Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I am going to yield my last potent 45 seconds to a distinguished member of the committee, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, to close.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds. If it is personal affirmation, when you sign up for SCHIP they say, ``Are you U.S. citizen?'' And if your parent says you are, you are. That's what personal affirmation is. So I hope we could somehow pull out a miracle and defeat this bill and then do the bipartisan compromise that we almost pulled off in the last Congress. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California, Congressman McClintock.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. May I inquire on the time remaining?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Deal).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I am going to be magnanimous and give the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the committee, Dr. Gingrey of Georgia.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, can I inquire of the time remaining on each side?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Madam Speaker, my admiration for the majority leader knows no bounds. Mr. Hoyer is a great man, and he is an institutionalist, and he was personally involved in the negotiations of the last Congress who tried to get a compromise. But sometimes he doesn't tell the entire facts of the matter. So I want to just point out a few things that our distinguished majority leader failed to mention. Right now in America, the SCHIP law that we're operating under is a Barton-Deal bill--Mr. Deal and myself, two Republicans--that extends the existing program. And to Mr. Hoyer's credit and Ms. Pelosi's credit, they passed that extension in the last Congress when we couldn't get a political compromise. Under current law, if you're low income, below 200 percent of poverty, your children are covered under Medicaid 100 percent, 100 percent. If you're a working family that's under 200 percent of the Federal poverty limit, you're automatically covered. In some States, they go up to 250 percent of poverty, and in some States they have asked for waivers to go even higher than that. I think Mr. Pallone's State of New Jersey may be at 300 percent. I think the State of New York may be at 300 percent. So it is a misnomer to say that there are all of these children out there that don't have health insurance. There are some. Now, the bill before us today really doesn't have an income test. It officially takes it to 300 percent of poverty but allows the States to ask for waivers and do what are called income disregards, which basically means you could have families at 400 or 500 percent of poverty and if that State disregards their income, they can be covered. That was admitted on the House floor in last year's debate, and that provision is unchanged in the bill before us. Now, President Obama has already scheduled a signing ceremony so there is no real suspense about whether this bill is going to pass with a Democrat majority of 258 votes and a Republican minority of 178 votes, we're pretty sure that this bill is going to prevail. But the record should show that low-income children are covered, that children up to 200 percent of poverty are covered, and in some states it goes to 250 percent. This debate is about raising the level. This debate is about do we want a children's health insurance program that covers every child in America with State and Federal dollars regardless of their ability to pay; do we want to freeze out the private sector for health insurance. That's what this debate is about. Republicans are for children's health insurance. Republicans do believe, though, that we should target the help to those families that have less ability to help themselves. And on the question of citizen verification, since we didn't have a legislative hearing, I'm not sure what the verification measurement is, but I think it's personal affirmation.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health in the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Honorable Nathan Deal from Georgia.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I continue to reserve the balance of my time until they are ready to close. We have one speaker remaining.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I recognize myself for 1 minute. Madam Speaker, we're here today to have another debate about SCHIP, another incidence of where we have a bill that's come over from the Senate slightly different than came from the House. In the case of this SCHIP bill, I don't recall there being a hearing on it. I don't recall there being a hearing last year before we had the vote. So, let us simply say from the Republican perspective that we're very supportive of continuing the State Children's Health Insurance Program. We do think that it should be limited to families that are under 200 percent of poverty. We do think this is a children's health program. It ought to be for children. And we do think that there should be a verification to make sure that the program benefits go to citizens of the United States. None of those things are in this bill. So we would oppose the bill and hope at the appropriate time the House would also oppose it. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. How about my friends on the majority?

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. If a Member on the floor at the time the Chair calls the question feels the Chair called the question erroneously, then that Member would be required to ask for a rollcall vote. Is that your remedy?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I give the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I reserve my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. So the minority has to be recognized to make the unanimous consent request?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I am just trying to facilitate the majority's request to go to the White House. Trying to be a good guy. I have now been muzzled on the House floor. We may decide to stay here all night.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. If the gentleman will yield.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the gentlelady from North Carolina. Madam Speaker, we are here on the same issue that we were here on last week when, under the suspension of the rules, the House tried to pass a bill to delay the digital television transition period from February 17 to June 12. Wisely, the House rejected that on a bipartisan vote. Our friends in the other body slightly changed the bill and did a procedure called hotlining it, which brought a basically identical bill back to the House. The new chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Waxman, has gone to the Rules Committee and asked that the bill be reported to the floor under a rule, which is not a bad idea. The problem is, this is a closed rule. Now, I want to point out to the newer Members of this body what a closed rule is. It means there can be no amendments. Now, there may be occasions when that's in order, but this is not one of those occasions. There's been no legislative hearing in the committee. There's been no markup in the committee. In fact, two markups have been scheduled and canceled in committee. So we have a piece of legislation. There's been no debate on it in the Senate, it's been hotlined, we had a suspension vote on it last week--which I think we had 20 minutes on each side before we had to vote. And so now we're under a closed rule. So no Republican amendments or Democrat amendments were made in order. I don't know if Democrats offered amendments, but there were six Republican amendments made in order, one of which was by myself and Mr. Stearns who said quite simply, ``You don't need to delay it. Just authorize an additional sum of money.'' One of the things that the proponents of the delay are saying is we need to delay this because there is not enough money. Well, actually, there is enough money. But under an accounting rule by the Office of Management and Budget, when you send a coupon, you have to assume that that coupon is going to be redeemed 100 percent of the time. So of the $1.3 billion that has been appropriated and is in an account, about half that money is still in the account, but because there are coupons that are outstanding, they can't issue new coupons. The amendment that was not made in order simply said authorize another $250 million of coupons to be sent out because that money is already there and only about 52 percent of the coupons are being redeemed. So at the end of the game, you're going to have plenty of money. Interestingly enough, this bill doesn't approve any money. The money for this bill is in the stimulus package--which probably won't clear the Senate for another couple of weeks, probably will be a conference committee or maybe another closed system where there is not a real conference--but in any event, I doubt that stimulus package is going to be on the President's desk within the next month. So we're delaying a hard day transition today with no additional money nor any way to send out any additional coupons. How silly is that? And no amendments made in order to correct the bill. We had other amendments that would have exempted broadcasters from the delay if the cost caused by the delay was more than $100,000. That one was not ruled in order. We had an amendment that said the broadcasters in rural areas would have to go ahead with the hard day if they were sitting on spectrums that were allocated to provide broadband to rural areas. That wasn't made in order. Not one amendment was made in order. And to top it off, myself and Mr. Stearns sent a letter to the new or the acting chairman of the Federal Communications Committee saying, ``How many TV stations do you think are going to go ahead and go forward even though it's not mandated?'' You know what the answer is? Sixty-one percent of the 1,000 television stations in America are probably going to go forward. And believe it or not, 143 already have. They've already gone digital. So, Madam Speaker, with all due respect, when you have a closed rule, no amendments made in order, no legislative hearing, no markup, no debate in the other body, I think we could defeat this rule; I think we could bring an open rule to the floor, let some amendments be made in order, let the body work its will; and if that passes, send that to the other body and try to work it out. We on the Republican side want digital television transmission to go forward. We want the spectrum to be released for the first responders. We want the television stations to see the benefit of savings, but we do not need this delay, and we do not need a closed rule. Please vote ``no'' on the closed rule.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want the American people to know that the Republicans want to solve this problem. If we defeat this bill tomorrow under suspension, then hopefully we can reach across the aisle and work with our friends in the new Democrat majority to do things that actually solve the problem. We can actually say that money that is in the Treasury that hasn't been spent on redemptions of coupons can be used to issue new coupons. We could even eliminate the coupon requirement. We could provide a small amount of additional funding. I have a bill that I introduced this week that does most of those things. But if we need to do something differently, I pledge to the American people and my friends on the majority side that once we defeat this delay bill tomorrow, we still have time to work together on a bipartisan basis to put together a bill that does solve the problem, without delaying the hard date of February 17. So, with all due respect, I would ask that we defeat S. 328, vote tomorrow not to suspend the rules, and then let's work together the rest of this week and next week to solve the problem. Vote ``no'' on S. 328. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)