Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to read a part of a letter. It is dated February 8, 2007. It is to myself. It is from Congressman Norwood. It is the last official correspondence that I received from him. It says: ``Dear Joe. ``When you receive this letter, you will know of my return to Georgia after my decision to forego further medical treatment in the Washington, D.C., area for my ongoing battle with non-small-cell cancer. Needless to say, I hope things turn out for the best. ``I expect to be unavailable for my duties for the foreseeable future. I do, however, expect my staff to continue working on several issues, even if I can't be there in person. ``I will have my staff working on the Living Organ Kidney Donation Clarification Act (H.R. 710). This bipartisan, bicameral bill addresses the issue of paired transplantation, which is a way to solve the dilemma faced by people who want to become living organ donors for a family member or friend, but are unable to do so because they are biologically incompatible. In the process of kidney-paired donor transplants, a pair consisting of a kidney transplant candidate and an incompatible living donor is matched with another such incompatible pair to enable two transplants that otherwise would not occur. This bill is widely supported, has no known opposition, doesn't cost a dime, will save Medicare money, and will save thousands of lives. I urge you to work with Mr. Inslee, Chairman Dingell, and my staff to move this important bill forward.'' I have checked with Chairman Dingell. He has assured me that he is prepared to move the bill if it is as he says it is. Knowing Charlie, always telling the truth, it is. So hopefully, very soon on the floor of this body, we will have the Charlie Norwood Living Organ Kidney Donation Clarification Act. There are so many stories, but I want to tell one Norwood story. Charlie asked me and now my wife, then my girlfriend, Terri, to go down to the Masters Golf Tournament. I am not golfer and so I discouraged him from asking me. He said you may not like it but Terri will. So we got to go down to the tournament, and on the first day we went to the tournament, Charlie was telling me how plugged in he was with all the folks at the Masters and how many people he knew and really he was really a major figure out there. So we pulled up to the driveway to go up to the main clubhouse that you have seen on TV, and the guard at the gate said, May I help you? He said, I am Congressman Norwood, and I have got Congressman Barton of Texas, and we want to go up to the clubhouse. The guard said, Well, Congressman, you are not on the list. He said, I am not on the list? And the guard said, No, Congressman, you are not. So I started giving Charlie a hard time from the backseat. I said, Charlie, I thought you were a big player around here; you cannot even get up to the clubhouse. So Norwood started giving me a hard time, and I started hoorahing the guard, and he said, Wait a minute; he said you are a Congressman from Texas? And I said, Yes, sir. He said, Congressman Norwood, you park right up there by the clubhouse. So, for that one day, Charlie Norwood had a better parking spot than Tiger Woods or Arnold Palmer or any of the members of the Masters golf course. He is in heaven now and my guess is he has got the best parking spot in heaven, too. God bless you, Charlie Norwood, and God bless you, Gloria, and God bless all your family members. You will dearly, dearly be missed.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

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 focus, in the small amount of time that I have, on one of the principal components of this particular piece of legislation. That is the apparent attempt to say that some of these leases that were granted in 1997 and 1998 were somehow flawed, and that there were mistakes made and things were covered up and the oil companies tried to renegotiate some of these leases to get a sweetheart deal. Nothing could be further from the truth. On November 28, 1995, President Clinton signed Public Law 104-58. It was entitled the Outer Continental Shelf Deepwater Royalty Relief Act, Royalty Relief Act. It was the intent of this act to offer royalty relief, royalty suspension in certain tracts in the Gulf of Mexico in order to create an incentive to get the oil companies, both large and small, to actually bid on these leases, to spend money to promote them, develop them and hopefully find some commercial production. There was no mistake about it. It was the intention of the act to sign some leases that did not have royalty or had a lesser royalty than was commonly in place. Now, remember at this point in time oil was selling for $10 to $15 a barrel, and there was no production, there was no exploration, or very little exploration going on. Section 303 of that act established a new bidding system that allowed the Secretary of the Interior to offer tracts with royalty suspensions for a period, volume or value that the Secretary so determines. Now, section 304 of that ACT went on and says that all tracts, a-l-l, all tracts that were off within 5 years of the date of enactment in deepwater; that is, water that is at least 200 meters deep, had to be offered under a new bidding system, had to be, not could be, might be, had to be. This new bidding system had a royalty clause in it, but the royalty clause was based on volume of production and is also based on the depth of the water. The deeper the water was, the less the volume was that you had to produce before you triggered a royalty. In other words, if you were in the deepest water in the gulf that was leased, you could produce up to 87 million barrels of oil without paying a royalty. That is a lot of oil, 87 million barrels is a lot of oil. So we, those of us that were in the Congress, in the mid-1990s, passed a Royalty Relief Act, it is in the title. It says, if you will put your hard-earned dollars and go out and bid on these leases, and you win one of those leases, if it is in the deepwater, we are putting in a bidding system, and under this bidding system you may have to pay a royalty based on how much you produce but you won't pay a royalty based on the price. Now, we only offered these leases for, I think, 2 years, 571 were actually bid on. Of those, about half, I think, were accepted. Of those, we discovered we have current production in 19 of them, 19. Now, after the fact, we can come back here in 2007, when prices are at $50 a barrel, and say that was a bad deal 12 years ago, we should not have done it. But 12 years ago oil was at $10 a barrel. We had no domestic exploration going on. We passed a specific act of Congress that said give this royalty relief. Today we are, in hindsight, saying take it away. That is wrong, and I oppose the bill. Mr. Speaker, during the 2006 campaign we were promised civility and ``playing by the rules, following regular order.'' Today, like the rest of the 110th Congress so far, we face the extreme opposite: government by martial law and bumper sticker. Mr. Speaker, your bumper stickers worked in the campaign but they are not governance worthy of the American people and it won't take time for the people to understand the difference. The last major energy legislation enacted by Congress was the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It was a long and heavy lift. We had countless hours of hearings before the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Committee mark-up seemed to take forever because of the many amendments offered by Members on both sides of the aisle. And then there was the exhausting conference with the Senate. Many provisions were negotiated in excruciating detail. What did it give us? One of the most important, historic, and consequential pieces of comprehensive legislation in history. It has already directly accounted for several liquefied gas facilities, new nuclear plant announcements, vastly improved electricity transmission reliability, and impressive capital investment in solar, wind, and other renewables. Did the minority party participation slow things down? You bet it did, but it also improved the product. I am proud of the 70 Democrat votes on final passage but especially of one vote, that of our new chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the gentleman from Michigan. We earned each other's support for the final product. Today, by contrast, we have a bumper sticker: ``Stick it to Big Oil.'' That's a cute bumper sticker, but, please, Mr. Speaker, don't use it to govern with because you are only hurting the very people who sent us all here. In 2004 we agreed that the JOBS Act was important for keeping American manufacturing and production here at home in the face of an increasingly competitive global market. Today we're saying, ``all that is still true--let's keep the JOBS Act, except we will carve out one industry for which we don't want American production, American manufacturing, American jobs: the energy industry. No, we'd rather tip the scales so that global companies with American operations in the energy industry will take their jobs and production off shore where they are more welcome: say Nigeria, or Iran, or Venezuela. Last year virtually all Members recognized the disturbing shortage of U.S. based refining capacity. We had various ideas to address it and virtually every Member of this body voted for one or the other. But driving refineries off shore was on nobody's agenda. Why is it on your's? Meanwhile, as off-shore energy prices spike as a direct, inevitable result, so do consumer prices for commuters, and soccer moms, and grandmothers struggling to pay home heating. These prices matter to our constituents in places like Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, and other States. Mr. Speaker, why must you turn every bumper sticker into more taxes and more spending? Why throw $14 billion into the Department of Energy to produce energy? In its entire history with all its billions, how much electricity, how much transportation fuel has DOE really created? Let's step back, see this H.R. 6 bumper sticker for what it really is and have the courage to say, ``The bumper sticker was for last year, now it's time to govern and to put the people of America first.'' I urge a ``no'' vote on final passage.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

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

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I would yield that to Mr. Stearns of Florida, 30 seconds.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire, do I have any additional time?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to apologize to Mr. Ross if he thought I was being rude to him. I wasn't. We only have 5 minutes on motions to recommit, and I wanted the Members to hear the motion and hopefully others that may be following the proceedings, because it is very short and it is also very simple. We have already heard from the Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan, that the bill before us is not going to save any money in its current form. Having said that, since it is not going to save money, it could still do irreparable harm, if in these negotiations, if they were ever to occur, the Secretary, in trying to save money, would have to look at the following areas: First, he would have to look at some of the very expensive drugs that serve small segments of our population like the HIV drugs and some of those type of drugs. We don't want that to happen, so we explicitly preclude that. He would also have to look at access. The VA program that has been touted as an alternative to Medicare part D, in spite of the fact that over a third of the veterans choose Medicare part D, it achieves many of its savings, number one, by restricting the formulary; and, number two, requiring that most of the drugs be delivered via mail order. In other words, you don't have that local pharmacy point of access. So this motion to recommit explicitly says you have to maintain that access. It also says you can't impact groups like the veterans or any recognizable group that may have a group plan, because we don't want to squeeze, if you start trying to save money somewhere else, you may squeeze them and raise their prices. So this is a very straightforward motion to recommit. We simply say if you are going to give the Secretary of HHS all this negotiating authority, let's be careful that, in doing that, we don't hurt all these other segments of our population. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of political rhetoric today. That is not surprising because the Democrats have made this a political debate and not a debate on substance. That is unfortunate because this issue is too important to too many Americans. There has been a lot of discussion about what this bill does and does not do; the truth of the matter is we don't really know. This bill has been the subject of no hearings; we have heard from no witnesses; we have had no subcommittee or full committee markups; we have had no opportunity to debate or even offer amendments. In fact, the Energy and Commerce Committee didn't even have its first meeting until 2 days ago. Mr. Speaker we do know something about the successes of Medicare part D. We know that tens of millions of our seniors have access to prescription drug coverage for the first time; we know that tens of millions more are saving money when they buy prescription drugs. We also know that seniors can choose from competing plans, have access to the approximately 4300 prescription drugs available, filled at pharmacies of their choice. Proponents of H.R. 4 claim that it will have no impact on beneficiaries' access to pharmacies or to the range of drugs they may take. If that is true then they should all vote in favor of the Motion to Recommit. The motion is simple but critically necessary. The motion guarantees seniors access to all drugs that are available under the current program; the motion ensures that seniors suffering from cancer, ALS, Alzheimer's, and other debilitating diseases get the drugs they need. The motion guarantees that our seniors have access to new and innovative treatments as they become available. The motion ensures that the government cannot limit or restrict beneficiary's access to their local pharmacies; seniors should be able to get their prescriptions filled at pharmacies of their choice. Finally, the motion ensures that the legislation will not end up increasing the cost of drugs for veterans or any other group of Americans. I urge all Members to vote in favor of preserving access to drugs and local pharmacies. Vote in favor of the Motion to Recommit. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the distinguished ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee (Mr. McCrery) for 2 minutes.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I object.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I very certainly am.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to close for the minority side. Mr. Speaker, I am not sure where the Majority Leader's clock is, whether we are at the end of the 100-hour period or the beginning or the middle. I do know that I have been very confused by this process. I understand the effort to bring the minimum wage bill back to the floor. Our new majority, for whatever purpose, didn't feel like they got a fair shake on that issue in the last several Congresses. So I can understand that. The stem cell bill we voted on yesterday is the identical bill from the last Congress, with the exception of the change in the dates and the reversal of the names from Castle-DeGette to DeGette-Castle. I understand that. I even voted with the new majority on that one. But on this one I am puzzled. We have a program that is working. We have a program that has 75 percent approval of the group we are trying to help, which is higher than most of our approvals in our congressional districts and certainly higher than most of our reelection rates. We have a program that the new majority even admits isn't going to really save any money. We certainly have an issue that there have been no hearings on and there have been no amendments made in order. In fact, we don't even have a Rules Committee yet established. If my good friend Mr. Dingell said, Mr. Barton, I will support you on that amendment, there is no place to amend it. We are operating under martial law, and maybe they did it this way in the war between the States; I don't know. I can tell you that in the 12 years that I was in the majority, we always had a Rules Committee you could go to. Now, maybe you didn't get your amendment made in order, but at least you could go to it. So this one is a puzzlement to me. Now, we know that the President has promised to veto this if it should somehow get through the Senate in its current form and come to his desk. In all likelihood it will never come out of the Senate, so this as far as it is going to get. So maybe that is what this is all about is just a political exercise. And I know, and everybody in this Chamber knows, when it comes to the vote, the new majority is going to win. They should win. They won an election. They have a right to bring issues and they have a right to win some. But that doesn't mean it is right and that it is going to be a win for the American people. I hope that once we get this foolishness out of the way, that Mr. Rangel and Mr. Dingell and myself and Mr. McCrery can work together as the leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Ways and Means Committee on a bipartisan basis, actually hold some hearings. If there is really something wrong with the current Medicare part D prescription drug benefit program, let's work together to fix it. But if there is really not anything wrong with it, and it ain't broke, there will be no need to fix it. So I hope that we vote this down today. I am not myopic, though. I can count how many Democrat votes there are and how many Republican votes. So it will probably pass, and it will probably go to the Senate and it will probably die there, which will be a nice benign death. And then we can get back to being responsible. So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that the bill fails today and that the Democrat 100-hour political program fizzles, and then in the next 2 weeks we get down to the serious, bipartisan business of working together for the American people. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to who has the right to close?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp) be allowed to control the minority time for the Ways and Means Committee, which I believe is 40 minutes.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to another distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Sullivan).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to a distinguished member of the committee who is currently on leave from the committee, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguish gentleman from Arizona, a former chairman of the Republican Policy Committee and a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Shadegg.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from West Texas (Mr. Conaway).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 1 minute to a distinguished congressman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to yield myself 1 minute just to reply to Mr. Waxman. The Congressional Budget Office, as far as I know, is not in the pocket of the drug companies. They say there are going to be no savings to this. The Heritage Foundation, which is admittedly conservative, but I don't think they are in the pocket of the drug companies, says there are going to be no savings. The Veterans Affairs Administration, which is the executive branch part of the Federal Government that is currently operated by President Bush, is opposed to this. They don't think there are going to be any savings. You can go to Wal-Mart right now, whether you are in Medicare or not, and get any number of generic drugs for, I think, a fee of $3 a month. Some of the plans that are out there in the marketplace give generic drugs away. Some of the plans that seniors can choose from have zero premiums. The average premium is $22. I just think it is flat wrong to think that the Federal Government is going to negotiate a lower price than a competitive marketplace. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and also a member of the Veterans Committee, Mr. Stearns of Florida. (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire as to the balance of the time amongst the many people on the floor today.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to put into the Record the Democrat vote on the motion to recommit to H.R. 4680, rollcall 356 back in 2000. This was a Democrat motion to recommit to the Republican drug benefit that later went to the Senate and was not acted upon. 205, and I assume that was the total number of Democrats in the House, all 205 Democrats voted for it, including Mr. Dingell, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Rangel, and every member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who is currently serving who was in the body at that time. This was a recommit motion by Mr. Stark of California, and I am going to read what it says: ``Noninterference by the Secretary. In administering the prescription medicine benefit program established under this part, the Secretary may not: One, require a particular formulary, institute a price structure for benefits or in any way ration benefits; Two, interfere in any way with negotiations between benefit administrators and medicine manufacturers or wholesalers; or Three, otherwise interfere with the competitive nature of providing a prescription medicine benefit using private benefit administrators, except as is required to guarantee coverage of the defined benefit.'' This is exactly the opposite to the bill that is currently before us, exactly the opposite. Back in 2000, every Democrat currently in the House at that time, I think, or at least 205, voted for it, including all of our senior members who are leading the fight 180 degrees opposite this today. Democrats That Voted in Favor of Representative Stark's ``Non- Interference'' Provision in 2000 Abercrombie Ackerman Allen Andrews Baca Baird Baldacci Baldwin Barcia Barrett (WI) Becerra Bentsen Berkley Berman Berry Bishop Bagojevich Blumenauer Bonior Borski Boswell Boucher Boyd Brady (PA) Brown (FL) Brown (OR) Capps Capuano Cardin Carson Clay Clayton Clement Clyburn Condit Conyers Costello Coyne Cramer Crowley Cummings Danner Davis (FL) Davis (IL) DeFazio Delahunt DeLauro Deutsch Dicks Dingell Dixon Doggett Dooley Doyle Edwards Engel Eshoo Etheridge Evans Farr Fattah Forbes Ford Frank (MA) Frost Gejdenson Gephardt Gonzalez Gordon Green (TX) Gutierrez Hall (OH) Hall (TX) Hastings (FL) Hill (IN) Hilliard Hinchey Hinojosa Hoeffel Holden Holt Hoyer Inslee Jackson (IL) Jackson-Lee (TX) Jefferson John Johnson, E. B. Jones (OH) Kanjorski Kaptur Kennedy Kildee Kilpatrick Kind (WI) Kleczka Klink Kucinich LaFalce Lampson Lantos Larson Lee Levin Lewis (GA) Lipinski Lofgren Lowey Lucas (KY) Luther Maloney (CT) Maloney (NY) Mascara Matsui McCarthy (MO) McCarthy (NY) McDermott McGovern McIntyre McKinney McNulty Meehan Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Menendez Millender-McDonald Miller, George Minge Mink Moakley Mollohan Moore Moran (VA) Murtha Nadler Napolitano Neal Oberstar Obey Olver Ortiz Owens Pallone Pascrell Pastor Payne Pelosi Peterson (MN) Phelps Pickett Pomeroy Price (NC) Rahall Rangel Reyes Rivers Rodriguez Roemer Rothman Roybal-Allard Rush Sabo Sanchez Sanders Sandlin Sawyer Schakowsky Scott Sherman Shows Sisisky Skelton Slaughter Smith (WA) Snyder Spratt Stabenow Stark Stenholm Strickland Stupak Tanner Tauscher Taylor (MS) Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Thurman Tierney Towns Turner Udall (CO) Udall (NM) Velazquez Visclosky Waters Watt (NC) Waxman Weiner Wexler Weygand Wise Woolsey Wu Wynn Representative Stark included this language in his motion to recommit on H.R. 4680 (roll call vote 356): Section 1860(b)--NONINTERFERENCE BY THE SECRETARY In administering the prescription medicine benefit program established under this part, the Secretary may not B (1) require a particular formulary, institute a price structure for benefits, or in any way ration benefits; (2) interfere in any way with negotiations between benefit administrators and medicine manufacturers, or wholesalers; or (3) otherwise interfere with the competitive nature of providing a prescription medicine benefit using private benefit administrators, except as is required to guarantee coverage of the defined benefit. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.