheney documents even though he went on a hunting trip with the Vice President on Air Force 2 to a preserve owned by an oil executive. The beat goes on. It is my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), who has taken a real leadership position on these issues. And Maryland is next door, it has got a lot of water, and the last thing they need is contaminated waterways. And I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for those comments, and they are worth elaborating on because in the past sometimes people who have lived around large power plants, particularly coal-fired power plants, they may have known that pollution problems were created in those plants in States far away, but they enjoyed the benefit of lower rates. The difficulty with mercury is just what the gentleman said. Mercury is a substance that does travel some distance, but lots of it comes down in the vicinity of the power plant itself. So along the Ohio River Valley in east Texas, in other parts of the country where we have coal- fired power plants, what the administration's proposal is basically saying is we do not care if the dirtiest plant in the country stays just as it is. We are going to develop a system that was developed for sulfur dioxide that will allow that dirty plant to buy credits from clean plants, and so the dirty plant can simply continue spewing out the mercury and poisoning people in the surrounding area. It is the height of irresponsibility. That is why I come back to what I said earlier. There is no question that under the Clean Air Act mercury, which has been found to be a hazardous air pollutant, was meant to be regulated under section 112 of the act, entitled ``Hazardous Air Pollutants,'' and all of the work being done by the administration to date with this proposed rule is a way to let coal producers and utility companies off the hook so they will not have to spend the additional money they need to spend to clean up their act. And in doing that, the administration is simply putting the health of the American people at risk. It is absolutely mind boggling. Unless one is down in the middle of this and seeing this going on over and over again, with this administration, when the choice is between public health or the interests of polluters, polluters win. I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, those are excellent points. I wanted to mention another point here that has just come up. The administration is starting to feel the heat. The new administrator of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Leavitt, has now said that he is going to reexamine this proposed rule. In other words, they did not do the studies; they issued the proposed rule. Now he is saying we need to go back and do the studies. This is the exact opposite of what normally happens. The gentleman said the administration was an evident-free zone. That seems to be the case. In past administrations, you do the scientific analysis first and then come up with a rule. You would not come up with a rule written by industry and then, when the heat got too much, say, well, we have to go back and do some studies now. But that is exactly what has happened. I think we need to say to the administration, well, it is about time, thank you for going back and doing the studies. But they have also made it clear that they do not really have much of an intention, as far as I can tell, of producing any results until December, conveniently, after the election. I wanted to make a couple of points. Over the past year, I guess I would say, I have written on numerous occasions, on February 12 of this year, last October 14, and May 21, 2003, I have written letters to the EPA about this exact problem, about the importance of doing the analysis and coming up with a Mercury MACT standard, as it is called, by the deadline. I never dreamed that they would come up with a proposal but never bother to do the science. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit for the Record at this time the three letters I sent to the EPA. Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, February 12, 2004. Hon. Michael O. Leavitt, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington,

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, one of the times that I raised this, the gentleman may be interested to know, was at a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, and Jeffrey Holmstead, the Assistant Administrator For Air, came before the committee. I asked him this question. I said, have you done the modeling to do the MACT standard? In other words, have you done the scientific and technical analysis to come up with a mercury standard that is based on Maximum Achievable Control Technology, not on some idea that is dreamed up by the political people? And here is what he said, and I quote: ``We are doing all the analysis that we need to do to propose a MACT standard, to do a proposal on time by December 15, so we are on track to do everything we need to do, including the evaluation of options, to get the MACT standard out. Well, guess what? They did not. They did not have a MACT standard by December 15; they just had that old Clear Skies proposal which is, in my opinion, illegal under the Clean Air Act. And on Tuesday, Mr. Leavitt, the new EPA administrator, told the L.A. Times the process is not complete, nor is the analysis. Well, as my kids might say, duh, if you waste the year not doing the analysis, you will not have the analysis when it comes time to do the rule. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I see we have been joined by my friend and colleague from Maine (Mr. Michaud). It is good to have the gentleman here, and I yield to him.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this particular issue. Before we close here, it is worth going back to that study I mentioned at the beginning. In February of this year, just last month, a new study came out which showed that of the 4 million babies born in this country every year, some 630,000 have been exposed while they were fetuses to levels of mercury in their mothers' body that are considered unsafe. Instead of dealing with that threat, this administration has written a proposed rule limiting mercury written by the industry lobbyists. What is happening is, now the EPA is going to go back and say try to do it over again, try to fix it up, but we do not know when they will do it or what they will do. This problem is growing. It is manageable. I said earlier that the technology is available today so that we could establish a rule to phase in mercury pollution control equipment; we could have that rule take effect in 2007. The industry would have time to make the changes. Ninety percent reductions in mercury emissions today are feasible, they are possible, they can be done. The only resistance is coal-fired power plants do not want to spend the money. So on the one hand, we have the interest of an industry that have been major, major contributors to the majority party here and, on the other hand, the health of our children. It is, or ought to be, a simple choice. And we are here tonight to make sure that people understand that choice and encourage policymakers here to make the right one.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for leading this Special Order. And the case of Richard Foster, though his name may not yet be a household word, is one that needs some review. It is an example of what we have tried to explain to people, that the legislative process in this Chamber, the democratic process in this Chamber, has been corrupted by special interests. And those are strong words, but there are no kind words that fit what the Republican majority is doing in this House. So let us just for the moment look at the case of Richard Foster. Back in June 2003, when the Medicare bill first came to the floor of this House, it came with a CBO, Congressional Budget Office, assessment that the cost would be $395 billion over 10 years. At that very time, the chief Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, had done a number of scenarios, all of which showed that the cost of the bill would be somewhere between $500 billion and $600 billion. He settled on around $550 billion. He never told any Member of Congress what that projection showed. And why did he not tell any Member of Congress? Because his boss, Tom Scully, the head of Medicare for this country, told Richard Foster that if he told Members of Congress what his numbers showed, that it would cost $550 billion and not $400 billion, he, Tom Scully, would fire Richard Foster. So here you have the chief Medicare actuary, under an ethical obligation, at least, to convey to the Congress of the United States information about what the Medicare law was likely to cost, and he could not say it because he would be fired. Well, now look what has happened. The bill comes back in the fall and we have the long night, the 3-hour vote held open. And the process had been corrupted before that because Democratic Members from the House had been appointed to the conference committee, they were not allowed in the room. They were not allowed to attend the conference to which they had been appointed because the Republican chair of the conference would not let them in. Now, if you try to explain this to people back home who read their textbooks about how American democracy is supposed to work, they do not believe you. They cannot believe that one party here, that the majority party would simply shut down the legislative process, would withhold information, would manipulate information. And it continues today, because now that bill has become a law by the narrowest of margins, a bill which would not have passed if the truth had been told about its projected cost. Now what happens? Well, Health and Human Services goes out and runs TV ads. Many people have seen them. They say same Medicare, better benefits. And it is not true. We are witnessing a concerted effort by the administration, in close collaboration with the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry, to move 35 percent of Medicare beneficiaries out of the fee-for-service plan they have today into private insurance. And why is private insurance such a problem? Well, it costs more. It costs a lot more. And Members on the other side of the aisle have come down into the well here and they have said Medicare is in financial difficulty, that we need to do something; and what we need are private insurance companies to take it over. Well, nobody in Maine has ever said to me, you know, I am willing to give up my choice of doctors and hospitals, which I have under traditional Medicare, and what I really want is a choice of insurance plans. Send me those brochures. Send me those insurance agents. That is the way to take care of our health care for seniors. Nobody has ever said that. The latest projections are that the insurance companies will need to be paid 20 percent more than it costs today to deliver health care to the average Medicare beneficiary. A 20 percent bonus. A 20 percent overpayment to the second biggest lobby here in Washington.

Mr. ALLEN. I would be glad to yield.

Mr. ALLEN. If the gentleman would yield just for a moment, Mr. Speaker. There is one other finish to this story. We are not sitting here on the Democratic sides of the aisle making all this up. Yesterday, Secretary Thompson initiated an investigation into these facts: that Richard Foster was threatened with being fired if he disclosed the true cost of the Medicare bill. So now Health and Human Services itself is investigating what clearly, at least to my mind, was an ethical and perhaps a legal breach by this administration, but one that clearly was absolutely essential, absolutely essential to getting the Medicare bill to become the Medicare law. Here again, we see a kind of distortion and misrepresentation of information that really has no place in the House of Representatives.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to finish right now with a couple of comparisons. The $80 million that Health and Human Services is going to spend to advertise this law, which does not take effect until January 2006, and Secretary Thompson made it clear why he was doing it, he said because there is too much criticism of the law. People do not understand that it is really the same Medicare. Of course, the author of the law in the House was quoted on television as saying, ``To those who say this bill will destroy Medicare as we know it, my answer is, I certainly hope so.'' He has made it clear his goal is to destroy Medicare as we know it. But I wanted just to finish up with this: $80 million in advertising to the American people. $80 million. Guess how much the President proposes to cut out of rural health care? One-half that amount, $39 million. We cannot afford $39 million to improve rural health care, but we can spend $80 million just to advertise a flawed Medicare bill to the American public. The $80 million is more than the $58 million which the incoming FDA commissioner, Lester Crawford, says would be needed to establish a drug reimportation plan. So in other words, we are going to spend, according to the Bush administration, $80 million to run TV ads to help his reelection campaign out of the Federal Government, to promote a bill that is flawed, $80 million to do that, when we could spend $58 million and establish a reimportation plan that would allow seniors to buy their drugs from Canada without interference, and that would reduce their present drug prices dramatically. Those are the priorities of this administration and the Republican Congress. And I do not know of anyone in my State of Maine who says those are the right priorities for the country. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the men and women of the Armed Forces serve this country honorably. They put their lives on the line in order to protect our freedom and our values. We owe them our gratitude, and they deserve to be recognized and fairly compensated for their service. They also deserve to receive the benefits and the health care that they need and have earned. We are all aware of the crisis facing VA health care. Veterans are waiting unconscionable lengths of time for appointments. The President's now out-of-date Web site claims his fiscal year 2004 budget, the year we are in, which Congress increased by $1.3 billion last year, would enable the VA to eliminate the waiting lists by the summer of 2004, this summer. Well, that is not the truth. That is not going to happen. Instead, VA hospitals are struggling to meet increasing demand; and year after year, my colleagues and I have to fight to increase the underfunded VA budget. Veterans in rural States, such as Maine, face all of these problems, amplified by the fact that they may have to travel hundreds of miles to the nearest VA health facility. Maine's single VA hospital, Togus, is located 100 miles from our southern border and 300 miles from our northern border. As anyone familiar with the cold and snowy winters will tell you, those kinds of distances are difficult, not to mention dangerous, to travel in the winter. The VA has established access guidelines which provide that a veteran should be able to access primary care within 30 miles or 30 minutes from their homes in urban areas, and 60 miles or 60 minutes in rural areas. Only 59 percent of Maine veterans enrolled in the VA health care system meet those guidelines, and that means that more than 16,000 Maine veterans live outside the access standards, not to mention the veterans who have not even enrolled to get VA health care. Perhaps one of the reasons they do not seek VA health care is because they are so far away. The VA's guidelines for access to inpatient hospital services provide that a veteran should live within 2 hours of inpatient services. Only 52 percent of Maine veterans meet this guideline. Let me give you an example of what this all means in my State. Veterans in Maine, veterans have to travel to get specialized care, often to a Boston VA hospital; and if a veteran lives in the northern part of the State, say Caribou or Fort Kent, he probably cannot make a bus trip to Boston in one day. He will have to stay overnight in Bangor or Portland and take the rest of the ride the next day. On the third day, the veteran may finally have his appointment, and then either start back that day or the next day. So you can see to get specialized care in Boston, a veteran from northern Maine may take 3 to 5 days to go down and get that care. Of course, a relative or friend may make the drive, and it might happen in 2 days or 2\1/2\ days instead of 3 to 5; but the problem is, how many people can afford to do that, how many people have the help they need? We need to enable veterans living in the most rural parts of our country to benefit from the same accessibility to services that veterans in more urban areas enjoy. In Maine, the VA staff did town hall meetings throughout the State to develop a market plan for the VA CARES process, and this plan recommended five new community-based outpatient clinics in rural areas to improve access, in addition to collaborating with the State's successful telemedicine program and to the continued use of contract care. I urge my colleagues to take to heart these difficulties faced by veterans in rural areas. Expanding access to care, particularly in these rural areas, must be a focal point of our efforts to reduce the huge backlog of veterans waiting for health care. As we consider the fiscal year 2005 budget and when we review the final CARES national plan, we must not let down our Nation's veterans. First, they deserve the highest quality of care, but we also must ensure that the VA health system provides access to that care for all veterans.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the ethical cloud hanging over Republicans in Washington grows darker. Every good lawyer and judge knows the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest. Last month, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went hunting in Louisiana with Vice President Cheney, on land owned by an oil executive. They flew on Air Force Two, at taxpayer expense. Three weeks earlier, the Supreme Court agreed to decide In Re Cheney, a case brought to force Vice President Cheney to disclose information about his secret energy task force meetings with oil executives. Justice Scalia said afterwards, ``I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.'' He is wrong. He has no business deciding a case of enormous significance to his friend and hunting companion. To preserve the integrity of the Supreme Court and to maintain the trust of the public, Justice Scalia should recuse himself from any role in the Cheney case. And Vice President Cheney should have been the first to ask him to do so.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, we have talked a lot about this bill. I want to say just a couple of words about my seniors up in Maine. Two points. First, they are desperate for lower prescription drug prices. Number two, they want to keep the Medicare program that they have because it is all they have. There are no HMOs in Maine to provide services to them. And here is what they do. To get lower prescription drug prices, they call my office in Maine every day. They pile into buses to go to Canada. They try to get their prescription drugs from Canada over the Internet. And so what do they get out of this bill? They get a provision that says the government will not be able to negotiate lower prices for them, will not be able to negotiate lower prices. They get an inadequate benefit that is not as helpful to most seniors in Maine as the Canadian drug prices. It is a big win for PhRMA and a big loss for people in Maine. Our seniors have come to rely on the stability, predictability, and continuity of Medicare. The chairman of the committee did talk about choice, but as in Illinois, no one in Maine has ever asked me for a choice between insurance plans. They have got the choice that matters now, a choice of doctors and hospitals. This bill over time drives them out of fee-for-service Medicare into HMOs. It is funded by an outrageous overpayment to private plans and HMOs. My parents for 1 year were in a Medicare+Choice plan. It was not golden. It was not modern, not efficient, not fair. Just a bureaucratic nightmare. Defeat this Medicare bill. It is bad for Maine's seniors.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in support of H. Con. Res. 288, and I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde), the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), and the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) for helping bring this resolution to the floor. Treaties are negotiated by governments; peace is made by people. Seeds of Peace is grounded in this truth. Seeds of Peace, founded by the award-winning author and journalist John Wallach in 1993 is a program which brings together young people from regions of conflict to study and learn about coexistence and conflict resolution. The program initially focused on Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian youth, but has expanded over the past decades to involve youth from Greece, Turkey and divided Cyprus, the Balkans, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries. H. Con. Res. 288 honors the accomplishments of Seeds of Peace, and offers the program as a model of hope that living together in peace and security is possible. I want to thank my colleagues, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), and 46 other Members who have cosponsored the resolution. At the summer camp in Otisfield, Maine, and at the Jerusalem Center for Coexistence, the young people of Seeds of Peace come face to face with those whom they have been taught to hate and mistrust. An Egyptian wrote to his peers following this past summer at camp, ``This camp changed things in my character, in my thoughts, and in my whole life. I really loved the people there without looking to where they are from or what is their religion. This is really the beginning of the road.'' Recently, two new grassroots initiatives for peace in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict have emerged. These efforts present much hope. Sustained progress, however, ultimately depends on a new generation of leaders. Youth must be involved in long-term visionary solutions to conflicts perpetuated by cycles of violence. Participating governments and world leaders strongly support Seeds of Peace. Previous Federal funding for the program demonstrates its importance in promoting United States foreign policy goals. Seeds of Peace is even working with youngsters in Maine where a large influx of refugees and immigrants has contributed to an increase in racial and ethnic tension. As we honor Seeds of Peace today, we should remember that it offers priceless lessons to our communities at home, as well as nations abroad. I have visited the Seeds of Peace camp up in Otisfield; it is a moving and inspirational experience, and congressional support over the years has been vital to the continuation of this particular undertaking. Mr. Speaker, I urge support for the resolution.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Madam Speaker, we have got a strange situation here. When we think about this, the most profitable industry in the country, the most profitable industry in the country is charging the highest prices in the world to America's seniors and others without health insurance. And yet the head of the Food and Drug Administration is giving speeches saying the problem is not that prices are too high in this country; the problem is that they are too low in other countries. The rest of the world has it wrong. They should raise their prices. This is ludicrous. In fact, the drug companies are happy to sell their drugs in Canada and Europe and around the world where on average they are selling their drugs for 40 percent less, and there is research going on in Canada. Look at this, just one example, there are 79 research-based drug companies in Canada. And since 1995, they have increased their research spending by 50 percent. The pharmaceutical industry is not hurting in Canada or around the world. The people who are hurting are our seniors trying to buy their medication here at home. We need to be able to take drugs from other countries to bring them into this country. We know one thing, this administration is never going to approve the reimportation of low-price drugs from Canada. They will not do it. They are trying to stop it now. So any provision which depends on the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services and a Republican administration is not going to fly. That is why it is so important that this motion pass; it is so important that we have legislation that authorizes the reimportation of drugs. We do it for other products. We ought to do it for medication.