Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for his leadership on this. I welcome the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Shows).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for being here tonight and for all of his hard work on this issue. I yield now to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, and I will return again on another occasion to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson- Lee). I want to thank all Members who have been here tonight.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentlewoman that I am not familiar with the study, but it has to be saving substantial amounts. Spending on prescription drugs is going up 15 percent a year, and we all know that the number of hospital beds in use is going down, at the very time that seniors are living longer. So there have to be substantial savings here, but I am not aware of a study that would quantify that.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk tonight about prescription drugs, about the high cost they represent to many seniors across this country, and about legislation that I have introduced in the House that will solve a good part, or allow substantial discounts on the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries. But first a little history. Last June I asked for a report to be done by the minority staff, the Democratic staff, of the Committee on Government Reform on which I sit. I asked for that study to be done on prescription drugs, for one reason. Every time I spoke to seniors in my district back in Maine, I always heard the same questions: What can we do about the high cost of prescription drugs? I remember distinctly one gentleman down in Sanford who stood up and said, ``You know, I'm spending $200 a month now on my prescription medication. My doctor just told me that I have to take another pill. The cost is $100 a month, and I'm not going to take it, because I simply can't afford to spend that additional $100.'' I heard that over and over again from seniors who simply could not afford to take the medication that their doctors told them they had to take. It is a serious problem across this country. Let us look at some of the numbers. Many seniors, as this chart shows, simply cannot afford to take the medication their doctors prescribe. Seniors are 12 percent of the population in this country, but they use 33 percent of all prescription drugs. Approximately 37 percent of all seniors have no coverage at all for prescription drugs. In fact, there are many seniors who do have some coverage, perhaps under a MediGap policy, but that coverage really does not do them very much good. For example, they may have a deductible of $250, a co-pay of 50 percent, and a cap of $1,200 or $1,500 per year. That does not do people who are paying $5,000 a year for their prescription drugs much good at all. The average drug expenditure for Medicare beneficiaries is $942 per year. But in listening to seniors in my district in Maine, many are spending much more than that. In fact, many cannot afford to take the drugs that their doctor prescribes. So what do they do? One thing they do is they take one pill out of three, they mix and match, they cut a pill in half, they try to get by by taking some of their drugs but not all of their drugs. It is a serious health care problem. We have reason to believe that it is sending people to the hospital, where expenses are high, who really do not need to go there if they could afford to take their medications. Thirteen percent of older Americans, that is almost 5 million people, report that they were forced to choose between buying food and buying medicine. Let me give my colleagues a couple of stories. I hear from women in my district, they send me letters that say, ``I don't want my husband to know, but I am not taking my prescription medication, because my husband's sicker than I am and we can't afford both his medication and my medication. So I'm not taking mine.'' Back in July of 1998 when I did the first report on the study I will describe in a moment, I got a letter from a woman who sent me a letter saying, ``I'm writing to you because I don't know where else to turn. Here is a list of the prescription medications that my husband and I are supposed to take every month.'' The bottom line in prices was $650 per month. ``And here,'' she said, ``are our two monthly Social Security statements that represent all of our monthly income.'' The bottom line was $1,350. You cannot spend $650 of a $1,300 a month income on prescription drugs. You simply cannot do it. People cannot live like that. So they are making choices that represent serious health risks to them. Now, let me look at the study. I want to talk about a report that the Committee on Government Reform Democratic staff did. We went into the First District in Maine and asked questions. We wanted to compare the price that the manufacturers, the prescription drug manufacturers, give to their best customers, compared to the price that seniors pay in my district at the retail pharmacy level. Here is how we did it. We looked at the price that the VA gets for its medications, the price that Medicaid gets for its medications, we looked at the price that large drug wholesalers get. Then we tried to figure out as best we could what hospitals and big HMOs get for a discount. Then we went and looked up the prices at the local retail level. Here is what we found. The average retail drug prices for older Americans are almost twice as high as the prices that drug companies charge their most favored customers. We did not pick the drugs to investigate arbitrarily. We simply picked the five most commonly prescribed prescription drugs for seniors. These are branded prescription drugs. You can see that there is Zocor, manufactured by Merck; Norvasc, manufactured by Pfizer; Prilosec, manufactured by Astra and Merck; Procardia XL, a Pfizer drug; and Zoloft, another Pfizer drug. The prices for favored customers, the best prices at which these pharmaceutical drugs are sold, for Zocor was $34.80. This is now a nationwide study, not just the First District of Maine. The retail price nationwide for seniors is $107.07. The price differential is 208 percent. Look at Norvasc. The price for favored customers, $59.71; the retail price for seniors $116.64, 95 percent higher than the price for favored customers. Prilosec, the price for favored customers is $59.10; the retail price for seniors, $114.56, a 94 percent increase. Procardia, $68.35 to favored customers; $130.33 at the retail price for seniors across this country, a 91 percent price differential. Zoloft, $115.70 for favored customers; and retail prices for seniors, $220.45, a 91 percent differential. In short, for the five most commonly prescribed prescription drugs for seniors, seniors when they walk into a pharmacy, when they walk in without prescription drug coverage, they are paying 116 percent of the price that the favored customers of the drug companies are getting. Now, those favored customers are hospitals, big HMOs, and the Federal Government through the VA and through Medicaid. That study, which was done first in Maine, has now been replicated in over 40 districts around this country, all of them at the request of Democratic Members of the House of Representatives who asked for the study. The results are the same. That differential means that seniors on average are paying more than twice as much as the drug companies' best customers. Now, there are some prices that are even higher than that. Here is a price, a chart showing that the price for Ticlid for favored customers is a little bit over $30, but it is $105 for older Americans. Synthroid, a prescription drug that costs about $2 to favored customers, is around $30 for seniors, a huge differential, almost 1,500 percent. Micronase has a differential, its cost according to this chart, $7 or $8 as best we can tell, about $40 for older Americans. That is happening all across this country. Older Americans are paying inflated prices for their prescription medication. What did our study show about who is getting all the money? The study showed that the pharmacies are not the problem. The pharmacies in all of these studies are making a markup, to be sure, but a markup that ranges between 3 percent and 22 percent on their prescription medications. They are getting, in other words, an ordinary markup, and they are getting that markup because at the retail pharmacy level we are dealing with a competitive market. People can choose to go to a number of different pharmacies in their area. When we talk to seniors, we find that they are in fact price shopping. Their price shopping has become more desperate, more anxious now than it was in the past because, frankly, they are having a harder and harder time paying their bills. The bottom line is, of that 116 percent price differential, maybe 25 percent maximum is going to the pharmacies. That means somewhere around 90 percent or so is going straight to the manufacturers. Now, is the pharmaceutical industry an industry about which we need to have grave concerns? I suggest not. Why do I say that? Fortune magazine reports that the most profitable industry in the country by any measure is the pharmaceutical industry. This chart is hard to read, but if we look at profitability as return on revenues, the number one industry is pharmaceuticals, with an 18.5 percent return in 1998. The next most profitable industry on that is commercial banks at something like 13 percent. If you look at return on assets, another way of measuring profitability, the pharmaceuticals are at 16.6 percent. Soaps and cosmetics are the second most profitable industry at 11 percent. If we look at return on equity, the number one again is pharmaceuticals at 39.4 percent. Soaps and cosmetics are at 35 percent. No matter how we look at this subject, we are talking about the most profitable industry in the country charging the highest prices in the country to seniors who do not have prescription drug coverage. If we look out beyond this country, we will find, as we have done studies comparing prices here versus prices in Canada and prices in Mexico, that the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world are charged in the United States, and within the United States the highest prices in the country are charged to those seniors who do not have any insurance for their prescription drugs. Now what is one possible way to deal with this problem? In developing this legislation we worked with the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry), a Democrat, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), a Democrat, to put together legislation. I have sponsored the Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act. It is H.R. 664, and here are the basic provisions: H.R. 664 would allow pharmacies to buy drugs for Medicare beneficiaries at the best price given to the Federal Government, and the best price is usually a price that is charged to the Veterans Administration or Medicaid or some other program. What the bill does is it gives senior citizens the benefit of the same discount received by hospitals, big HMOs and the Federal Government. What is unique about this legislation is that it does not cost the Federal Government any significant amount of money. We can achieve a 30 to 40 percent discount in prescription drug prices at no significant cost to the Federal Government, and how does that happen? Because it happens this way: All we are saying is that the Federal Government should be the negotiating agent, the buying agent, for people who are already participants in a Federal health care plan: Medicare. The Federal Government already provides for hospital care and doctors care and other benefits, but Medicare does not provide any funds at all for outpatient prescription drug coverage. Why is that? Well, back in 1965 when Medicare was created, prescription drugs did not cost anything. There were not, frankly, that many drugs with the potency and effectiveness of drugs that are available today, and the pharmaceutical industry gets a great deal of credit for developing many new drugs that have improved the quality of life for people. But if someone cannot afford to buy the drugs, they do not do them any good. H.R. 664 does not establish a new Federal bureaucracy, it does not cost any significant amount of money, but it would reduce prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries by 30 or even 40 percent. This is a bill that has broad support in the Democratic Caucus. There are 111 cosponsors to this bill, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), our Independent, and Democrats all across this country have lined up to say we want to reduce the cost of prescription drugs for seniors. To date, not one single Republican has cosponsored this legislation. The bill has been introduced in the Senate by Senators Ted Kennedy and Tim Johnson, but again not one single Republican has stood up for senior citizens against the pharmaceutical industry. It is not happening, and people need to ask why. Because a bill that provides a benefit of that magnitude, a 30 percent discount, and yet costs the Federal Government no significant amount of money is not objectionable. Now, one of the things that I found is that, and it has been interesting, is that as the prescription drug studies have been replicated around the country, people begin to understand that there is a solution out there. This is part of the solution. A Medicare prescription drug benefit of some kind is another part of the prescription. But the fact is that here is something that can be done right now. We do not need comprehensive Medicare reform in order to give seniors a discount that other people in the society already get. I am pleased to see so many of my colleagues here tonight. I promised the first person here that she would be able to stand up first, our new member from Cleveland, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York, and I want to thank him for all his work on this legislation here within the House and also for conducting that study back in his district, which shows basically the same kind of pattern that we have seen across the country. I would like now to yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the subject of my special order today.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule. This bill, along with last week's votes on Kosovo, reveal a fundamental flaw in the majority party's vision of national security. First, the majority of House Republicans voted against our military's effort to stop genocide in Kosovo. Now that same majority uses funding for the operation as an excuse for $6 billion in non-Kosovo military spending. The majority whip calls us chicken hawks. The other side complains that the administration's defense policy is ``doing more with less.'' But in rejecting Kosovo while giving the Pentagon $6 billion more, these critics embrace a doctrine of doing nothing with everything. In today's world, we cannot afford to do nothing. With today's budget, we cannot afford to buy everything. Republicans complain that our military's efforts to bring peace to the Balkans undermines readiness. Ready for what, if not Kosovo? Ready for the Soviet Union to spring to life, or Nazi Germany? Readiness is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end, our military's ability to carry out its mission, a means to ensuring our own security and prosperity. Ethnic conflict and regional instability, as in Kosovo, threaten our security and prosperity. It makes no sense to build up fortress America and sit inside idle while the world outside falls apart. Congress' decisions on the military must reflect the world as it is and will be, rather than a world of the past. I urge my colleagues to support this needed funding for our troops over Kosovo, and to resist playing games with it. We are better than that.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support our policy on Kosovo. Some in this debate have said our goal is not clear, but our goal is to stop Milosevic's slaughter of Albanian Kosovars, to prevent the spread of conflict, and to permit the Kosovars to return safely home. Our allies share that objective. This century is the bloodiest in human history and the world's democracies must stand against Slobodan Milosevic's bloody repression if we hope to deter other tyrants from engaging in ethnic slaughter. In Kosovo there are no clear answers, no good options, but to do nothing in the face of Milosevic's barbarity would be barbarous itself. Some see Kosovo as another Vietnam. I disagree. Kosovo is another Cambodia, another Rwanda. Let us learn the lesson of those in other killing fields and not allow our belated or inadequate response then to compound this tragedy today. The lack of a perfect choice is not an excuse to take no action. Some here today have declared after 30 days that this policy is a failure. Well, we should be made of sterner stuff than that. The young men and women in our military are made of sterner stuff than that. We need to be patient with this policy in Kosovo. The bombing campaign, even with its limitations, should be given time to work. Ground forces may yet be required, and we will have that debate. But for now, we should maintain our unity, stay the course. America is strong enough to see this through.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding me this time. It is April 15. In April, the Republican constitutional amendment of the month is always the same. Let us try once again to pass a constitutional amendment that would require a two-thirds majority to raise taxes in any amount. So here we go again. They have lost before over and over again, but let us try again. The previous Speaker said, ``Why are taxes high?'' We have got government that is too big. On the other hand, they are always tax talking, always talking about taking the people's money. Well, the people's money goes for defense. It goes for Social Security. It goes for health care. It goes for education. James Madison would be turning over in his grave today because there are only three reasons in which the Constitution requires a supermajority vote. They are all procedural matters: the removal of a Member of the House, the passage of a constitutional amendment, and overriding a presidential veto. James Madison realized the importance of majority rule. What this amendment attempts to do is empower one-third of this House plus one to block measures that would be good for the American people. It would do so in perpetuity. We do not know what this place will be like or what issues we will have to deal with 50 years from now. We will not be here, but other people will, and they may decide that it is more important to improve education or improve health care and have some increase in taxes perhaps on the wealthy, and we, today, the majority would take away that opportunity. We look back. Let us look back at the last few years. Since 1982, there have been six major deficit reduction acts that have been enacted, six major laws since 1982. Five of those six have included a combination of revenue increases and program cuts, five of the six. President Reagan signed three of them. George Bush signed one of them. President Clinton signed one of them. They included revenue increases. Let us take the one that President Clinton signed in 1993. Not one Republican in the House or Senate voted for that. It raised taxes on 1 percent of the American people. It drove down interest rates. It improved our economy to an extent that we could then have only imagined. In fact, if the President had said in 1993, if the President had said, ``I have a plan that will lead this country to greater prosperity than it has ever been known before, and here is the package that will do it,'' no one would have believed President Clinton in 1993 if he had said what his plan would accomplish and has accomplished over the last 6 years. We have a level of prosperity that is unmatched in American history, and it is due to the fact that we bit the bullet and made a tough decision then. Now, what this rule proposes is that it is okay for this House to have 51 percent vote to go to war, but we need a two-thirds to close a tax loophole. We would need 51 percent to do something about Social Security and Medicare that might involve some increase in revenues, but we would need two-thirds to close a tax loophole. This is a bill, a constitutional amendment, that basically says we want to make sure that we can cut taxes for the wealthy, but we prevent this Congress from doing anything else of significance without a two- thirds majority if it requires some increase in revenues. Now, there have been a number of statements made about the States, but the States are not responsible for Medicare, the States are not responsible for Social Security, the States are not responsible for national defense. And if we go into a recession, the people of this country will not be looking to the States to pull us out of it again. This bill is not needed. It is not needed. We have lived with this arrangement where we have majority rule on substantive matters for 200 years. The next 200 years will be better if we have majority rule on substantive matters and we do not try to empower a minority of one- third plus one to make the decisions in this House of Representatives.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, Congress must act now to pass campaign finance reform and ban soft money. We must act now in a nonelection year, before the strategic calculations of the election year money chase contaminate the debate on campaign finance reform. We must act now before unregulated, unaccountable soft money contributions drown out the people's voices in the 2000 election. If we thought the presidential election year of 1996 was awash in soft money, 2000 promises to be a deluge. We must act now to give the Senate sufficient time to act. Campaign finance reform is too important to be held hostage to the anti-reform faction's policy of delay, delay, delay. I urge Members to sign the discharge petition so we can pass the Shays-Meehan reform bill. If we combine last year's votes on the Shays- Meehan and Hutchinson-Allen bills, 352 Members voted to ban soft money. That is 81 percent of the House. I urge my colleagues to sign the discharge petition, pass Shays- Meehan, and ban soft money.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, this debate has gone on for a while. Most of us, virtually all of us, agree that the supplemental, the motives of the supplemental, are appropriate. We ought to have a supplemental to relieve the needs that are met in that bill. But the offsets, the offsets are the issue. We do not need, we should not need offsets at all on this supplemental appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the offsets that are given to us today, specifically the cuts in the Russian plutonium disposal program, the World Bank and other development aid. I sit on the Committee on Armed Services which is charged with providing for our Nation's security, and from where I sit these offsets are bad for our national security. Last week, the House passed the bill to commit us to deploy a national missile defense system. Such a system is designed to defend against a limited ballistic missile attack, meaning a handful of missiles, from, at most, a North Korea or Iran. That national missile defense system would cost somewhere between $18 billion and $28 billion. Last week, we committed $18 billion to $28 billion, or said we would commit that amount, to a narrow response to a limited threat. This week, this bill cuts $150 million from a program designed to prevent excess Russian plutonium from ending up in the hands of terrorists. Mr. Chairman, what are we doing here? What kind of defense are we providing our country when we gut a key nonproliferation program to keep nuclear materials away from terrorists, yet commit billions to an untested system to intercept missiles? It does not make sense to me.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the point is that this $150 million can allow us to acquire and dispose of, safely enough, fissile material to make 20,000 nuclear weapons. To take that material potentially out of the hands of terrorists is a major advance. There is no point to cutting this $150 million. This bill also cuts funds to promote economic stability overseas and raise the standard of living in poorer countries. Our national security depends on our economic security. We do our prosperity a disservice by cutting vital funding from multilateral development banks, food aid, Russia and Eastern Europe. Congress must not reject a cheap, wise and effective first line of defense against terrorism and nuclear weapons when just last week we chose to move ahead to a more expensive and technologically dubious line of defense. I would just go back, I know it has been mentioned before but the Secretary of Energy Mr. Richardson has said since the Department of Energy has already negotiated an agreement to purchase uranium from Russia for $325 million, the entire cut, this entire $150 million, would have to come from the $250 million appropriated to dispose of Russian plutonium. This is a very serious matter. I do not understand the other side. It seems clear to me dismantling Russian nuclear warheads and disposing of plutonium is solidly in the national interest. I urge my colleagues to support the Obey amendment and make the right vote for our national security.

Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 416, the Federal Retirement Coverage Corrections Act. I want to commend both the chair of the subcommittee the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) and the ranking member the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) for their determination to bring this bill to the floor at this time. The bill would provide relief to Federal employees who through no fault of their own were placed in the wrong Federal retirement plan. Some Federal agencies mistakenly placed thousands of Federal employees into the Civil Service Retirement System, or CSRS, when the employees should have been placed in the Federal Employees Retirement System, FERS. Often this error has not been discovered until an employee is on the verge of retirement. Once discovered, the employee faces a severe erosion of his retirement security. I am going to come back to the two employees that the gentleman from Florida mentioned who work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. They were very surprised to discover this error, and they face a serious deterioration of their retirement reserves unless Congress passes this bill. These two employees were placed in CSRS 14 years ago but only recently did they discover that they should have been placed in FERS. Once they learned that, they were then required involuntarily to switch from FERS to CSRS, and, since they had not been making their Social Security payments, all their CSRS resources were transferred to Social Security to make up for what they would otherwise have been paying in FICA taxes. For one of the men, his $30,000 CSRS investment was all used to pay so-called back FICA taxes. Furthermore, these employees will likely have to pay FICA tax not withheld for overtime, awards and other compensation for which they had legitimately not paid FICA tax because they were in CSRS which did not require it. This may total another $10,000 to $15,000. Finally, the FERS plan consists of three components, Social Security, a small defined benefit plan, and a Thrift Savings Plan contribution plan. Consequently, these employees will need to make substantial catch-up contributions to the Thrift Savings Plan if they want any sort of nest egg for retirement. These heavy TSP contributions and FICA tax payments quickly consume the paychecks of these employees. As a result, one employee will delay his retirement by 3 years and the other may have trouble financing his child's college education. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 416 will offer vital relief to these employees by making the agency responsible for their mistakes. The agency made the mistakes; the agency should be responsible. The bill requires the agency to make up both the agency's and the employee's lost contributions to the TSP. These hard-working employees do not deserve to have their retirement plans wiped out by a employer's mistake. H.R. 416 offers relief for a problem they did not cause. I want to thank both the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) for their work on this and leadership on this issue, and I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this House should defeat this rule. It is a closed rule that silences an important voice in the national missile defense debate, and that voice is the voice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Hugh Shelton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said in testimony before the Committee on Armed Services of the House last month that, and I quote, the decision to deploy a national missile defense system will be based on several factors, the most important of which will be assessments of the threat and the current state of the technology. H.R. 4 does not address threat or technology, or cost, or arms control. I asked the Committee on Rules to make in order an amendment I drafted, but that request was denied. The amendment provided that it would be the policy of this country to deploy a national missile defense that is proven to be effective. In other words, the system needs to work. Second, that it would not diminish our overall national security. We have the task of making sure that we develop and we proceed with strategic nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia. Third, that it would not compromise other critical defense priorities. We have to pay attention to our troops, and as the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) said a few moments ago, a theater missile defense to protect our forward-deployed troops is vitally important. This is the position, the amendment I proposed, I believe is the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I am dismayed that their views were shut out. Now, H.R. 4 came up in the Committee on Armed Services, but it is interesting. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Research and Development, said I did not offer this amendment in committee. Well, the truth is, I did not offer the amendment in committee because we had not even held a hearing with General Lyles. This bill was marked up in committee before we heard from General Lyles on that day.

Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 4 because the legislation fails to acknowledge that the choice to deploy a national missile defense system is an extraordinarily complex one. It must be based on effectiveness, threat, cost and other efforts to reduce threats to this country. Some say a national missile defense system should be deployed as soon as possible, no matter what the consequences are. There are others who say that a national missile defense should never be deployed, no matter what the threat is. All I am saying here is that the system should be deployed only if it is proven to work, if the threat truly warrants it, if the cost does not undermine our ability to train and equip our troops, and if it does not prevent further reductions in offensive nuclear weapons arsenals. Some of the proponents today here are saying we have to decide now, and they have cited other weapon systems. But with other weapon systems we test them before we fly them. We test them before we buy them. This is not just my view. This is the view of the our Nation's top military leaders. In speaking earlier today, I mentioned General Shelton and Secretary of Defense Cohen. Let me quote General Lester Lyles, who is the Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. He said at the time of a deployment decision we will also assess the threat, the affordability of the system, and the potential impact on treaty and strategic arms reduction negotiations. Congress trusts the Joint Chiefs on readiness, we trust them on troop pay, so why do we not trust them on national missile defense? H.R. 4 is only 15 words long. We can vote for these 15 words and feel good, but the promise is a hollow, empty one. Fifteen words cannot solve the immense technological challenge of hitting a bullet with a bullet. Fifteen words cannot make hit-to-kill technology hit the target more than 26 percent of the time and only 13 percent of the time in outer space. The era of budget deficits is over, and so must be the era of avoiding tough choices. We must be honest with the public on what it will take to deploy a national missile defense. How much will it cost to test, build and operate over a period of years? Will it improve our security or lead to a dangerous new arms race? Will it work? I had an amendment that recognized these important considerations, but it was denied by the Committee on Rules. Some Members here today have said the only thing standing between today and deployment is political will. One Member said the problem is political footdragging. I disagree. The problem is more than that. It is technology, it is physics, it is money, it is the real world. I am under no illusion about what the outcome of this debate will be today, but I ask Members to think about this decision; think about at the end of the day whether these 15 words will do anything to solve the immense technical challenges of national missile defense. We cannot afford this bill. I urge Members to vote ``no''.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, I am, Mr. Speaker, in its present form.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by commending both the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for the work they have done on this issue. This is a case where there are some of us who respect and admire their expertise in this area but do disagree on the substance of the policy, that it is the right one for this country. It is certainly true that the threat that has evolved with rogue nations is different from what it was perceived to be a number of years ago, and it is appropriate to consider the responses to that. But I would point out that couple of facts. One is that even the system that is being proposed today is a very limited defense system that would only deal, as a practical matter, with the threat from rogue nations and not provide the broader security that perhaps some believe. But the objection that I have primarily is this: This system has not been tested. We do not know whether or not it will work, and I believe that the decision to deploy should follow and not proceed; the testing, that would show whether or not we have a viable system here. The motion to recommit has three parts. The motion provides that it is the policy of the United States to deploy a ground-based national missile defense that, number one, has been demonstrated to be operationally effective against the threat as perceived at the time we come to a decision on deployment. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) said the President's policy, and he is correct, is to deploy some time next year after we have had some tests. Let me first mention a couple of things: We need to know we should not commit to deploying a national missile defense until we know it works. This is extraordinarily difficult technology, hitting a bullet with a bullet. The first intercept test will be held in the summer of 1999, this year, but the first fully integrated test of the entire system will not be held until the winter of 2001. That is a long time off, and a lot can happen during that time. Missile defense has been a program where we have run the risk of rushing to rush ahead with the system before it is fully tested. There are new tests that have been added which are appropriate, but we still, I think, need to wait and to see how the test works before we move ahead with the decision to deploy. The second part of the motion provides that the motion to the committee would provide that the system would not be deployed if it would diminish the overall national security of the United States by jeopardizing other efforts to reduce threats to the United States including negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear forces. We really need to make sure that we handle this matter appropriately so that the great threat of all of the nuclear weapons still available in Russia are managed and controlled and that we do not do anything to jeopardize our ability to deal with that task. The third part of the motion is that the system must be affordable and not compromise readiness quality of life, weapons modernization, and exceedingly importantly, theater missile defenses needed to protect our troops and our war ships that are forward deployed. The costs are, as my colleagues know, subject to great debate, but last year in June the GAO estimated the cost of 18 to 28 billion to develop, produce, deploy and operate a national missile defense system through 2006. The truth is we really do not know how big a cost we have, but it is in the amount of billions and billions of dollars. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would say it is my hope that colleagues will want more detail, want more testing, want more understanding, that they will support the motion to recommit. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALLEN. But I chose not to exercise that right, because I wanted to hear from the military as to their opinions. Does it make sense for us to commit to a program before we hear from the office that executes that program? H.R. 4 would deploy a national missile defense system before we have tested the system, before we know whether or not it works. My amendment, however, was not designed to kill this system. On the contrary, it was designed to make sure that a national missile defense system would work. First, national missile defense must be demonstrated to be operationally effective against the threat as defined as of the time of the deployment and as we can project for a reasonable time into the future. Does anyone disagree that we should test national missile defense before we buy it? Second, national missile defense should not diminish the overall national security of the United States by jeopardizing other efforts to reduce threats to this country, including negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear forces. Does anyone disagree on seeking further Russian disarmament? Third, national missile defense must be affordable and not compromise readiness, quality of life of our troops, weapons modernization, and theater missile defense deployment. Does anyone disagree with these critical defense priorities? H.R. 4, however, is silent on each one of these priorities. We should defeat this closed rule and allow Members the opportunity to vote to recognize that there are real world considerations for national missile defense deployment. That is the opportunity the Senate had; that is the opportunity that we should have in this House and well. I urge a ``no'' vote.