Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I guess for the time being I am in mild opposition.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. And I may not be in opposition. I want to ask the distinguished author: these grants that would be established if the program were to be established, would they be granted on a competitive basis?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. So this is not specified certain institutions?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. It would be an open process with criteria, and all comers would get to submit an application and then a merit-based review of those applications?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Oklahoma (Mr. Boren).

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I am going to rise in confused opposition.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Then, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of the Energy and Commerce time on the minority side until the end of the general debate.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I just want to offer a suggestion. There is a number on the computer on the minority side, and there is a number on the computer on the majority side. Why don't we compare numbers? If they are the same, accept the vote. We know that we are going to get beat. Let's accept this vote.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would recommend that our distinguished minority leader show our number to the majority leader's number, and if they are the same, accept it as this vote. That's my suggestion. I think we could at least expedite this one vote. I yield to my distinguished minority leader (Mr. Boehner).

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I have only been in the House for 23 years, so I guess I am still in some ways still a novice, but I have never seen anything like last night. When you look up on that board over there and over there, it says ``215-213 final,'' that's it. In the 23 years I have been in the House, I have never seen a vote that said ``final'' and been gaveled reopened until last night. I mean, how important is it that you win a motion to recommit? My gosh, all you do is take it back to committee, report it back out, muscle your troops in line, and pass the bill as you want it. Now I know there are men and women of integrity on the Democratic side of the aisle, because last week the dean of the House, John Dingell of Michigan, in the Energy and Commerce Committee, when I as a ranking member used a procedural rule to force the reading of bill, he read the bill. It is not what he wanted to do, but it is what the rules allowed and required. The strength of a democracy is how you treat the minority, and the minority's strength is in using the rules. When we are smart enough to use the rules and win, we ought to let it count.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Is the vote that is about to occur a 15-minute vote or a 5-minute vote?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Further parliamentary inquiry. Would it be in order to ask a unanimous consent request to make it a 5-minute vote?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Further parliamentary inquiry. What would constitute proper notice?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I'm sorry, Mr. Speaker, I couldn't hear the answer. I am not being dilatory.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about the emergency communications provisions in the H.R. 1 Conference Report. September 11th and Hurricane Katrina were high-profile reminders that our first responders across the Nation cannot communicate with each other during an emergency. Ensuring interoperable communications among 50,000 different public safety systems is no easy task. While the Department of Homeland Security has attempted to address this problem over the years, the agency spent $3 billion without achieving any measurable improvements. Meanwhile, the Energy and Commerce Committee, recognizing that this issue requires strong federal leadership, ushered through the passage of the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 last Congress. That legislation not only cleared 24 MHz of spectrum for nationwide, interoperable public safety communications, it also provided $1 billion in grants for interoperable solutions, $156 million for a national alert and tsunami warning system, and $43.5 million for advanced 911 services. The Energy and Commerce Committee also secured last Congress the creation of the Office of Emergency Communications so that there would be an entity of expertise within the Department of Homeland Security whose sole focus and responsibility is solving the interoperability problem. The legislation before us now has many shortcomings, including in the interoperability provisions, as I indicated in my conference statement. It is not a complete failure; however, as Title III at least establishes a targeted grant program specifically designed to achieve interoperability. It also places the experts in the Office of Emergency Communications in charge to try to ensure that the money will be spent wisely. However, it is not surprising that this legislation is lacking. H.R. 1 was written behind closed doors. It skipped Committee and went straight to the Floor, where no amendments were allowed. I am deeply disappointed by this process, and the legislation itself.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I just wish to make an observation that the tradition of normal procedure is to alternate between majority and minority. We just had a minority speaker. It should be the opportunity of the majority to tell their side of the story.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I respectfully reserve the balance of my time at this time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to point out CBO scores this as $1.9 billion. So somebody is not telling the truth on the floor. I yield 1 minute to a distinguished member of the committee, Mr. Burgess of Texas.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I proudly stand for the First Amendment rights of even the Members of the minority, and I also stand for honoring the rules and the procedures developed over 200 years in the most Democratic body the free world has ever known, the House of Representatives. With that, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished minority leader from the great State of Ohio (Mr. Boehner).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to yield 1 minute to the Member of Congress with the largest number of Social Security recipients, the gentlewoman from the great State of Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite).

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished Member from New Jersey, Congressman Garrett.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to recapitulate the debate as I see it today and start off, as I've already said, with what the Republicans are for. We are for reauthorization of the SCHIP program. This program has been in existence for 10 years. It is a block grant program between the Federal Government and the States where we spend approximately $5 billion each year to help States provide health care and health insurance for low-income and near-low-income children in their States. Some States have received waivers to provide health insurance for adults and for children that are not really in the low income. We, on the Republican side, support reauthorization of the straightforward SCHIP program. We believe that SCHIP should be for children. A Republican substitute, which was not made in order at the Rules Committee last evening, would limit SCHIP to children; that is, individuals in this country that are under 19 years of age or under. We believe that SCHIP should be for low-income and near low-income children. The Republican substitute, again, allowed SCHIP eligibility for up to 200 percent of poverty. We believe that SCHIP should be for citizens of the United States and legal residents of the United States who have been here at least 5 years. We believe that SCHIP should be funded without cutting senior citizens' health care, so the Republican substitute had no cuts in Medicare for our senior citizens. We also believe that we should fund SCHIP without tax increases. The Republican substitute had no tax increases to fund our SCHIP reauthorization. The problems with the pending bill before us have become almost too numerous to mention. But just to go through some of them, first of all, the pending bill changes SCHIP from a block grant program for a limited duration of time to an open-ended entitlement. It has authorized such sums, and there is no time limit on the bill before us. It removes the limitation on income at the Federal level. If a State chose to certify that millionaires were eligible for SCHIP, as far as we can tell, there is no restriction on covering millionaires, if a State chooses to make that certification. There are tax increases in the Democratic-sponsored bill. There is a tobacco tax increase that CBO scores at least $52 billion. And there is a cut in Medicare that CBO scores over a 10-year period at $157 billion. While there is disagreement among my friends on the majority side about this requirement, there are sections of the pending bill that removes the requirement that was put in place several years ago that States have to certify the citizenship of eligible citizens for SCHIP. Of the 465-page bill that was produced in the Energy and Commerce Committee last week, three-fourths of that bill does not deal with children. The Democratic bill is not just about the children. According to the CBO score that we just received today, the pending bill before us in the SCHIP program, by expanding eligibility requirements, would add an additional 1.1 million children, and by adding enrollment within existing eligibility, another 1 million. The SCHIP bill that the Democrats are putting before us, according to the CBO, adds 2.1 million children in the SCHIP categories, so that all the other money and all the other things that they are doing, it is not about the children. It is about a lot of other things. So, I have great respect for the people that are trying to reauthorize SCHIP. I know that at some time this fall, some time in September or maybe in October, we will have a bipartisan effort to reauthorize and send to the President an SCHIP bill that he will sign. But this is not that bill. This bill won't come up in the Senate. This bill won't come up in conference between the House and the Senate in all probability. This bill will be voted on one time, and that is sometime this evening. And then it will just sit there. So I would rather, as Chairman Dingell and I talked about back in November, the day after the election when I called to congratulate him on becoming the new chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I would have rather we spent this spring working on a bipartisan basis to come to an agreement on what we could agree on and bring before this body a bipartisan bill on SCHIP. That has not happened. This bill was presented to the Energy and Commerce Committee at 11:36 last Tuesday evening and the markup was scheduled the next day at 10 a.m. It was presented to the Rules Committee this morning at 12:30 a.m. It was reported out of the Rules Committee at approximately 2:30 a.m. this morning with no amendments and with self-executing changes that nobody had seen, until we had time to look at it this morning. There have been no amendments on either side; not just on our side, but on their side. So the only people that really know what is in the bill, and the only people that really have input into the bill, are those people on the majority side that are working behind the scenes in the dark of night to craft this bill. Mr. Speaker, I hope we vote ``no'' on the bill. I hope we vote ``yes'' on the motion to recommit. I hope eventually we will get in a bipartisan mode, work with our friends on the other side of the body, work with the President of the United States, and send to the President some time this fall a bipartisan SCHIP reauthorization bill that is just about the children. Mr. Speaker, today the Democratic majority will make claims that they support reauthorizing the SCHIP program and, by implication, that Republicans do not. I, for one, fully support reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program. I also believe we should ensure that the program is covering the population it was intended to serve, and that's low-income children who don't have health insurance. It isn't for adults or for bureaucrats who think adults should pretend to be children. It isn't for men and women making $100,000 salaries. And it shouldn't be an incentive to pull families out of private health insurance coverage and into a public welfare program. States have used the gaping loopholes in the current SCHIP program to expand coverage to include adults and people with the kinds of salaries that are still a dream to most working people. Our friends on the majority think those are blessings, not problems, and that explains why they've written legislation that makes the list of blessings longer instead of shorter. Their bill is the first giant leap towards government-run, universal health care since Hillarycare collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy and deception. More bureaucracy? They're for it. More welfare? They're for it. Rationing health care? They're for it. A blank check? They're for it. In reality, the check isn't exactly blank. The CBO indicates that the cost of this Democratic welfare bill will top $200 billion, and that's only for Federal taxpayers. The States' share of SCHIP will cost the state taxpayers another $300 billion. The majority would spend hundreds of billions of dollars saying that they are trying to cover low-income children who don't have insurance. That's not what CBO says. According to the Congressional Budget Office, of the newly eligible individuals, 60 percent already had private health insurance coverage. Democrats say they are not raising the eligibility levels for SCHIP in this bill. They fail to mention that they allow states to determine income and they also do away with the block- grant nature of the program by providing states swollen Federal matching funds, even for families making above $200,000 a year. Now, some will say I've got it all wrong, but if I'm wrong and they're right, show me. I challenge my friends on the majority to point to the place in the bill where that would be prohibited. Further evidence that this bill is not about low-income children is that their bill actually allows for bonus payments to states if they eliminate asset tests. It looks like they do want welfare for the rich, and the richer, the better. I ask, should a millionaire's child be on SCHIP or Medicaid? I don't think the American people believe so, but the majority's bill encourages it. Yesterday, on the floor some members spoke about how this bill would pay for services for illegal immigrants. With no true way to refute that assertion the majority, in the managers' amendment that was released after midnight this morning, added a new section that states that no Federal funding can go towards paying for care for illegal immigrants. That was a nice restatement of current law, but it does not change the fact that this bill eliminates the requirement that States verify a person's citizenship before they are enrolled. If we don't verify citizenship, this new section is meaningless. The bill even eliminates the 5-year waiting period that legal immigrants must wait before being enrolled in Medicaid, effectively inviting more illegal immigration. During the morning session, member after member of the majority rose to say that this bill is about children. I ask my colleagues to show me where in this bill limits this Children's Health Program to children. They can't, because the bill will continue the discredited practice of siphoning off money from children's health care to buy health care for adults. We had amendments filed at the Rules Committee to ensure that SCHIP dollars go toward children, not adults, but these amendments were banned. The majority also says this isn't kids versus senior citizens, but Democrats pay for their enormous expansion by cutting $200 billion from Medicare. The Democratic bill makes a particular target of the senior citizens who picked Medicare Advantage, and takes over $150 billion away from them. That means more than 8 million of our seniors will have their choice in health care coverage sharply restricted. This bill disproportionately harms rural and low-income Medicare beneficiaries in particular since it cuts payments in these areas so drastically that plans will be driven out of these markets. The draconian cuts that the Democrats expect the Medicare Advantage program to take will obliterate the benefit. Again, no wonder the Democrats kept this bill away from the public eye. It is hard to explain to seniors why you are cutting their benefits. These plans are an important option for low-income and minority beneficiaries--57 percent of enrolled beneficiaries have incomes less than $30,000. These plans can reduce cost-sharing relative to traditional Medicare. These plans also offer better access to care-- more than 80 percent of plans provide coverage for hospital stays beyond the traditional Medicare benefit, and more than 75 percent cover routine eye and hearing tests. Over 98 percent of beneficiaries can enroll in a plan offering preventive dental benefits. These are our most vulnerable seniors. Yes, the Democrats would cut their benefits to pay for the higher income children and adults. They made this decision with no legislative hearings and developing the bill behind closed doors. My friends on the majority claim that they have had seven hearings on this. I would like to set the record straight that the Energy and Commerce Committee held one hearing on SCHIP back in February to discuss the general program, and did not discuss anything that is incorporated in this bill. They did not even invite the people who administer SCHIP at the Department of Health and Human Services to testify. This bill was written in secret, delivered at midnight, and then rewritten from 1 to 3 a.m. this morning. We have had little time to examine this bill, and we have found glaring weaknesses, I urge all members to be very cautious about what you are voting for because the rhetoric of the authors of the bill doesn't match the substance. The majority adjourned the Full Committee markup without disposing of a single amendment or reporting the bill. The rules Committee allowed no amendments in order. We have had more Committee process in this Congress on bills naming post offices. It should come as no surprise that the majority wants to ram this through with no public process provided and no changes allowed. They don't want people to know what's in it, and they certainly don't want people to change it. They claim that they have to do this because the program will expire. They have had 8 months to reauthorize the program since the day that Chairman Dingell and I agreed that SCHIP was to be a high priority in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Where have the Democrats been? They claim that this is of the highest priority, but yet they sat on it until they could create an artificial crisis and then blame Republicans for daring to read their bill. I question why they would treat the reauthorization of SCHIP as a last-minute concern. I feel it's important to note that SCHIP is only part of the Democrats' bill, which also is laden with attacks on Medicare and Medicaid. The legislation pits children against the elderly. It was brought here today out of the night, when no one was looking. I urge Members to vote against this bad bill so we can reauthorize this program in a responsible, transparent, and open way that the powerful Democrat leadership promised to conduct the business of the Nation.