Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) said he was puzzled by this bill, but I am not so puzzled. It seems to me quite clear that the one thing that our Federal retirees were right to be concerned once the Republican prescription drug bill had passed this House, they were right to be concerned that they might some day have to live under those prescription drug benefits which do not even come close to the benefits that they have today. So it does make sense that as soon as the Republican prescription drug bill was passed that Federal retirees would get worried and Members would come down here and say, boy, one thing we sure do not want to have is to have our Federal retirees forced to participate in the Republican prescription drug bill that we just passed. Now, one of the reasons that this is happening so fast, and it is happening fast, the Republican bill passed by one vote here in the House. A bill has passed in the other body, but we do not even have a conference. We do not know what the final product will be like. But we know this: it will not be good for America's seniors. It will not be good for those Medicare beneficiaries who are counting on getting some relief from the high cost of prescription drugs. The Republican bills are a disaster, a looming disaster for our Medicare beneficiaries; but they also fall far short of what Federal retirees are likely to expect. Because under the FEHBP program we have today, there are no additional premiums for drug benefits. There is no deductible. There is a small co-payment. There is no gap in coverage, and that is different from the Republican bills passed here in the House. This bill may make some sense for Federal retirees; but the question remains, if it is good enough for Members of Congress and Federal employees, it ought to be good enough for Medicare beneficiaries. That is what the President said, but the Republican bill does not keep that promise.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues Mr. Robert Simmons, Mr. William Delahunt, Mrs. Lois Capps, Mr. Michael Capuano, Mr. Sam Farr, Mr. Edward Markey, Mr. George Miller, and Ms. Lynn Woolsey in introducing the ``Fishing Quota Standards Act of 2003.'' From 1996 until 2002, Congress placed a moratorium on new quota programs, programs which place limits on the amount of the total allowable catch that a fisherman may harvest within a particular fishery. The purpose of the moratorium was to protect fishermen, coastal communities, and the marine environment from the negative effects of unregulated quota systems by giving Congress an opportunity to develop national standards. When left unchecked, quota systems can give unfair advantages to the highest bidder--leaving the family fishermen out in the cold. Quota programs can also create over- consolidation of the industry, negative impacts on local communities and individual fishermen, and over-harvesting of the resource. When the moratorium expired last September, no national standards had been put in place, leaving regional fishery management councils free to develop new quota programs. That is why we are introducing the ``Fishing Quota Standards Act of 2003.'' This Act allows for the establishment of fishing quota systems if they allocate quota fairly among fishermen, prevent excessive consolidation, and include management measures designed to ensure the sustainability of the fishery. Both quota systems and share holders must come under periodic review to ensure adherence to the goals of the program. Standards legislation must be passed as soon as possible to avoid any future negative results from quota systems developed without any standards at all. This Act allows for the establishment of fishing quota systems within a fishery management plan or plan amendment if such systems: Are voted on and approved by fishermen who hold a permit to fish in the fishery and crew who derive seventy-five percent of their income from the fishery subject to the proposed fishing quota system. Include management measures designed to ensure the sustainability of the fishery and provide additional and substantial conservation benefits to the fishery. Allocate quota to distribute the public resource fairly. Not allow anyone to hold an excessive share of quota. Reserve an allocation to new entrants into the fishery. Minimize, to the maximum extent practicable, negative social and economic impacts of the system on local communities. Ensure adequate enforcement, management, and data collection of the system. Be effective for a set period, 7 years. A system can be altered or renewed to respond to fishery management issues and to ensure the sustainability of fish stocks.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, the Republican prescription drug bill transforms Medicare into Maybe care. Depending on where you live, maybe you get your traditional Medicare and maybe you do not. Depending on what plan you have, maybe you keep your doctor or maybe you do not. Depending on what year it is, maybe you keep a good package of benefits or maybe you pay very high prices for a low, low package of benefits. And the Republicans are here tonight saying choices, choices, choices. We are giving America's seniors choice. Well, what kind of choice are they giving America's seniors? Well, not a choice of doctors and not a choice of hospitals. What they are saying is we are going to give you a choice of insurance plans. Well, no one in my State of Maine has ever come up to me and said, You know what I really want is not a choice of doctors or hospitals, I want to see different brochures, different insurance brochures. Please have some insurance agents call me and talk about their different plans. What is happening in Maine, in the private sector with this wonderful competition for the employed market is every year 20 percent increases, 30 percent increases, higher payments, lower benefits. That is competition and choice and what the Republicans are saying is that is what America's seniors need. It is unbelievable. Every senior I talk to says we want lower prices. Please give us lower prices. We are buying from Canada. We are taking buses to Canada, and this bill prevents the administrator from negotiating lower prices for America's seniors. This bill is never likely to work in my opinion, but if it did, you ought to follow the money. Who gains from this bill? The insurance companies will make millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. The pharmaceutical industry will be able to keep charging the highest prices in the world. America's seniors lose. You follow the money to the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry and you can tell who wins under this bill. This bill is a nightmare for America's seniors. Reject this bill and support the Democratic substitute.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership in holding this Special Order tonight. Many people across the country are really confused about what all these prescription drug plans mean for them. They are trying to sort out whether the Republican plan or the Democratic plan or whatever plan may be up, how it might possibly help them in the future. And, frankly, you cannot blame anyone for being confused out there because there are so many descriptions flying back and forth. But it is worth highlighting one that the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin) highlighted before and my friend, the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) was mentioning as well and that is the way these two approaches treat the subject of price. It seems that in every instance the Republican plans do everything they can to avoid trying to reduce prices; and, obviously, that is consistent with what the pharmaceutical industry wants. But the most remarkable thing about the prescription drug proposal made by the Republicans here in the House is actually like the Senate bill; it contains a provision essentially saying to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, you shall not negotiate lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries. And what are they afraid of? What are they afraid of? Every private insurance company in the country tries to negotiate the lowest prices they can for themselves and for their beneficiaries. It really makes a huge difference. But here you have the Republicans in the House saying you cannot negotiate lower prices. They might as well say to the Federal Government, to Health and Human Services, we think you should pay higher prices to the pharmaceutical industry. Above all, we do not want the pharmaceutical industry to be paid less. I did not bring them tonight, but I have some charts that go back in history; but they show that over the years every time there has been a major effort to improve the ability of seniors or anyone else to get their prescription drugs, they show that the pharmaceutical industry comes in and says, if you do this to us, if you make generics more widely available, if you have a rebate program under Medicaid, those are the two major developments over the last 15 years, if you do either one of these things, then we will have to cut back on research and develop. And what happened in the aftermath of those acts? The 1988 Hatch- Waxman Act, which made it easier for generics to get into the market and in the mid-1990s a provision that basically capped Medicaid prices. In both cases, the industry said, we will have to cut back on research, and in both cases what the industry did was dramatically increase funding on research. The truth is that all of this fear about what the pharmaceutical industry will do is misplaced. What our people need is very simple. They need lower prices. Now, our seniors pay the highest prices in the world, the highest prices in the world for their prescription drugs. Here you have the biggest health care plan in the entire country, Medicare, 40 million beneficiaries, obviously some real ability to leverage lower prices; and the Republican bill in the House explicitly says we will not allow the Secretary to negotiate for lower prices. That is not where our home State of Maine is going. That is not where private insurance companies go. It really is completely off the wall. There is absolutely no reason to do that. But when you look at the Republican plan in the House, you can also see that the benefit is not very good. It is really not very much. For example, if you pay, if you wind up with $4,900 of drug expenses in the course of a year, you are going to wind up paying about $3,600 of that all by yourself. For many Americans, for those whose drug expenses are less than $1,367 a year, all of those people, if they sign on to this plan will pay more in than they ever get out. It will not make any sense for them. And it is also true between about $2,400 and $4,900; those people with lose money as well. It is because the benefit is completely inadequate. Now, we have our friends on the Republican side coming down here and saying what this country needs, what our seniors need is the same kind of prescription drug benefit that members of Congress have. Well, if that is what they need, why not provide it for them? Why not give them a prescription drug benefit more or less like we have, one with an 80/ 20 co-pay, for example? But they will not go there. And there is a reason why they will not go there. They cannot go there. They have given all the money back. They have basically got tax cuts; if all of their plans go into effect, they will have reduced tax revenues over 10 years by about $4 trillion. No wonder there is no money left for a real prescription drug benefit under Medicare. No wonder there is not enough money to fund Head Start or not enough money to fund special education or not enough money to even fund the President's initiative, No Child Left Behind. They have given the money back to people who earn over $370,000 a year. Now, I suppose some people would say that is a very needy group; but it is hard to figure out, particularly when you have seniors all across the country who are choosing between food, rent and prescription drugs. I mean, there are so many stories; they cannot all be repeated. But I know one couple where he takes his medication one month, she takes her medication the next month because they cannot possibly pay for both of them. And that is why so many people in Maine and across the country now get their prescription drugs through Canada. What does Canada do? Why is Canada so special? The bill I have introduced, H.R. 1400, the Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act, basically says to the pharmaceutical companies, you cannot charge Americans more than the you charge the Germans and the French and the British and the Italians and the Canadians and the Japanese, the other 6 countries in the G-7. Just take the average foreign price, you cannot charge more to our people, our Americans, than you to do to those people in those other countries. It is that simple. And yet that is exactly what the Republicans will not do. They simply will not go there because their friends in the pharmaceutical industry cannot abide the thought of having the government do what the insurance companies do, which is negotiate lower prices. We hope, in the State of Maine, and we hope across the country that people will finally understand that unless the government works to negotiate lower prices, our seniors will continue to pay the highest prices in the world. It is not right, and it needs to change. But it will not change in this House this week when the Republicans pass their prescription drug bill because they will talk about choice, but there is not much choice out there. The President was out on the stump not so long ago and he said, we want seniors to have the kind of choices that members of Congress have, choices among many plans. Well, in my State and many States, guess how many choices I have? One. I have one plan in the State of Maine, one health care plan that I can choose. One. Not two, not three, not ten. One. And that is all there is. And this is what this bill promises. This bill promises, they say they are going to try to give the insurance companies enough money so there will be two plans in every district; but, in fact, this is a product that does not exist, this kind of insurance on prescription drugs. It looks and feel like another way to get past the next election, to have a plan. It does not take effect until 2006. What are we really talking about? We need to reduce prices for our seniors. We ought to do it now. I thank the gentleman; I appreciate his time and leadership on this issue.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak again about the injustice of President Bush's latest tax cut bill. It is really amazing what he has done to families with children earning between $10,000 and $26,625. They are not treated like American families who earn larger sums than that. I want to quote from the editorial today in the Bangor Daily News in my State of Maine. The editorial reads, ``On the day President Bush signed his latest tax cut bill, astute observers noticed that the increase from $600 to $1,000 in the package's child tax credit would not apply to children of the working poor. Families with incomes under $26,625 will remain at $600. By leaving those children at the lower level, did the tax cut crafters really mean to imply they were worth only three-fifths of richer kids? Did someone have an awful sense of symbolism or are they trying to tell the public something?'' Three-fifths. If families earned between $10,000 and $26,600 a year, they get three-fifths of the tax cut, the child tax credit earned by people earning over $26,000 a year. Now, just coincidentally perhaps, that is the way slaves were counted in the Constitution. When the Constitution was written, slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person, and today, under the Bush tax cut, children and families earning between $10,000 and $26,000 a year count for three-fifths of what children and families earning over $26,000 a year. It is an embarrassment. It is shameful. It is yet one more example, if any were needed, that this administration is on a relentless quest to treat the very wealthy in this country differently, in fact, to transfer as much money as they can from middle-income America to the richest people in the country. It would have been easy to correct this problem, very, very easy. Let me give my colleagues one example. The cost of the deleted low-income child tax provision is $3.5 billion. It is 1 percent of the official cost of $350 billion for the final bill, and it could have been easily made up by reducing the top income rate by 0.1 percent for 3 years, because for each 0.1 percentage rate that the top rate is reduced, the cost is $1.3 billion. That is all it would take, 0.1 percent less to the top rate. This is all it would have taken, and people with incomes over $1 million a year on average would get, instead of a tax cut of $93,500 a year, they would get an average tax cut of $88,000. In other words, for a reduction in their tax cut of $5,500, we could have reached 12 million children. We could have reached all of those children in families between $10,000 and $26,000 and given them just the same tax cut that go to families earning more. It is unbelievable, it is appalling that once again the administration has taken this approach. I would just say that it is obvious from this example and others that this is not a tax cut designed to increase economic growth. Its primary purpose, given the huge deficits, given the fact that every dollar of the tax cut is borrowed, borrowed from our children and grandchildren, it is obvious once again the whole motive here is to drain the Federal Government of revenues so that we will not have the funds to fund education the way we have in the past, so that we will cut veterans benefits, as reflected in the President's budget, and so there will not be sufficient funds to maintain Social Security and Medicare in the way in which they have been funded in the past. This administration and the Republicans in Congress are engaged in a determined effort to reduce the size of the Federal Government at the same time that they are increasing the wealth of the wealthiest people in this country. It is embarrassing, it is shameful, it should stop.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his enormous courage and directness and integrity in bringing this issue forward. This is an unusual event tonight, to have Democrats, Republicans, and our Independent from Vermont all on the floor during a Special Order talking about the same subject and agreeing with each other. I had the pleasure to serve with the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) for the last 6 years on the Committee on Government Reform of which he was chairman. I am very pleased to be here tonight. Over the last week, I rode part of the way on a bus trip, on a bus in Maine chartered by Maine seniors to go up to Canada, we are close as you know, to go up to Canada to buy their prescription drugs. They go to Calais in Maine and get a prescription and then go over the border and find enormous savings. The 18 or 20 people on that bus must have saved thousands of dollars as others have before. People in Maine generally now, many of them, are ordering prescription drugs over the Internet from Canada because that is the only way they can both eat and have their prescription medications. It is a scandal what is happening in this country right now. The richest, most powerful country in the world finds that those people who do not have prescription drug coverage in this country are paying the highest prices in the world. Several years ago we started a series of studies to find out just how great the difference is. Those studies showed basically that for drugs that on average cost, let us say $100 a month here in the United States, the cost in other industrialized countries is around $61 or $62. In other words, there is about a 40 percent difference on average for the drugs that are taken most frequently by people on Medicare, our seniors and the disabled. That is why I introduced a bill that basically would cap the price that the industry could charge in this country to what we call the average foreign price, that is, the average price at which the same drug is sold in Canada, in Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the other countries of the G-7. But however we go at this issue, and Mr. Gutknecht, of course, from Minnesota has been one of the leads with the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) on the whole issue of reimportation, however we go at this issue, we have to recognize that the people without insurance and the people on Medicare pay the highest prices in the world. I happen to have a health insurance plan for Federal employees in the State of Maine through Anthem Blue Cross. I know that the premium that I pay is lower than it would otherwise be because Anthem Blue Cross negotiates with the pharmaceutical industry to reduce the price of the drugs that are purchased for beneficiaries. But if you are on Medicare in this country, if you are on the biggest health care plan in the entire country, you cannot get any discount like that. In Maine, we took steps to try to rectify that problem. We passed a program in the year 2000 called Maine Rx. Just a few days ago, on May 19, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against PhRMA. The Supreme Court ruled that you could not stop the Maine Rx program before it was even implemented. What it did was essentially to say that the State of Maine will enter into negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry to reduce prices on their drugs sold to anyone who does not have prescription drug insurance in Maine. That is certainly all those on Medicare who do not have prescription drug insurance and all of the uninsured who obviously do not have prescription drug insurance because they do not have health insurance; and the industry would have to reduce their prices to that group, or the State would eventually set up a commission and deal with it directly. But in doing that, the State of Maine is really not doing anything different than we do through the Federal Government for Medicaid, certainly not different than what we do for our veterans, not different than what Kaiser Permanente or Aetna or Cigna or United do for their beneficiaries, negotiate lower prices so their beneficiaries are not paying the highest prices in the world. That is really the scandal. The gentleman from Indiana mentioned the article in The New York Times the other day. It is an amazing article because the author, Robert Pear, had access to confidential budget documents from PhRMA. I will not go back to everything that the gentleman from Indiana mentioned, but I loved this entry. Here it is, the Canadian health care system where they have lower prices, and just to give you one example, Tamoxifen, a drug to deal with breast cancer, is one-tenth the cost in Canada as it is in the United States. Here is what PhRMA is planning to do. They have allocated $1 million, according to their documents, to ``change the Canadian health care system.'' Can you believe that? They would like the Canadian system to be like ours, where they can charge whatever they want to the Canadian public and where they wind up spending $150 million a year to lobby Canadian legislators. And they think that is what the American people want as well. It just takes your breath away. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back and thank you for including me in this special order tonight, and I thank you for your courage in standing up for your constituents.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I am pleased to be here tonight. This was a very important decision that the FCC made today on a three-to-two party line vote, and I found one of the significant aspects of the decision was that it was made in spite of what the newspaper says is 500,000 comments in opposition, and it would have been fairly simple for the FCC to agree to hold a hearing, absolutely just to have a hearing so that people could speak out in public. But that is not way the chairman, Mr. Powell, decided to proceed. He wanted this over and done as quickly as possible so that it did not become an issue. It has not become a major issue in the major networks. I wonder why. Could it be that perhaps all those broadcasters, who pride themselves on their independence, are a little uneasy about telling a story that might be critical of their ownership? There is, as my colleague mentioned, increasing concentration in the major news organizations. It was just 1996 when the Telecommunications Act was passed. If we added together the two largest groups of owners of radio stations in the country, their collective ownership would come to, I think it was something like 214. I may have that a little wrong. That may be too high, but no more than 214 radio stations across the country. Today, Clear Channel alone owns 1,200 radio stations, and yesterday and Saturday evening Garrison Keillor on Public Radio had a comment about this. He was doing a little skit there, talking with someone who appeared to be complaining about Clear Channel Communications and changing over a local broadcast channel to Clear Channel. And he said, Look, Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations in this country; we cannot expect them to have a human being in every single radio station. That is the point. Those who have been advocating this, like Mr. Powell at the FCC, would say, Well, there will be inefficiencies of scale. There will be inefficiencies, and it will jeopardize the ability of small businesses to start up, to own radio stations. It will jeopardize the ability of people in a local area to hear local news, not something that is canned, prerecorded, from somewhere else in the country. This decision is basically starting to strangle the diversity of opinion that is fundamental to a democracy. It is ultimately a very dangerous decision; and we in the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, need to stand up and say that at the core of this democracy, what makes it work is diversity of opinion. Thomas Jefferson said a long time ago, if I were given a choice between having newspapers and no government, or government and no newspapers, I should not hesitate to choose newspapers and no government. Obviously, we need both; but the media is, in all of its different forms today, absolutely fundamental to the health of this democracy. And with this decision today, the FCC has made our democracy weaker. It is a bad decision, and the Congress should reverse it. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for giving me this time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to discuss the harassment of whales and other marine mammals in Puget Sound, all the way across the country from my home District in Maine, and a few words by way of background. I served for 6 years on the Committee on Armed Services in this House. Half of all the destroyers in the United States are made at Bath Ironworks in my District. I am a strong supporter of the Navy, and I believe that we need to do everything we can to protect the national security. However, in some cases, the Navy is not paying attention to competing demands, and this House is not paying attention to competing needs as well because the Defense authorization bill is likely to come to the floor soon, and included in the Defense authorization bill is a blanket waiver for the Department of Defense from the Marine Mammal Protection Act. That is an Act that has been in existence for a long period of time. It has done a great deal to save marine mammals: whales, dolphins and other marine mammals. It is very, very important. We have had a debate going on in this Congress for some time about the Navy's new long range, low-frequency sonar, and there has been grave concern. A couple of years ago, there was an incident in the Bahamas where whales were stranded. Many of them died. They were found to have bleeding around the eyes and ears, a suggestion that they had been damaged by sonar. The Navy later admitted that that, in fact, was the likely cause of the death of those particular whales. Now it has happened again, and today, what I want to do is cite a very recent example of marine mammal harassment and the use of sonar by the Navy, but as I said, all the way across the country from my home State of Maine. On May 5, just a couple of weeks ago, whale watchers were observing porpoises and a pod of 22 orcas, endangered killer whales, at their feeding grounds in the Puget Sound. At the same time, the USS Shoup, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, started to conduct sonar operations in the Sound. The whale observers noted that the animals abruptly stopped their feeding, gathered in a tight group and quickly left the area. The animals surfaced frequently in what appeared to be an attempt to avoid the intense mid-frequency, long duration pings from the ship's SQS 53C sonar. The sonar pings were so powerful that they could be heard in the air by observers on the shore of San Juan Island in Puget Sound. Let me show my colleagues the photograph. For once, the changes in behavior of the whales was observed and here is the photograph. This is a photograph taken on May 5. The USS Shoup is in the background. It is at this moment, when the photograph was taken, using a sonar. This is a smaller boat, a whale watching boat, a whole raft of people watching this pod of orcas down here at the bottom. There is also a video. I have not seen it yet, but I am told it is a startling video which shows the rapid change in behavior of the whales trying to get away from this very loud, mid-frequency sonar. The administration wants to exempt the Department of Defense from the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the face of absolute, uncontrovertible evidence that these mammals are harmed by sonar, and while I would agree that there may be times when that sonar has to be used, there are no terrorist subs in the Puget Sound. I can guarantee it. There is no threat from enemy submarines in the Puget Sound. We would know about that, and the Navy owes the country an explanation of why this ship was conducting sonar operations affecting, in all likelihood, every marine mammal within 20 miles of the USS Shoup in a place where it should not be and where they certainly should not be conducting sonar operations, particularly when it is pretty obvious there are whales in the area. Since May 5 several porpoises have washed up along the shore of the Washington State and Canadian coasts. Biologists at the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor, Washington, suspect that the sonar played a role in their deaths, since internal hemorrhaging was observed in the eyes and ears of many of these individuals. Yesterday, I spoke with Ken Balcomb, senior scientist of the center, who told me that he repeatedly observes how naval sonar operations influence marine mammal behavior, and the Navy knows that their sonar injures and kills whales at great distances; yet they still continue to exercise in places they should not do it.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) for his work on this bill. I am proud to support H. Con. Res. 147, legislation which commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Orphan Drug Act and the National Organization for Rare Disorders. Approximately 25 million Americans suffer from more than 6,000 rare diseases. These diseases include Huntington's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, cystic fibrosis, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Because of the relatively small patient populations associated with rare diseases, pharmaceutical firms are concerned about receiving an adequate return on their investment in developing medications to treat them. In response to this problem, Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act on January 4, 1983, which allows for incentives, such as market exclusivity, for products developed for rare diseases. Additionally, the Food and Drug Administration has been able to support small clinical trials through Orphan Products Research Grants. The Orphan Drug Act has been effective, leading to the development of more than 183 drugs and four medical devices for rare diseases. I also note that the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) was a key leader in the development of the Orphan Drug Act. The success and longevity of the Orphan Drug Act are a tribute to his skillful work on this legislation 2 decades ago. We are also here today to recognize and commemorate the National Organization for Rare Disorders. NORD is a unique federation of voluntary health organizations dedicated to helping people with rare, also known as ``orphan'', diseases and assisting the organizations that serve them. NORD is committed to the identification, treatment and cure of rare disorders through programs of education, advocacy, research and service. The purpose of this legislation is to recognize the contributions that the Orphan Drug Act has made to the rare disease community and to commemorate the 20th anniversary of both the Orphan Drug Act and the National Organization of Rare Disorders. I urge all of my colleagues to join me in support of H. Con. Res. 147. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, last month, students from around the country competed in the national finals of the U.S. Department of Education program, ``We the People . . . The Citizen and the Constitution.'' Administered by the Center for Civic Education, the program reaches more than 26 million elementary, middle and high school students. The national finals simulate a congressional hearing in which students testify as constitutional experts before a panel of judges. I am pleased that the following students from Catherine McAuley High School in Portland, Maine, under the supervision of their teacher, Joseph Wagner, and State Coordinator, Julia Underwood, won a award in the finals for their expertise on ``Foundations of Democracy'': Michelle Baldwin, Amanda Clements, Jessica Croteau, Katie D'Alessandro, Adrienne D'Ascanio, Kara Ebrahim, Katie Foster, Sara Marion, Brigid McGovern, Gulia Muca, Erika Poulin, Jackie Roy, Kate Sawyer, Laura Shortill, Becca Wagner, and Beth Witting. Competing against 48 classes, these students demonstrated a remarkable understanding of the fundamental ideals and values of American constitutional government. I commend these students and hope that they will continue their interest in and commitment to these principles, which have never been more important.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss the proposed Republican tax cut that will be on the floor tomorrow, and I speak tonight because I know that the majority will not give us the kind of time to debate the issue tonight that the subject deserves. I want to begin by just saying for anyone in the country trying to follow this debate, it is bound to be confusing and the question would have to arise, What is going on? I hate to say it, but I am afraid there is a good deal of deception in the arguments that are being made to promote this particular tax cut. For example, when the President spoke on April 15, he said that American workers and American businesses need every bit of their tax relief now. He said, a significant part of the benefit from his tax cut package would come within the first 2 years of the plan. He wanted to give Americans, he said, immediate tax relief. When we look at the facts, only 6 percent of the tax cuts in the President's package would occur in the current fiscal year which ends September 30. Only 21 percent of the tax cuts would occur by the end of fiscal year 2004. The White House has also released a fact sheet which says that under the President's proposal to speed up tax relief 92 million American taxpayers would receive, key words, on average a tax cut of $1,083 in 2003. Once again, the averages do not speak the truth. Eighty percent of the American taxpayers would get less than the average of $1,000. Forty-nine percent of the American taxpayers would receive a tax cut of less than $100. So what is really going on here? It is very clear. If we look at what the Republican majority does and not what they say, the goal is to reduce taxes on the wealthiest people in this country. The goal is to push the burden of funding government from the Federal level onto the States, and this is driven by an astonishing and remarkable continuing hostility to everything that the Federal Government does. Let us look at our brothers in the States. Almost every State in this country is struggling with trying to fulfill their responsibilities. They are under pressures to raise property taxes and sales taxes because of reductions in Federal funds. We are not talking about a tax cut at the Federal level. We are talking about a tax shift. They are reducing funding for education, reducing funding for Medicaid, laying off State employees. There is no way, furthermore, that we can call this tax cut fair by any stretch of the imagination. To take one more figure, one group of Americans will get tax cuts that total $139 billion. That group of American taxpayers are the 183 households that earn more than $1 million per year. Another group of Americans will get a total package of $139 billion, but that group is 124 million American households, the bottom 89 percent of our taxpayers, but that is not the worst. People will come to this floor and they will say we are going to let people keep more of their money. It is not their money. Every single dollar that is going to be given back in tax cuts under the Republican proposal, every single dollar will be borrowed from the American people, and we, the American people, will wind up if this tax cut passes tomorrow with an additional Federal debt of somewhere between $550 billion on the low side to well over $1 trillion on the upside. This is our children's money that is being taken from them to give to the wealthiest people in the country, and it is an outrage. This will also, for obvious reasons, drive up the debt. We have people coming to this floor and saying, well, these tax cuts will stimulate economic growth and they will try to leave us with the impression that there will be even more Federal revenues coming in. It is not true. By every economic model that the Congressional Budget Office has run, there is a dramatic decline in Federal revenues. We are looking, when we add up the 2001 tax legislation, other Bush administration tax proposals, when we package it all together, we are looking at a reduction in Federal revenues over 10 years of $4.6 trillion. This plan is a disaster for our States, for working Americans. It is a violation of the fundamental premise that we will work together in this country to build a better and stronger America. This plan, this Republican tax cut plan, is a disaster for the country.

Mr. ALLEN

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

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This amendment directs governors to appoint administrators of adult education and literacy programs to be members of local workforce investment boards. That is the current law but the underlying bill strips that provision out of the proposal. This amendment would ensure that workforce investment boards are well-informed when developing strategies to strengthen and improve our Nation's workforce. Business and workforce representatives need to be aware of all that the adult education system can offer. As the participation in adult education continues to grow, we must expand and support a strong relationship between the education community and the business sector. The better educated and informed our workforce, the better our businesses can compete in the global economy. We know that a person with a college degree earns more than $1 million in the course of his or her lifetime as compared to someone with a high school diploma. Clearly education is a vital part of developing a successful workforce. Adult educators must continue to have a voice in workforce development, and that is what my amendment would provide. I am told that the majority has agreed to support this amendment. I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for their help in preserving active communication between the education and business communities to ensure a sufficient and quality workforce. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his support, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to commend him and all of my colleagues for being here tonight to try to present some factual evidence about what the Republican tax cuts are really all about. One can see what is going on in part just by looking at the state of the economy under the Bush administration. This chart shows that with net growth of 1.5 percent, the Bush administration has now the worst real GDP growth since World War II. Every other administration has done better at creating jobs and growing the economy than the Bush administration has. For example, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) was just showing this other chart, which shows that it is the worst private sector job growth since World War II. In fact, if you look at this chart again, what you see is that since President Bush took office, we have lost almost 2.6 million private sector jobs in this country. No wonder the administration is concerned. In every other administration, except only the second term of the Eisenhower administration, there has been job growth in this country. This has been a country where the economy has been strong, where it has been growing, even when we have had difficulty. But not in this administration.

Mr. ALLEN. That is exactly right. Like the gentleman, I have been in my home State of Maine doing community meetings and talking to people throughout my district, and these are not very good times for many, many people. We are suffering losses in agriculture, we are suffering losses in manufacturing, and, for more and more people, it is difficult. I sat with a group of people at one company which is doing okay right now, but she was talking about the cost of her health care, trying to raise her daughter, she is a single mom, trying to take care of a daughter, and she said what a lot of people are echoing: ``I never thought it would be this hard.'' This is a difficult economy. Young people coming out of college today, coming out of graduate school, are having a very tough time finding jobs, and many people are being laid off and losing their health care along with their employment.

Mr. ALLEN. Well, that is a different priority than the Republicans in Congress have. This is what the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), said just a few weeks ago: ``Nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.'' ``Nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.'' What he meant by that is we are not going to ask anyone to sacrifice. We are certainly not going to ask anyone to sacrifice to improve the lives of their children and grandchildren. So it is worth looking at what taxes he is actually talking about and who benefits. This chart says how much of the 2003 proposed tax cuts do you get? Well, look at the chart. Let us leave off all of those earning less than $46,000 a year. Let us just talk about the group earning between $46,000 and $77,000 a year. That group, under the President's proposal, would get $657 on average per year. It is something, but the price to be paid for that is less money for schools, less money for health care, no prescription drugs for seniors and so on. For those earning between $77,000 and $154,000 the average tax break is $1,800. If you are much wealthier than that, if you are in the upper 5 percent in this country and you are earning between the 95th and 99th percentile, $154,000 to $374,000, you get $3,500 a year. I can tell you, that is not going to change the lives of many people in that income category. But it is only when you get to the upper 1 percent that you strike megabucks. Only then do you strike the jackpot, because if you are earning over $374,000 a year on average, you get $30,000 a year in tax reductions. That is who is benefiting from these tax cuts that the President is talking about. He is saying this is a plan for economic growth. You have to ask, is this about growth, or is it just about greed? Is it about those people who benefited most in the 1990s, who saw their incomes soar, who are now getting the benefit of more economic growth, more money just funneled to them by the Republicans in Congress, the people who are the richest people in this country getting the benefits of this tax package if it goes through?

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I am really not. I do know some people in this upper 1 percent and none of them so far have said to me that we really need to have a tax cut of this magnitude. They are better than that. So one has to wonder, what really is the underlying motivation. It seems to me that it is clearly not economic growth, because this is a plan that will not grow the economy. What is it? Mr. Speaker, that old hostility that so many Republicans have for Medicare and Social Security, we have to wonder whether or not something is going on here. If they succeed in stripping out revenues, billions, even trillions, of dollars from the Federal Government in the next few years, then there will not be money to take care of the baby boom generation when we enter Medicare and Social Security. We cannot let that happen. It is the wrong thing. But I absolutely agree with the gentleman from Washington. Nobody, not one person in the 2 weeks I was back in Maine, not one person said to me, what we really need in this country is a tax cut weighted primarily to people earning $1 million a year. Nobody is for it.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for his comments, and clearly not. Clearly, when you look at the economists, the bulk of the economists who have commented on these proposals, this is not about economic growth at all. The President can travel across the country and say over and over again that we are trying to grow the economy, and the truth is it is not true. It is just not true. It is about something else. I want to just conclude by saying a few things about what I believe that something else is. The President's proposal, the proposal of the Republicans in Congress, is essentially saying to the American people, think of yourself first. These are ``me first'' policies. When the President said that after taking office, that it is not the government's money, it is your money, he was encouraging every person in this country to think of themselves first; not to think about the children in this country who are going to public schools and need some funds in order to have the quality of schools that they should have. Not to think about those people who have lost their jobs and need some job training assistance to get back to work. Not to think about those seniors who have to choose between prescription drugs and their food or their rent or their heating fuel. What he was saying to America was think of yourselves first. When Republicans stand up and say we want people to keep more of their money, they are making the same pitch. Do not think about those things we have in common. Do not think about what it takes to build a strong country. Do not think about the resources that we need to put into transportation, into health care, into education, into those things that will lift the country and make it strong. They want people to think of themselves first. That is not what this country is about. This country is better than that. We have invested in ourselves before, since the Second World War. We need to keep investing in the American people, and, if we do that, we will be a stronger and better country in the future than we are in the past. I have great hope that we will get there, but these Republican tax cut plans for the richest people in the country are leading us down the wrong path. We need to get back to a policy of investing in people and making sure that the government plays its role in strengthening this economy. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, first of all, it has been my understanding that when we look at the total cost of nuclear power, including dealing with the radioactive waste, we are not talking about a cheap source of power. We are talking about the most expensive source of power there is. I simply ask Members to think about North Korea. We want to make sure that North Korea does not use civilian reactors for military purposes. We should not be setting the example here doing what we are saying they should not do over there. This amendment should be rejected, and I urge Members to reject it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, America needs an energy policy that increases our national security, encourages new technologies, enhances economic growth, preserves the environment, and protects consumers. Our nation now spends nearly $200,000 per minute overseas to buy oil, mostly from undemocratic regimes. But this bill does not redirect American energy policy. H.R. 6 only reinforces the failed energy policies of the past, policies which have increased our dependence on fossil fuels. Unfortunately, this bill never escaped the circumstances of its conception in the secret, closed door meetings between Vice President Cheney and the CEOs of the energy industry. Instead of seeking a balanced, bipartisan energy policy, this legislation discards key compromises forged with the widespread support of Republicans and democrats in the 107th Congress. It puts the interests of big energy ahead of consumers and the environment. The bill before us rewards private industry at the expense of the public interest and national security. It provides a $200 million subsidy to the hydro industry; a $397 million subsidy for nuclear fuel reprocessing, a process banned since the Ford Administration; a $1.7 billion hydrogen subsidy to the auto industry; and a $1.8 billion subsidy for clean coal technology. The legislation opens a pristine wilderness, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil drilling. The bill opens the possibility of oil drilling in offshore areas of the Gulf of Maine. The bill even rewards oil companies for exploiting our public lands by lowering the rent they have to pay. The bill does not redirect energy policy because some businesses claim that they cannot compete in a cleaner, more efficient economy. I believe America's energy policy should actively promote policies that will allow American industry to catch up to other nations' advancing energy sectors. American companies trail behind Iceland in hydrogen and geothermal development; behind Denmark in wind energy; behind Japan in efficient vehicle development and home heating efficiency; and behind Germany in diesel powered engine efficiency. These are high growth industries. Wind energy is the fastest growing power segment in the world. America has the high tech work force, the research institutions, and the capital to lead in each of these industries. If we commit to supporting new technologies, our companies will again lead the world in the energy industry. Finally, this bill represents a missed opportunity to adopt a forward-looking energy policy. We should have seriously dealt with the challenge of climate change, raised CAFE standards that regulate the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks, and established a renewable portfolio standard to encourage the development of new technologies.