Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise to oppose the Barrett amendment. Today is, in my opinion, the worst possible day to be considering this amendment. American troops are in Iraq, completing a war that was justified in part as necessary to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Barrett amendment could facilitate the proliferation of nuclear weapons by blurring the long-standing, carefully drawn lines between civilian nuclear energy production and nuclear weapons production. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, U.S. policies have drawn a bright line between civilian and military applications of nuclear power. There is a very good reason which remains valid today: we want to prevent legitimate civilian nuclear facilities from being used illicitly to produce nuclear weapons material. Under U.S. leadership, international law requires separation of civilian and military nuclear power. This obligation is part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and is enforced by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This international law formed the basis for our finding Saddam Hussein in violation of nonnuclear pledges. This law is the way we hold Iran and North Korea accountable on nuclear weapons development. We undermine our ability to prevent these nations from using peaceful nuclear reactors to make bombs if we pursue a policy that collocates civilian and military activities at the same site, as the Barrett amendment ultimately contemplates. I am not aware of any recent congressional hearings held on this issue. This policy could have severe consequences for nuclear proliferation and should not be taken lightly. It should be reviewed by the relevant committees before being considered by the full House. I urge rejection of the Barrett proliferation amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in strong support of H. Res. 170, a resolution to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the tragedy of the USS Thresher, and I thank the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) for bringing this resolution forward. The gentleman from New Hampshire and I jointly represent almost all of the workforce at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where the Thresher was built in 1961 and which continues to serve a vital function for the Navy in submarine repair and overhaul. Mr. Speaker, 40 years ago 129 sailors, officers and civilians lost their lives when the USS Thresher went down off the coast of Cape Cod. It was one of the worst peacetime submarine disasters in history. The Thresher was the lead ship of a new class of nuclear-powered submarines. Following commissioning in August 1961, the Thresher spent the next year and a half in sea trials to test its technological enhancements. It returned to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for overhaul. On April 9, 1963, the Thresher departed for deep-sea training. The next morning as the boat was near its maximum depth, something went wrong. The Thresher's crew notified its companion ship on the surface, the USS Skylark, that it was experiencing minor difficulties. The Skylark then received ominous but less clear signals, and soon realized that the Thresher had sunk to the depths with all souls on board. Despite a depth of 8,400 feet, the Navy located the wreckage. It was able to investigate and discovered the likely cause of the catastrophe. A leak in the engine room seawater system had caused a reactor shutdown, and left the sub insufficient power to resurface. The loss of the Thresher and its crew left an important legacy for future generations of submariners. The Navy subsequently implemented new procedures such as the SUBSAFE program to ensure that no submarine would ever again enter the water without a full safety certification and rigorous test program. These changes have benefited the Navy and saved lives over the last 4 decades. This week, memorials are being conducted at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to mark the 40th anniversary of the tragedy. This resolution pays tribute to the crew of the USS Thresher, who continue to be remembered throughout New England for their bravery and sacrifice. Today we offer our remembrance and our gratitude to them and express our sorrow to the families they left behind. Again, I appreciate the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) in bringing forth this resolution and ask the whole House to join us in honoring the lost crew of the Thresher.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, the supplemental bill provides emergency funds for the war in Iraq, but right here at home, our States and our school systems are facing an emergency as well. I understand that the amendment that I have offered can be ruled out of order and I will withdraw it, but I am here because I cannot find another way to make the point that I am trying to make. Our school systems in Maine are struggling and our school administrators and school board members do not know what to do because the Federal Government is not fully funding the special education law that was passed in 1976 and we are not fully funding the No Child Left Behind Act, so all of these school systems, all of these people are basically faced with laying off teachers or raising property taxes. What is going to happen is some combination of the both of them. So tonight we stand here trying to figure out how to pay for a war in Iraq that we have to pay for, we have to support our troops, but we have these emergencies here at home that we are completely neglecting. I wish there was some way for me to bring this issue up on the floor at one time and say on the one hand the Republicans in this Congress are proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the richest people in the country and on the other hand not adequately funding our schools. That is the priority. I know that I cannot bring an amendment before this body and say reduce the tax cut by $9.5 billion this year and actually fully fund special education. We could do that. It is a piece of cake, if you do both at once. It would take $5 billion. Reduce the tax cut and you could fully fund the obligations that we are imposing on States through the No Child Left Behind. Again, it is simple math. It could be done. But the truth is we are barred from doing that. We cannot make that happen. I came here tonight to say that is what we ought to be doing. That is what we ought to be doing with legislation like this in some form so we could deal with our expenditures and our revenues at the same time, the way people deal with their personal budgets and the way businesses deal with their budgets: look at the revenues, look at the expenditures and make them come out roughly balanced. We can do that. We can support education. But not without reducing the President's tax cut. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my amendment.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I rise to make an argument outside of the scope of this latest controversy, though I will say the sooner this Congress deals with the GPO issue, the better, because it is a very important issue back in my home State of Maine. But I do rise in support of this bill, H.R. 743. I commend the work of the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) and the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) for their effort to bring this bill forward. I want to confine my remarks to one particular section of the bill, section 414. That section will directly benefit one of my constituents, Nancy Wilson of Bremen, Maine. Nancy Wilson has been denied Social Security benefits through a quirk in the law for more than 10 years, and thanks to the efforts of the Committee on Ways and Means, H.R. 743 will fix that quirk and will enable Nancy Wilson to receive the benefits to which she otherwise would have been entitled. Since the 105th Congress I have been working to pass legislation that would assist Mrs. Wilson. In both the 105th and 106th Congresses, private legislation passed this House but was not acted on by the other body. Since then the Committee on Ways and Means has graciously worked with me in both the 107th and 108th Congresses to include language similar to my bill, H.R. 249, in the Social Security Protection Act in order to help Mrs. Wilson. As anyone who has worked with her knows, Nancy Wilson is a tenacious battler. She will not give up. She will not allow her elected representatives to give up until she receives the justice that she feels she deserves and that she does deserve. I hope with the passage of this bill, Nancy's efforts will finally be vindicated. I urge the swift enactment of this legislation.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, on February 13, 2003, I was unavoidably absent for two rollcall votes, due to the death of a family member. Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 31 (Obey motion to recommit on H.J. Res. 2), and 32 (Final Passage of the Conference Report to Accompany H.J. Res. 2, the Fiscal Year 2003 Omnibus Appropriations Bill).

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the Toomey plan, which I find even worse, if possible, than the majority Republican plan. I have been doing this now for 7 years, and every year the sense of unreality grows greater as I see charts and graphs on the other side that bear, in my opinion, very little relation to reality. The charts and graphs this year, the budgets proposed, both of the Republican budgets, seem to me totally unrealistic. The charts are misleading in an astonishing number of respects. We are dealing with what can only be called voodoo economics. But we have to ask ourselves, among all the numbers, what is really going on here? Well, if you set aside all the numbers, and you look at all the different changes that are being made, two things are going on. The Republican majority is determined, absolutely determined, to shift the burden of government from the Federal level to the State and local level. This is an effort to cut taxes at the Federal level and increase them at the State and local level. It is an effort to reduce the amount of money that the Federal Government provides States and municipalities for environmental issues, for health care, for education, in order to diminish the size of the Federal Government. That is it. That is what is going on. That is number one. Number two, the second effort that is being made by the majority here is to make sure that the burden of taxation in this country is reduced from those at the upper income levels, so that it burdens those at middle income levels more than it has in the past. The way of doing this, of course, is to give little, bitty tax cuts to people in the middle of the income scale, and to give massive tax cuts to people at the upper end of the income scale. The reason for doing this, I would add, is the other side believes in a flat tax, but they do not want to argue a flat tax; they simply want to arrive there. Look at a couple of the charts. We have heard over and over again how much ordinary citizens will benefit from eliminating the tax on dividends. Look at the chart. Here is the tax benefit. This is designed to show how people at different income groups will benefit. Let us skip all of those who earn less than $100,000, because even if they are just below $100,000, households will only get about $300 a year. If you earn between $100,000 and $200,000, you get $885. If you earn between $100,000 and $200,000 a year, you get a total of $885. But if you move up the scale to where you are earning around $1 million, that is where the benefit comes. Then you get an average tax benefit, annually, of $45,000. That is why everything the other side says about averages makes no sense. Then they say we need to accelerate the tax cuts passed last year and make them permanent. The same deal. If you earn between, pick a different category, pick between $200,000 and $500,000 a year, you get $2,000 a year. Below that it is not much. But if your household takes in about $1 million a year, it is $63,000 a year. There is no moral justification for stripping this much money out of the Federal Government, cutting education, cutting veterans' benefits, in order to give tax cuts to the richest people in the country. It is an outrage.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, this bill will not reduce health care spending significantly. If you add up all the malpractice premiums in this country, they represent one-half of 1 percent of the $1.4 trillion we spent on health care last year. Now, some States have problems. Maine does not impose caps on noneconomic damages, yet we have comparatively low insurance premiums. Maine has a mandatory pre-litigation screening panel for every medical malpractice case. The panel consists of one attorney, one doctor and one retired judge. This panel process weeds out the frivolous lawsuits and encourages legitimate cases to come to a fairly quick resolution. Sixteen other States have similar screening panels. States with screening panels should be exempt from the cap on noneconomic damages. There is no reason to impose this law on States which have figured out how to deal with this problem on their own. But this bill imposes a one-size-fits-all Federal rule in a traditional area of State jurisdiction. And this bill does something else. This bill sticks individual plaintiffs, particularly those who are children or unemployed or elderly, with perhaps a huge lifetime cost because of severe injuries, instead of sharing those costs through our insurance system. So, once again, the Republican majority is basically saying it is better to stick the loss on those who suffer it than to share that loss broadly through insurance. A $250,000 cap does not mean $250,000 will ever go to a plaintiff, because they always have expenses and attorney's fees and all of that. It seems to me that this cap is unbelievably low, it is imposed arbitrarily on States which have figured out another way to deal with this problem, it is bad policy, and I urge my colleagues to vote down H.R. 5.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, on February 12 and 13, 2003, I was unavoidably absent for seven rollcall votes, due to the death of a family member. Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 24 (H.R. 346, American Spirit Fraud Prevention Act), 25 (H. Res. 62, regarding POWs), 26 (H.R. 395, Do-Not-Call Implementation Act).

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr Speaker, on February 13, 2003, I was unavoidably absent for rollcall votes, due to the death of a family member. Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 27 (Kucinich Substitute to H.R. 4), 28 (Cardin Substitute to H.R. 4), and 29 (motion to recommit H.R. 4). I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote 30 (passage of H.R. 4, welfare bill).

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight like so many Americans in anticipation of what the President may say to this Congress tomorrow. These are difficult times for this country. We face extraordinary challenges abroad in grappling with the war on terrorism and also with the proposed invasion of Iraq, and we face daunting challenges here at home. Our economy is not doing well. There is no question that the jobs have been declining. We have fewer jobs in this country than we had 2 years ago. In many parts of this country people are suffering. Many States across this country are finding that their budgets are completely out of whack. They are struggling both with rising expenses, particularly with Medicaid, as the economy suffers and declining revenues, declining revenues from the Federal Government and also declining revenues at home in their own State funds. So in this context this is an appropriate time to talk about what the President may say tomorrow night and also to give a sense of what we believe as Democrats are some of the issues that lie ahead. I am going to begin tonight by discussing the topic of health care. There have been a number of articles in the press anticipating what the President may say about Medicare. In particular, those articles suggest that tomorrow night the President will unveil a Medicare reform proposal and that that proposal will basically seek to privatize more of Medicare; that is, it will seek to put more of the people in this country who are now getting traditional fee-for-service Medicare into the hands of insurance companies, and those insurance companies would take over the provision of health insurance from Medicare. Now, one of the things that is very clear is that when Medicare gets turned over to insurance companies, as it has in so many States with what is called Medicare+Choice, that the world changes; and some of those changes, a number of those changes, are not to the advantage of seniors. Let me give you a few examples from the program called Medicare+Choice, which we have had in this country now since the 1997 act. What has happened in those cases where insurance, private insurance companies have taken over Medicare and provided insurance is that every year the benefits can change. That is, every year the insurance company can decide, for example, that though we were providing prescription drug coverage before this year, we are going to have a lower cap, or we will have a higher copay, and the other part of that is every year the premiums can change. In many places in this country when Medicare+Choice first began, prescription drugs were free. There was no added cost for prescription drugs; but over the years that is changed. Now, the other third component that changes is that if a company is not making enough money, if an insurance company is not making enough money on Medicare+Choice, on a managed care plan for seniors, then what happens is the company can simply pull up and leave the particular area. In fact, in most counties in this country there is no opportunity for private insurance to cover people on Medicare, to be the primary coverage. There always are Medigap policies that many seniors take advantage of, but those policies provide very few benefits for their costs, so most seniors do not sign up for them. So now the President is saying what seniors need in this country is more of this private insurance under Medicare. Well, let us think about that. If you have private insurance under Medicare, taking over Medicare for many seniors across this country, here is what happens: Any given year the premiums for that policy can change. The benefits for that policy can change. In short, maybe you get coverage one year, and maybe you do not. Maybe some States get covered, and maybe they do not. Maybe the premiums, almost certainly the premiums change every year. The bottom line is maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe you get coverage, maybe you do not. Maybe in some States, maybe not in others. Maybe in some years, maybe not in others. The President is trying to turn Medicare into ``maybe care'' and seniors need to say, ``Maybe not.'' In fact, definitely not. Because if the President is able to turn Medicare into ``maybe care,'' then our seniors are faced with a kind of uncertainty, instability, unpredictability that they have do not have when they sign up, when they get ordinary Medicare. But the President will propose that this is reform, this is something that would be good for all Americans. I suggest we need to take a different look at what he proposes. There is also one other topic I want to address before turning it over to my distinguished friend from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), and that is the proposal that you can read about in the papers today, some of them, that the President is likely to propose in the near future that small businesses be able to join national association health plans. Now, a lot of small business organizations are saying, this is a good deal, this is what we need to do. And who can blame them, because I do not know a small business in my home State of Maine that is not desperate about the rapidly rising cost of health insurance. In fact, in my home State of Maine, health insurance costs tend to go up about 30 to 50 percent for small businesses in each of the last 3 years, and we have to do something about it. But the President, from what we hear, is likely to roll out a plan for association health plans. These plans would bypass State regulation, so a lot of the protections that are built into your State laws to protect consumers against insurance companies that are always trying to skim off the healthy people and not take the people who are not as healthy, a lot of the State regulatory apparatus would be gone, and consumers would be left at risk. But here is the important point: The important point is that there are now about 41 million people in this country who do not have health insurance, and the Congressional Budget Office has estimated under the President's proposed plan that maybe 4.6 million people would sign up for these association health plans, and as I said, who can blame them? But 4.3 million of those folks already have health insurance. In other words, here is another plan to be rolled out by the administration and by the Republicans in Congress, and it will cover about 300,000 of the 41 million Americans who do not have health insurance today, and they will call that progress, but it is not. In short, we have to look at the health care proposals that we expect to be contained in the President's speech tomorrow night; and so far, from what we have heard, they are a bad deal for America's seniors and a bad deal for America's small businessmen. I now yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. In fact, in just a moment after a couple more comments on my part, I would like to ask the gentleman to come down in the well and take my place and control the remaining time, but I did want to add a couple of things. It is astonishing, when we think back about what happened in the 1990s, to see the agenda that the President will roll out tomorrow. What we learned from the 1990s was if we maintain our fiscal discipline, if the Federal Government works to get rid of deficits, to come roughly into balance, that is our best bet for the future. We have lost that interest. The President and the Republicans in this Congress have lost any interest in maintaining a balanced budget and getting rid of the deficits. In fact, there is an exactly opposite trend here. We learned in the 1990s, we maintain the balance and we invest in people. We make sure we are contributing to their health care, that we are investing in job training, we are making sure people have the skills for the 21st century, common phrase. We do not hear it anymore because what is happening now is we are not investing. We have stopped increasing support for education. It is being flat funded like other domestic priorities, and it does not matter what the area is. In almost every area, we are basically cutting back on investing in people. At the same time, we are going back to an era of huge, huge deficits, and why? Well, partly because we have had to make an investment in defense and in homeland security, but primarily because, in fact, we are having tax cut after tax cut after tax cut directed to the wealthiest people in the country. That is not what investing in people means. That is not strengthening our workforce. That is not going to strengthen our economy in the long run. Basically, tax cuts for the wealthy in the long run simply widen the gap between the very wealthy and everyone else, do not allow us to invest in the future of the way we did during the 1990s with the economic results that we saw in the 1990s and we can see what is happening. The President will come here tomorrow night, and he will propose a $674 billion tax cut, again weighted mostly to the wealthy; and I predict almost I think to a certainty that he will also say we have to make the tax cuts that were passed last year permanent, and I guarantee that he will not tell this body and he will not tell the people of this country that that in itself, making those tax cuts permanent, will cost an additional $600 billion dollar loss of revenue. We are going to be so deep in deficits for so long that our children and grandchildren will pay the price, and it is hard to understand the morality of borrowing from our kids, borrowing from our grandchildren, forcing them to pay interest on the national debt for decades and decades to come simply in order to satisfy a current desire for tax cuts. I think it is wrong, and at this time I would like to yield to the gentleman from Oregon, and Mr. Speaker, ask leave that he control the remainder of the time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, by the year 2030, the number of young people between 15 and 24 is projected to reach 1.2 billion, signifying a 17 percent increase in population worldwide. In many parts of the developing world, almost half of all girls under 18 are married and child-bearing, despite the fact that children born to women younger than age 20 are one and half times more likely to die before their first birthday than those born to mothers between ages 20 and 29. We must, therefore, recognize the problems associated with rapid population growth among young people. Governor Angus King of Maine has proclaimed the week of October 20-26th of this year as World Population Awareness Week, and I would like to support Governor King in this effort by entering his proclamation into the Congressional Record. Whereas, more than one billion people--one sixth of the world's population--are between the ages of 15 and 24, the largest generation ever in this age bracket; and Whereas, nearly half of the world's population, and 63% in the least developed countries, is under the age 25; and Whereas, 17 million young women between the ages of 15-19 give birth every year, including some 13 million who live in less developed countries; and Whereas, early pregnancy and childbearing is associated with serious health risks; and Whereas, the choices young people make today regarding their reproductive lives will determine whether the world population stabilizes or continues to grow, Now, Therefore, I, Angus S. King, Jr., Governor of the State of Maine, do hereby proclaim October 20th-26th, 2002 as Population Awareness Week throughout the State of Maine.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I wish to respond to some of the comments made just now by the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) and earlier by the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International Relations, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde). It is true that this resolution seeks to have the United States first act in a multilateral basis through the U.N., but we are not transferring the job of protecting Americans to the United Nations. In section 8 of this resolution it says, ``inherent right to self- defense.'' Nothing in this joint resolution, the Spratt substitute, is intended to derogate or otherwise limit the authority of the President to use military force and self-defense pursuant to the Constitution of the United States and the War Powers resolution. But there is a reason why we need to act on a multilateral basis. It is because if we act against Saddam's weapons of mass destruction together with allies, we are less likely to provoke an Islamic fundamentalist uprising in the Middle East. We are more likely to diminish the number of recruits to Osama bin Laden, not to accentuate the number of recruits to terrorist causes. Insofar as people have suggested this is a steeple chase or they are roadblocks to getting the second resolution passed, it is a week-long proposition. Come back, we have the resolution laid out in this substitute, there are no amendments, no points of order, it comes to the floor, we will have a debate of 20 hours, and it will be done. This is critical. This is as important a vote as the vote on final passage, and I urge Members to support the Spratt substitute.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the resolution. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant to his own people and a threat to ourselves and to others. If this were simply a referendum on him, the vote today would be unanimous. But the resolution before us raises two questions of fundamental importance, questions that are agonizing for Members of this body: First, how do we diminish the threat from Iraq without empowering Islamic fundamentalism and creating new recruits for terrorist groups; and, second, how do we avoid setting a dangerous global precedent for other nations to launch unilateral preemptive attacks as a legitimate tool of national policy? The resolution negotiated between the President and House leadership is still a blank check. The Spratt substitute, in its essence, said that we are not willing to provide a blank check now for unilateral military action, though we are willing to provide or authorize military force multilaterally. This resolution unwisely justifies action against Iraq under the Bush administration's new doctrine of preemption and regime change. This justification has the potential to create precedents that will come back to haunt us if adopted by our Nation or by others. Under the Constitution, the President and Congress share warmaking powers. Yet, the underlying resolution represents an abdication of Congress' historic role. We cannot look into the future. If we act unilaterally, we do not know today what support we might have from some allies, how many troops it would take, what the President has in mind. A decision to use unilateral force should be postponed to a later date. In the war on terrorism, we need more friends and allies and fewer enemies. We will get to that place if we first make a commitment to working with our allies, and only later, if necessary, authorize the use of unilateral force. I urge my colleagues not to give our rights away in this Congress, and to reject the resolution.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule. I particularly want to commend the chairman and the ranking member for approving and bringing to the floor the separate substitute, which is supported by the following Members as it went to the Committee on Rules: the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder), the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn). Mr. Speaker, the separate substitute reflects four fundamental principles: First, our mission should be clear: disarming Iraq of all weapons of mass destruction; Second, it includes a sense of Congress supporting tough new, rigorous U.N. inspections; Third, it authorizes the use of force if sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council; and Fourth, it establishes a separate fast track congressional authorization of force if U.N. action is insufficient. In other words, the separate substitute authorizes the use of force today through the United Nations, but it provides no blank check now for unilateral military action. Why does it do that? Because if the U.S. acts unilaterally or with just a few other nations, there is a far higher risk of fueling resentment in Arab and Muslim nations and swelling the ranks of the anti-U.S. terrorists. Our fundamental concern has to be to deal with the terrorist threat represented by al Qaeda and other international organizations. Regardless of how Members vote on final passage, voting for the separate substitute is an important way to voice concern that the U.S. should work through the U.N. Security Council first and unilaterally only as a last resort. If unilateral action is necessary, Congress should have a vote on that issue. We cannot fulfill our historic role if we end our consideration of this matter this week. We need to be more than the President's megaphone. We need additional consideration when the President has decided to use unilateral force and when he can tell us what it is he has in mind.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Spratt substitute and in opposition to the underlying resolution. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant, a brute, a danger. Were this simply a referendum on him, the vote would be unanimous. But Saddam is not on the ballot. The two questions before us are, first, how do we diminish the threat from Iraq without empowering Islamic fundamentalism and creating new recruits for terrorist groups; and, second, how do we avoid setting a dangerous global precedent for other nations to launch unilateral preemptive attacks as a legitimate tool of public policy? Our country is strong enough to attack Iraq and win, but we ought to be wise enough to achieve our ends with allies and without war. In the past year, terrorism has threatened us as never before. We should face that new threat resolutely, but not frighten our own people by overstating the risk to Americans. Some who support the resolution have morphed Osama bin Laden into Saddam Hussein and Saddam into Hitler and Stalin, yet the classified briefings that I have received do not lead me to conclude that the threat is imminent. We have time to work with our allies to enforce U.N. resolutions. Actions often have unintended consequences. An invasion of Iraq to enforce U.N. resolutions may cost hundreds of Americans lives, maybe more, and thousands of Iraqi lives. But the future is obscured to us and predictions on this floor can easily turn out to be wishful thinking. The resolution negotiated between the President and the House leadership has two fundamental shortcomings. It is still a blank check. I quote: ``The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate.'' The Gulf War resolution of 1991 did not delegate decisions on ``force as he determines.'' The post-September 11 use-of-force resolution did not use the words ``as he determines.'' Not even the Gulf of Tonkin resolution used the words ``as he determines.'' Under the Constitution, the President and Congress share war-making powers, yet the underlying resolution represents an abdication of Congress' constitutional role. This is the people's House. Pass this resolution, and the people's voice will be silenced. Pass this resolution, and Congress' role in this matter is finished as of this week. We are being used as a megaphone to communicate the President's resolve. We should have a larger role, an equal role. The underlying resolution is also troubling for how it is rationalized. The President has justified his action under new doctrines of preemptive strike and regime change. What precedent do these doctrines set, for ourselves and for others? How many wars will start when another country launches a preemptive strike against a nation that it determines to be a threat? The United States created the institutions and laws that have governed the international system for the last half century precisely because no nation benefits more than the United States from a rule- based international system. There are serious questions about the precedents we set and the dangers we create. This House should reserve to a later time the question of whether or not unilateral military action in Iraq should be authorized. We should, instead, pass the Spratt substitute. It reflects four fundamental principles: First, our mission should be clear, disarming Iraq of all weapons of mass destruction; Second, it contains a sense of Congress supporting tough new rigorous U.N. inspections; Third, it authorizes the use of force if sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council; and, Fourth, it establishes a separate fast track congressional authorization of force if U.N. action is insufficient. In other words, the President gets expedited consideration by Congress on an up or down vote without amendment on the second resolution set forth in the Spratt amendment. The Spratt amendment affirms that the U.S. should work through the United Nations Security Council first, and unilaterally only as a last resort. In the war on terrorism, we need more friends and allies and fewer enemies. We are unlikely to succeed through unilateral preemptive policies so poorly received overseas. The Spratt substitute is our best opportunity to disarm Iraq without inflaming the Middle East and to keep this Congress relevant in the decisions that lie ahead. Support the Spratt substitute, and reject the underlying resolution.

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

Mr. ALLEN. Madam Speaker, is there anything in this resolution that would prevent the President from committing 500,000 troops to a war in Iraq without further congressional action?

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 4600, a bill to protect doctors, other health care providers, drug companies, and manufacturers of medical devices from the consequences of their own negligence. It reduces compensation for severely injured people in order to save money for negligent providers and their insurers. This is a congressional power grab to take over tort law from the States. Many States, including Maine, have held down malpractice premiums without stripping compensation from severely injured plaintiffs. Maine requires a review of malpractice claims by an independent panel within 90 days of the plaintiff's filing a claim. I served on two of those panels before I left the practice of law, and the result is more cases are settled early without an arbitrary cap on damages. I believe that we here in the Congress should deal with our issues and leave the State law issues to the States. We do not need to take over State legislative responsibility. We are now in the fourth week since the August recess, and not one single appropriations bill that we ought to be dealing with has come to the floor of this House; instead, we are spending our time dealing with matters more appropriate for State legislators.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, there is a lot that is important to the American people that is being lost in the current focus on the situation in Iraq and the administration's plans for regime change and a military invasion. And I want to spend this evening talking about one of those issues that is getting less attention than it deserves. I am talking about the fact that in my home State of Maine and all across this country, seniors who need prescription drugs in many cases simply cannot afford to buy them. In my office, my district office in Maine, people are coming in all the time, calling on the phone or stepping into the office and basically saying, What can I possibly do? I can no longer afford my prescription drugs. People who have a Social Security check each month of $800 to $1,200 can wind up with $400, $500 a month in prescription drug costs, and the math just does not work. They cannot do it. People are, in fact, giving up food in order to buy their medicine or giving up their medicine in order to pay the rent or buy food. We have been dealing with this problem for years. Back in 1998 I introduced a bill that would provide a 30 percent discount to all Medicare beneficiaries and the cost of all of their prescription drugs at no significant cost to the Federal Government. But the pharmaceutical industry weighed in, lobbied heavily, described the plan as price controls even though it is one that is widely employed by other industrialized nations and nothing has happened on that front. The Democratic Caucus year after year has proposed a Medicare prescription drug benefit. That is a benefit for Medicare beneficiaries operating in the way that part B of Medicare does, the way doctors, the expenses for physicians is covered, that is, seniors would pay a certain amount per month and get a significant portion of their expenses covered, both by the amount they pay and by contributions from general revenues. Well, that is what we thought ought to appear here. But tonight I want to spend some time talking about what really goes on here in Washington, what really goes on out in the field, and why we do not have even a discount for Medicare beneficiaries or a Medicare benefit. And we may remember, it has been a long time, but some may remember in one of the debates, one of the Presidential debates in the year 2000, President Bush said, I support a Medicare prescription drug benefit. I knew what he meant. Lots of people in this Congress knew what he meant. But never in the past 2 years has the administration presented a plan for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Not one. Let us look at a little bit of what has been going on in the Congress and why we have not been able to accomplish what we should. Let us look for a moment at the last election cycle, 1999 to 2000. The pharmaceutical industry in that time period, according to the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, spent $177 million lobbying Members of Congress and $20 million in campaign contributions. So that is $200 million that the pharmaceutical industry spent in those 2 years in order to try to get its way. At the same time they employed in the year 2000, 625 lobbyists here in Washington. Think about it. There are only 535 Members of the Senate and the House put together, but the pharmaceutical industry hired 625 lobbyists to make sure that their views were well represented in the Congress. But that is not the end of the story. In the same time period, that election cycle, the pharmaceutical industry was the largest interest group spending money on political ads, so-called issue ads, of any group in the country. They spent $50 million. And we can be sure, we can be sure based on their advertising so far in this cycle that they will far exceed that number. Let us take a look at how these groups operate. The pharmaceutical industry not only has legions of professional lobbyists, but it is also funding what they call grass roots groups. A lot of us call this Astroturf lobbying because the grass is manufactured. And I want to call attention to a couple of those groups. One group is the 60 Plus Association, which not so long ago did an ad in the Houston Chronicle, an ad thanking the majority whip, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), for his work on a prescription drug benefit plan. And the advertisement of the 60 Plus Association, we need to know, is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. It sounds like a group just of grass roots seniors, but it is not. It is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Here is what the ad said. It said: ``Results, not politics, for American seniors.'' And it goes on and on talking about this particular publication. What we need to know, what people need to know about this industry and this campaign, Mr. Speaker, is that 2 days after the House Republicans unveiled their prescription drug plan back in June, a plan that was backed by the pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical companies were among 21 donors paying $250,000 each for special treatment at a GOP fund-raising gala headed by President Bush. That same week, a senior House Republican leadership aide was quoted in the newspaper as saying that Republicans are ``working hard behind the scenes on behalf of PHARMA,'' the industry association, ``to make sure that the party's prescription drug plan for the elderly suits drug companies.''. In fact, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce during markup of the Republican prescription drug bill had to break early that day so that Republican law makers could attend the dinner, and that was reported in the Washington Post on June 19, 2002. At that time, the drug lobby had financed a massive $4.6 million issue ad campaign in 18 competitive districts, some of them held by Republicans. This September one ad in the Houston Chronicle praising the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) for the plan he supports is really a remarkable document. The pharmaceutical industry wrote the bill, wrote the Republican prescription drug bill. It passed by a very narrow majority on essentially a party line vote, and now the pharmaceutical industry goes out running ads thanking the Republicans for passing the bill that the pharmaceutical industry wrote. If people have enough money in this country, they can do a lot to hoodwink the American people. Let us take a look at this particular ad and just talk about some of the allegations made here. The suggestion is that the Republican prescription drug plan includes a guaranteed drug benefit under Medicare for all seniors, but what the ad does not tell us is that it does not provide a guaranteed defined benefit with a guaranteed premium, and the reason for that is that the plan relied on insurance companies to provide the benefit. It was not a Medicare benefit. It was an Aetna benefit, a CIGNA benefit, a United benefit. It was something, but it was not a benefit, and we can look through that entire bill and look for the number that seniors will have to pay to be part this so- called Medicare prescription drug benefit plan and we cannot find the number anywhere in the bill because it does not exist, because what the bill consists of is a subsidy to insurance companies in the hope that they will turn around and provide stand-alone prescription drug insurance to seniors, a kind of policy that does not exist at all today and probably will never exist but which is the heart and soul, if those are the words, of the Republican bill. Let me deal with the other four allegations here. The suggestion is that this will reduce out-of-pocket costs by up to 70 percent, but what the ad does not tell us is that those seniors with drug costs between $2,000 and $3,700, within that group, will have to pay 100 percent out- of-pocket if the insurance companies, given the subsidy, offer the plan that is assumed by the Republican prescription drug bill, all of which is highly unlikely. The third claim is that this plan, the Republican plan, would offer seniors the flexibility to choose the plan that best meets their need, but what the ad does not say is that the plans under the Republican prescription drug bill are not under the Medicare program but private insurance companies and HMOs, and as someone who comes from the State of Maine, it is very clear to me that Maine, another rural State, is going to be one of the last places where insurance companies rush in and say we really want to provide prescription drug insurance to seniors, a group that represents 12 percent of the population but buys 33 percent of all prescription medications. Then the fourth claim in this ad run by the astroturf organization in favor of the pharmaceutical industry is that it will provide complete protection against catastrophic drug costs, but it does not say that between $2,000 and $3,700 a person pays 100 percent out of pocket, and the catastrophic protection assumes that again there will be an insurance company to provide the benefit. The final claim here is that there is no government bureaucrat between a person and their doctor, but there is someone between them and their doctor, and that will be the private insurance company, the HMO who will decide what drugs will be available under what plans. One of the problems with that is, unlike Medicare, where the benefits are reasonably stable, known in advance, consistent from year to year, where the premium changes only a slight difference from year to year, when it comes to HMOs and private insurance companies, what will happen, as it has in the Medicare+Choice market, is every year people will be laid off if the company is not making money in a particular area. The premium can be changed, the benefits can be changed at will, and despite the fact that in each of the last 4 or 5 years hundreds of thousands of people each year for a total of several million have withdrawn from the Medicare+Choice plans, that is, managed care for Medicare beneficiaries, despite that fact, that is the model that is being relied on under the Republican prescription drug plan. The bottom line is real simple. Having written the bill for the Republican majority, having watched it pass here in the House, now the pharmaceutical industry is out running ads under the name of other organizations, trying to persuade the American people that Republican Members of Congress who are marching in lockstep with the pharmaceutical industry should be congratulated by seniors, ostensibly for doing what seniors want, but in fact, doing what the pharmaceutical industry wants. I notice my colleague from Arkansas, a tireless advocate for seniors, is here, and at this time I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, there are two words that sum up why we cannot get done here what needs to be done. Greed and money together are the answer. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal on September 16, just a couple of days ago. Let me just read a couple of paragraphs. The title is this: Drug Industry Steps Up Campaign to Boost Image Ahead of Elections. ``Here we go again, the pharmaceutical industry will spend millions of dollars on feel-good ads to boost their image before the election, and in the part of what they are doing, of course, not just boosting their own image but supporting Republican candidates.'' Let me read these two paragraphs. ``More than $8 million has been committed to ads in recent months promoting nearly two dozen House candidates favoring industry-backed legislation and encouraging a Senate vote on the same bill, according to Charles Jarvis, chairman and chief executive of United Seniors Association, which is airing the spots. He acknowledged that most of the costs associated with the effort, including an additional $4 million Internet and direct mail campaign, are supported by a `general educational grant from PhRMA.' All but a few of the two dozen or so United Seniors ads running this year thank Republican Members of Congress for supporting an industry-backed bill to provide medicine to seniors.'' It is money. It is greed. When there is as much money as we have in the pharmaceutical industry, and its obvious willingness to spend unlimited amounts of money on lobbyists, on campaign contributions and on television ads, we have in effect the people's House taken over by one industry group and blocking the steps that need to be taken. There is an article in the Hill, a local newspaper, and one of the things, and this is a column by Bruce Freed saying basically that the drug industry needs more transparency. On the one hand they will run ads, lobby people in Congress and say it takes $600-800 million to bring a drug to market, but you cannot find in our figures, we will not show you the accounting, we will not give you enough information about our costs to prove what we are saying. He is saying, look, there is so much lack of confidence now in large American corporations because of the way they have handled their accounting that this cannot be believed. The industry really needs more transparency. One pricing expert that he quotes says that prescription drugs are priced to generate the greatest profit to the companies. That is independent of any historical research and development spending on that product or any other product. That is not news to us, but it might be news to the American people because the industry has been so relentless in trying to say we need these profits, these profits that make us year after year the most profitable industry in the country. We need all of those profits in order to do research and development, but the cold, hard truth is they spend more on marketing than they do on research and in many respects they have become marketing companies. Find a drug, tweak it a little bit, get a new patent and spend millions in television advertising trying to persuade seniors and others that this particular medication is the one that they absolutely have to have. I have heard from doctors saying that more and more people are coming into their offices saying not what should I do for my condition, but saying I want this particular drug that I have seen on television. This is not a healthy development for our seniors and certainly not for this democracy.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, what the gentleman is really talking about is what we often call reimportation, and that is legislation which has been passed that would allow drugs to be reimported from Canada. Just to give an example, from a recent bus trip up in Maine where a group of seniors went over the border to Canada, got their prescriptions filled by a Canadian physicians, 25 people saved $1,600 in one bus trip. Just to give one example of a critical drug, Tamoxifen is a drug for breast cancer, and many women who are going through a fight against breast cancer do not need to be fighting for their pocketbooks as well. Tamoxifen in Maine costs $112-114 for a month's supply. In Canada, it is about $13. There is a 10-1 differential for Tamoxifen for fighting breast cancer. When we look at other countries, the prices are much lower elsewhere. Why? Because the governments in those countries do not allow their seniors to be taken advantage of. All of those governments one way or another set some kind of cap on what the pharmaceutical industry can pay. We have the anomaly here in the United States, Medicare, 39 million beneficiaries, the largest health care plan in the United States, they do not have prescription drug coverage, they do not have the Federal Government negotiating lower prices for them. They are on their own. For those of us who are still working and have some sort of health insurance, we get our prescription drug coverage through our health insurer. No matter who our health insurer is, that insurer is negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies to get a reduced price. How much, we do not always know, but they are getting a reduced price from the pharmaceutical industry. It is a scandal that seniors cannot get the best price in the country. They are part of the largest group. They use the most medications. We ought to have the kind of leverage over price that will give seniors the price that they are leveraged, that their marketing position deserves. But when it comes to developing a Medicare prescription drug plan of any kind down here in the Congress, the first rule is do no harm to the pharmaceutical industry's profits. So we have seniors dying, not getting the care they want. We have seniors who cannot afford food and paying the rent simply because their prescription drug costs are too high. They simply cannot do it, and the result is that they are in trouble. But the instinct of many down here who receive corporate campaign contributions from the industry is protect the industry first. We are a long way of being done from campaign contributions in this particular election cycle, but so far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, nearly $16 million has been donated to political candidates and parties during this election cycle, 2001-2002, by the pharmaceutical industry, 74 percent of it so far to Republicans. If Members wonder why we are not getting this job done, that is the reason. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) to explain this particular chart.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I will make just one final comment. We have been talking a lot about prescription drugs for seniors this evening and what a serious problem it is for Medicare beneficiaries because they do not have a Medicare prescription drug benefit at all. But back home in Maine what we are finding is that the small business community is now getting hit by very steep increases in their health insurance premiums. Small business men and women in my State are seeing health insurance premium increases of 30 percent, 40 percent, sometimes 50 percent; and this is the third successive year in which that is happening. The viability of many small businesses in Maine is really being threatened by rapidly rising prescription drug costs because that is the major component that is driving up their health insurance premiums. This is a big and complicated issue. The fairness of our health care system, the ability of people to get access to the health care they need is a national issue of enormous importance, and it is one that is being neglected in this House because we are paying far too much attention to the industry itself and not to the people. I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas for participating in this Special Order tonight.