Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I want to reiterate that this did not have to happen. We have a very good Medicare system. One of the great things about our system is while we do not always rank at the top around the world in our health care system because a lot of people do not have insurance and all that, if you get to 65 in this country, you in fact do have one of the longest life expectancies in the world because you have very good health care, you have Medicare. You had a shortcoming. You did not have a prescription drug benefit. You still really do not because it is now a privatized insurance plan. But this did not have to happen. We did not have to take Medicare, one of the great programs this country has ever had, and do what the Republicans did. I want to outline again, first of all, how they did it. If you do something, if you build a house in a way that is not structurally sound, if you do not use a good quality wood, if you cut corners, you are not going to have a very good house at the end. If you do not have good input into any manufacturing process, you are not going to have a very good manufactured product at the end. Just again look at how the Republicans did it. They first told the American people and the Congress the bill would cost $400 billion over 10 years. It turns out there was an actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services who said no, it will cost $534 billion; but he was not allowed to speak out. He was threatened by Tom Skully, the administrator, and I assume by the President also, who had to know this too, that it really costs $534 billion. Mr. Skully has since moved on to work as a lobbyist for the drug and insurance industry, no surprise there, while the President has taken tens of millions of dollars apparently to thank him for the Medicare bill. We will get to that in a moment. But the cost estimates were hidden from the Congress. They simply did not tell us the truth about how much it was going to cost. Then the administrator violated ethics laws by the way they treated that employee and other ways. Then the way it passed this Congress, we remember that night, the debate started at midnight, the vote started at 3 o'clock in the morning, the roll call was kept open for 3 hours. They literally tried to bribe one Member.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, ``persuading'' is a very nice word. They did well beyond persuading. They arm-twisted, they cut deals, they tried to cut deals, they made offers, they tried the carrot, they tried the stick, they tried to bribe a Republican Member from Michigan, who talked about it the next day. So this whole process, from the conception of the bill written by the drug and insurance industry to the cost estimates hidden and then lied about, the ethics violations, then the middle-of-the-night vote, then the bribing of a Member of Congress, the attempted bribing of a Member of Congress, and then the bill passing in the middle of the night, it is no surprise that this bill led to a product where seniors got a 17.4 percent premium increase. Again, the largest increase in Medicare history. In the 1990s, in the second half, the premiums stayed almost the same. It was between about $46 and $50, within a dollar or two, every year for 4 or 5 years. President Bush came into office. Now it is up to $78 and some cents. It has gone up double digits more than once, and this time it went up 17 percent. Why? Because of all these things that happened. This was not an accident that it went up 17.4 percent. It went up that much because they lied about the cost and they covered it up, the President and the administration and the Office of Medicare, CMS. Then they violated election laws. Then they strong-armed Members. Then they tried to bribe somebody. Then the bill contained a huge payout to the insurance industry, $290 million every month for 22 months before the bill, the drug benefit, was even into effect in 2006. So the increase to seniors was 17.4 percent. Of course, the Republicans had to collect their money from the drug and insurance industries for their campaign this year. Republicans may have a good year this year in the election because they have so much money from the drug companies and so much money from the insurance companies. But it is morally reprehensible and outrageous how they did it, and even more outrageous, what ultimately happened to this bill.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) mentioned how premiums are up dramatically, obviously, the 17.4 percent. And before my friends on the other side of the aisle say anything, because I know what they are going to say, because they always say that to this is, well, one of the reasons premiums are up is because they are getting these great new preventive benefits. Well, the fact is preventive benefits cost, and this is all public information, they will add 20 cents to the cost of the premium increase. The premium increase is $11.40. The increase in better benefits, the preventive benefit is 20 cents, so they are getting almost nothing for the $11.40. So we are seeing the premium increase 17.4 percent; we are seeing the deductible increase, as the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) says; and once the drug benefit comes into effect, we are seeing accelerated, continuing, quickening, sky-rocketing drug prices. And the reason for that, again, this stuff does not happen by accident. The reason for that is as a payoff to their drug company contributors, because there is no other explanation that I have heard from anybody, including Republicans privately, is they have a provision in the bill that says that the government may not negotiate the price of drugs on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries with the drug companies. So in other words, think how easy it would be if the country would simply say, the government would say, we have 41 million Medicare beneficiaries. We are going to use them as one buying pool, one purchasing pool, to bring the cost of drugs down. That is what every other country in the world does. That is why drug prices are one-half, one-third, one-tenth in Germany, Japan, Israel, England, or Canada as they are here, because the government intervenes. It is not price controls; they just simply negotiate the price on behalf of seniors. That is what the Veterans Administration does. They bulk buy. They use the purchasing power of many to get a good price from the drug companies. For the Republicans to write into this Medicare bill, with all the corrupt and outrageous and morally reprehensible and questionable tactics and ethics violations that went into this bill, for them to write a provision into the bill saying, we cannot negotiate for lower drug prices, that absolutely guarantees the prices will go up. So premiums go up 17 percent this year, maybe, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said, another double-digit increase next year, even bigger, without the threat of an election over them, if President Bush wins the election or if Republicans keep control of Congress, premiums go up, deductibles go up, and the cost of prescription drugs keep going way through the roof. It is by design. It is clearly what they want. They want to privatize Medicare, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said; and they move towards a very different system. Back 38 years ago, almost no Republicans supported Medicare, and every time they have had a chance, they have gone after it. They have tried to privatize, take money out of it, tried to underpay providers so that they can rob the system. They have tried to pay off the drug industry and the insurance industry to privatize the system; and now that they control the House, the Senate, and the President, they are able to do all of these things, costing seniors more and seniors getting less; but the drug and insurance companies are doing very well, thank you.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time just for a moment, in this House, a group of us wanted to try to amend the bill to take that out so that even though we did not like the bill overall, at least we could have brought drug prices down by working for that discount by using the power of 41 million people purchasing, a Medicare purchasing pool. We wanted to offer that amendment, and because of the corrupt way this bill was brought to the House floor, from the cost estimates to the ethics law to the middle-of-the-night vote, to the bribery, attempts of bribery on the House floor, we were not even allowed to offer that amendment so we could debate it; and let my friends on the other side try to defend the drug companies, but they did not want to do that in public. Everything they wanted to do would be in the middle of the night or not have to do it at all, so they did not even allow us to offer that amendment to even discuss it.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, before yielding for a moment to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), one drug in particular, a drug cold Tamoxifen, a breast cancer drug, it is a very effective drug to help women combat breast cancer, costs 10 times in the United States what it costs in France. This is a drug that was developed in large part by U.S. taxpayers, and it is made here. Yet the French pay one- tenth as much for Tamoxifen as do Americans; French women do pay one- tenth as much as American women do. Those are not coincidences; they do not happen by accident. They happen because of the corruption and the violation of ethics laws and the bribery and all that Republicans have engaged in on this medicare prescription drug bill. If you want to teach a class about how government should not run, if you want to teach a class about how government can be rife with corruption, all you have to do is talk about the Medicare bill. If you explain to students or explain to anyone how this Congress, how this Congress passed this Medicare bill, there is no better example in my 30 years in public office, almost 30 years in public office, there is no better example I have ever seen from either party even at its worst, and both parties do things we sometimes should not do, but we have never seen anything close to the corruption that just permeates this Medicare bill, from the beginning of its process to the 17.4 percent increase, and who knows what in the future.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is why the comment of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) earlier was so important. Without the prospect of an election, if President Bush wins this election, if Republicans win the House, it is Katie, bar the door. Premiums, deductibles, copays, who knows what this is going to look like. More insurance company subsidies, more subsidies for the drug companies, two industries that have done so very, very, very well in this country. The drug industry is the most profitable industry in America for 20 years running, with the lowest tax rate. Insurance companies and HMOs had a 50 percent increase in their profits this year over last year, and that is before they got this, before all of this corruption led to their $290 million-a-month payout from taxpayers to HMOs. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is right. When there is not an election, if President Bush was willing to increase premiums 17.4 percent, a record increase 2 months before an election, granted, he did it on Labor Day weekend when he hoped nobody would notice, but if he is willing to do that 2 months before an election, a very close election, you can wonder what he is going to do when those shackles are off.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for joining me and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) earlier tonight. Again, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) pointed out, we know what has not worked. We know this bill has been an absolute payoff to the drug and insurance industries. We know how this bill became law. We also know what we could do to fix it, and we would offer again tonight, because we should not come down to the floor and only criticize, we really should offer constructive solutions. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is exactly right. We should have reimportation. We should run the Medicare prescription drug bill through traditional Medicare, not farm it out to insurance companies, and then have to subsidize those insurance companies to ``incentivize'' them to offer the prescription drug benefit. With reimportation, we also ought to be able to use the buying power of the Federal Government on behalf of 41 million Medicare beneficiaries to get the price down so that people could simply open up their purse or their billfold and pull out their Medicare card and go to the local drug mart in Elyria, Ohio and get a price that is 50 or 60 or 70 percent less than we have today. We can do this if we have the political will. We could do this if the Republican leadership and the President would wean themselves off of drug company and insurance company contributions. That is what we need to continue to push in our country so that seniors are finally treated equitably by their Federal Government. I thank my friends from New Jersey and Ohio.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration recently announced that America's seniors will pay 17.4 percent more for Medicare coverage next year. It is no accident that they announced this piece of information late in the afternoon on Friday of Labor Day weekend. They simply hoped nobody would notice. But the largest premium hike in Medicare's history, the largest premium hike in the 38 years of Medicare is the sort of news you just cannot suppress. One senior advocate called it a hidden tax on seniors. That hidden tax on seniors is a multi-billion dollar tax at that. That is big news and it is bad news for President Bush. But when faced with bad news, the Republican spin machine does what it always does. It tries to shift the blame. It is the Democrats, they said, President Bush rolled out his ad plan knowing this would happen, it is the Democrats that are responsible for the premium hike, even though the Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House. But because that did not jibe with the facts, no one bought it then and no one buys it now. Before the Bush Medicare bill became law, the nonpartisan Medicare trustees estimated that Medicare monthly premium would increase $2 in 2005. After the Bush Medicare bill became law, the premium jumped to $11.60. Hence, the 17.4 percent increase. Those are the facts. No amount of sweet talk, misdirection, or spin from the Bush team can change those facts; but rather than take responsibility, the Bush team just changed its spin again. This time they said the premium, the record-setting 17.4 percent increase, the Bush administration says was a good deal for America's seniors because it financed new preventive benefits. Again, there are a few things the Bush administration did not tell us. They forgot to say that the preventive benefits account for less than one-fourth of 1 percent of the premium increase. In other words, virtually nothing in the premium increase really went into prevention benefits. Here is where the money went. They neglected to mention that the Bush Medicare law creates a $23 billion slush fund for the HMOs. These are bonus payments for an industry, the HMO industry, which already saw their profits go up 50 percent last year. They can use these bonuses to lure seniors out of Medicare's reliable, equitable, traditional program. Interestingly, the benefits do not take effect until 2006. Seniors actually cannot get the Medicare benefit until 2006, but the payout to the insurance industry to pay back for the contributions the insurance industry frankly made to my colleagues on this side of the aisle and to the White House began in March of 2004. In other words, the insurance industry as a whole got checks from the Federal Government totaling $290 million in March, $290 million in April, $290 million in May, $290 million in June, all the way through this year, all the way through next year, $290 million a month. The benefit is not available to seniors until the following year. They also forgot to tell us, in addition to this slush fund the insurance industry paid for out of seniors' premium increases, they forgot to tell us that the Bush Medicare law actually goes out of its way to prohibit the Federal Government from negotiating with the drug industry for fair prices to bring the cost of prescription drugs down, which go up at double-digit increases every year. They did not tell us that the Bush Medicare law will increase drug industry profits, already the highest industry profits of any industry in America, they will increase industry profits, not gross income but industry profits, by $180 billion, that is with a B, $180 billion over the next 10 years. So that insurance industry got huge subsidies, the drug industry got record profits, the Bush administration got huge campaign contributions, tens of millions of dollars from the drug and insurance industries, and seniors were stuck with a 17.4 percent premium increase. It is wrong. The increase was five times larger than it should have been. That is an outrage.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, recently the President of the United States announced a record increase, 17.4 percent, in the premiums that Medicare beneficiaries will be forced to pay, a record not matched in the 38-year history of Medicare. Why this increase? Because of the President's prescription drug bill, a drug bill written by the insurance industry, written by the drug industry. Twenty-three billion dollars in direct subsidies go from the pockets of seniors, with their premium increase, into the coffers of the insurance companies, $180 billion dollars extra profits for the already record profitable drug companies. And this has happened over and over on the House floor: middle of the night votes, literally a bribe offered on the House floor during the passage of Medicare. That is why Democrats are unveiling today the New Partnership for America's Future to take our country in a new direction, to take our country in a better direction.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I was only talking about his actions. It is nothing personal. I just thought that tens of millions of dollars in contributions which lead to legislation which means bigger profits for the insurance and drug companies was shameful. I did not cast aspersions on the President himself.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, is pointing out that the President receives tens of millions of dollars from the drug and insurance companies, is that considered a criticism? Is that appropriate to say?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I guess, Mr. Speaker, that I do not know if the President told the truth, but people who report to the President that should have been informing the President certainly did not tell the truth, because they said the bill would cost $400 billion. It cost $534 billion, and that led to the biggest Medicare premium increase in history.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow on the heels of the comments of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) about the Bush administration not telling the truth about Iraq and how much the country has paid for that and discuss how the President of the United States did not tell the truth about the Medicare bill and how, unfortunately, because of that, senior citizens of this country will be inflicted with the largest Medicare premium increase, 17.4 percent, that seniors have ever seen in the 38 years of Medicare's history. On this chart we can look at what is entitled ``Medicare Bill's Dirty Laundry.'' I want to talk for a moment how we got where we got, how this bill came to become law and led to that 17.4 percent premium increase that Medicare beneficiaries will be forced to pay. First of all, the Medicare bill was written by the drug industry and the insurance industry, both industries having given the President of the United States tens of millions of dollars, and to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and Republican leadership, tens of millions of dollars for their political campaigns. So the legislation was written by the drug and insurance companies as a payback by the Republicans for the help that they had gotten from these industries. Now, when the bill came to the floor of the House of Representatives, and everybody in this body remembers that night, the debate started at midnight, the votes started at 3 o'clock in the morning. The vote went for 2 hours 55 minutes as the Republican leadership attempted to bribe, as told the next day by one Republican Member, strong arm, twisted arms, waked up the President, got him on the phone with Members of Congress, campaign contributions flowed liberally to Republican Members of Congress, and that vote, after 2 hours 55 minutes, the longest vote in Congressional history, two Members changed their vote at 5:55 in the morning and that Medicare bill barely passed. Then the administration used tens of millions of dollars, of taxpayers' dollars, to try to convince the public that this was a good bill. At the same time we found out that this bill that was to cost $400 million, we were told would actually cost about $530 billion, from $400 billion to $530 billion. The President knew it, the head Medicare knew it, and they simply did not tell the people and the Congress of the United States. That is why we ended up with a 17 percent increase. Then this was capped off by the fact that the President of the United States did not release this information about the 17 percent increase until they could almost do it in the dead of night. They chose a Friday afternoon right before the Labor Day weekend to announce to the public that, yes, this increase was going to be 17 percent. Now, before the Bush Medicare bill became law, the nonpartisan Medicare trustees said the premium increase for 2005 for Medicare beneficiaries would be $2. Instead, once the Bush Medicare bill became law, the premium increase jumped to $11.60. The premium increase after the Bush Medicare law was more than five times larger than the previous premium increase was estimated to be. So where does that money go? Where do the billions of dollars that come out of seniors' pockets on the one hand go? It comes out of seniors' pockets. By and large, it goes into the insurance company HMO pockets. Insurance company HMOs had a 50 percent increase in profits last year. That is before the Medicare bill became law. In fact, that 17 percent largest increase in Medicare history premium goes directly into a $23.5 billion slush fund for the insurance industry. The insurance industry, which enjoyed huge profit increases the year before, now is going to get a $23.5 billion bonus, thanks to the increase in premiums for seniors. So, Mr. Speaker, it makes a perfect circle. The Medicare bill is written by the drug companies and insurance companies; the bill passes Congress in large part because of huge contributions from the drug and insurance companies to the Republican leadership and to President Bush and to Republican rank and file members; the bill then means huge subsidies for the insurance companies, $23.5 billion, and even bigger profits for the drug companies; and then, when all this is over, the premium goes up not $2, but $11, 17 percent, the largest premium increase in Medicare history. Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of corruption that I hoped we would never see in this body, where campaign contributions result in a bill written for the drug and insurance industries under the guise of improving Medicare, although seniors never really believed that. The bill passes in the dead of night, seniors' Medicare premiums go up 17 percent, the largest increase in history, and Republicans cash in with political contributions. Mr. Speaker, that is shameful.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, America's newspapers are widely read, except on Saturdays. So it is not much of a surprise that the Bush administration waited until late on a Friday afternoon leading into Labor Day weekend to announce that they were raising Medicare premiums by a record 17.4 percent. That is the sort of news, however, you just cannot suppress, so the news that Saturday was all about the Bush administration's plans to impose the biggest premium increase in Medicare's 38-year history. But the White House public relations office is nothing, if not tenacious. So faced with the bad news and faced with the blame for that increase that would naturally affix to the Bush administration, they did what they always do, they tried to shift the blame. Even though the Republicans have controlled the House and the Senate and the White House for the last 3\1/2\ years, it is actually the Democrats, they said, who are responsible for the premium increase. But no one bought it then and no one buys it now. The facts are the facts and no amount of spin, no amount of revisionist history, can change the facts. Before the Bush Medicare bill became law, the nonpartisan Medicare trustees estimated the monthly Medicare premium increase for 2005 would be $2. After the Bush Medicare bill became law, the premium increase instead jumped $11.60. That is the 17.4 percent record increase. The facts are that the premium increase after the Bush Medicare law, which was written by the drug and insurance companies, is five times larger than the premium increase estimated before Congress passed the Medicare law. So where is all that money going? Where are the billions of dollars out of seniors' pockets, that huge increase, where are those dollars going? The Bush administration is quick to remind us that some of it goes to new preventive health care benefits. That is true. But what they are less eager to say is that a whole lot of it is going directly from seniors' pockets into the pockets of the biggest HMO insurance companies in the country. The Bush Medicare law creates a $23.5 billion slush fund that HMOs can use to lure seniors out of Medicare and out of Medicare's reliable, equitable core program into the HMO private insurance. This windfall is in addition, this insurance company payoff, to the payments HMOs receive in exchange for covering enrollees. It is a bonus largely paid for because of major political contributions the insurance and the drug industries have made to the Bush administration. Seniors who already spend more than 20 percent of their incomes on out-of-pocket health care costs are receiving a giant increase in their Medicare premiums, and HMOs are receiving a giant boost to their bottom line. HMO profits already, before the Bush administration did this, jumped 50 percent last year. They hardly need more money from America's overstretched seniors. Social Security benefits for seniors will increase by 2 percent next year. So the Social Security increase and the checks that seniors get will go up 2 percent. The Medicare premiums will go up 17 percent. I will say it again. The Bush administration is draining billions from the Medicare trust fund into the pockets of the big insurance companies. At the same time, the Bush administration is emptying the pockets of America's seniors, again to the tune of billions of dollars. It is no secret that President Bush and his privatization of Medicare plans wants to take the responsibility for retiree health care away from Medicare and give it to HMOs. But to actually make seniors pay more so the President can pave over their Medicare program, every senior should be enraged, every American taxpayer should be outraged and none of us should put up with it. The bottom line is the Medicare legislation which the President pushed through this Congress and signed was written by the drug industry and the insurance industry. Medicare premiums went up 17 percent announced by the administration earlier this month and the drug companies and the insurance companies have given President Bush and the Republican leadership tens of millions of dollars in political contributions this year. In the end, it is really as simple as that.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, President Bush was again in Ohio in the last few days, a key battleground State, again trying to justify a failed economic policy, a policy where we have lost one out of six manufacturing jobs in our State, a policy where we have lost 150 jobs every single day of the Bush administration, yet the President's answer continues to be the same old tired bromides, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Taxpayers who make $1 million a year, they get a $123,000 tax cut, hoping it trickles down to create new jobs. That has not worked. The other President Bush answer to bad economic times is more trade agreements that ship jobs overseas. In fact, this body is coming back in a lame duck session in November, probably to try to pass a Central American Free Trade Agreement to expand the failed policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr. Speaker, we need a new economic direction in my State of Ohio where we have lost more than 200,000 jobs. We need a new economic direction in this country.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. When it comes to jobs, President Bush has a credibility problem, not just the White House applauding the offshore outsourcing of American jobs as a ``good thing'' then trying to explain that a good thing does not really mean a good thing; not just his Labor Department issuing guidelines to help companies avoid paying overtime to middle-class and low-income workers then insisting that they did not really mean for employers to actually use that guidance to avoid paying overtime; not just the fact that George Bush promised 6 million jobs with his tax cuts and has fallen 7 million short of that goal; not just that President Bush, in a 63-minute speech at the Republican Convention, mentioned the word ``jobs'' one time. The particular credibility problem I am talking about can be summed up in one word: McManufacturing. In the President's Economic Report, this is put out every year, signed by the President of the United States, by George Bush, this report referred to, in trying to answer the problem of lost manufacturing jobs in our country, and my State alone has lost 170,000, my State of Ohio alone has lost 170,000 manufacturing jobs, 150 jobs every single day since George Bush was sworn in 3\1/2\ years ago. So to deflect that, they have talked about changing the definition of manufacturing, and here is what they said. This is on page 73 of the President's economic report: ``The definition of a manufactured product is not straightforward. When a fast food restaurant sells a hamburger, is it providing a service, or is it combining inputs to manufacture products?'' So here is what we got, according to the Bush administration, who knows they have a problem with the loss of manufacturing jobs, we got the kid in the restaurant at McDonald's or Burger King, whatever. He is setting up an assembly line. He unwraps the package, and then he puts the bun out. And then they chemically treat the beef. We call it cooking, but in George Bush administration legalese, I guess they call it chemically treat the beef. They put that on the bun. And then they take the lettuce, and they put that on and slice the tomato, part of the manufacturing process, and put that on. Then they chemically treat the cheese. We would call it melting the cheese. And then they get a foreign component. They bring french fries in and make some kind of happy meal of some sort. I am not making this up. This is in this economic report. My point is, Mr. Chairman, that we know what manufacturing is. We know what manufacturing is not, and these are the kinds of games the Bush administration plays to try to deflect attention away from what they have done with American manufacturing. In my State of Ohio, we have lost one out of every six, one out of every six manufacturing jobs since George Bush took office. And his answer every time is more tax cuts for the richest people. If you are making $1 million, you get a $123,000 tax cut. That is not creating jobs in Ohio and across the Midwest in this country. His other response is more trade agreements that continue to ship jobs overseas. It is clear, Mr. Chairman, we need a different direction. That different direction is to extend unemployment benefits to the 60,000 or 70,000 Ohioans who are looking for jobs but have lost their benefits; they have expired. This Congress will not extend unemployment benefits. We also need to quit giving incentives to companies that send their jobs overseas. We continue to give them tax breaks instead of passing the bipartisan Crane-Rangel bill, which will give those companies that manufacture domestically, give them incentives. We need to stop those tax breaks, as I said, that ship jobs overseas and stop those tax breaks for those companies, in giving those companies contracts with the Government, like Halliburton and other companies, that continue to violate so much of what we stand for in our country. Then the President wants to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement which will, again, be more of the same. We need to stop these kinds of trade agreements. We need to pass unemployment compensation. We need to pass bipartisan legislation to give incentives to those companies who manufacture in America. This amendment, while modest in its goals, I believe at least is honest in its goals and honest in deciding what really is manufacturing, what is not manufacturing. It stops the games. This Congress needs to stay in session and pass legislation that really will create jobs. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time and ask support of the amendment.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, President Bush said about a year ago he would veto any Medicare bill that cost taxpayers more than $400 billion. The President then signed a bill that cost $551 billion. His Medicare Administrator, who had lied to Congress, who had not shared any of this information as they continued to say it was $400 billion to people on both sides of the aisle, his Medicare Administrator knew the true bill's cost long before the President signed it, and you have got to think that the President knew what the bill cost since the Medicare Administrator works for the President, that the President knew what the bill cost before he picked up his pen and signed that legislation late last year. Seniors would have been outraged had they known that this bloated bill that the President signed would have increased their Medicare premiums 17 percent. Image that, the Medicare premiums that seniors have paid, they have fluctuated a little over the years, but imagine a 17 percent increase, the largest increase in Medicare premiums in Medicare history. Thirty-eight years of Medicare, never an increase like this. But seniors would obviously have been outraged to know that Republicans in Congress and the Administrator not only made this happen by passing that bill, but that the President and the administration and the Republican leadership knew that this increase was going to happen because of this bill. But, of course, this increase happened. Of course, George Bush had to push forward and announce a 17 percent increase. Why? Because of the increased subsidies in the Medicare bill for the insurance industry, for the HMOs. The health maintenance organizations had a 50 percent profit increase last year, yet we are subsidizing them additionally under this bill to the tune of billions of dollars. So, of course, we have to take money out of seniors' pockets in increased Medicare premiums and then turn that money over to Medicare HMOs. Here is how it works. In this Medicare bill that Congress passed last year, a year ago, starting in March 2004, Medicare HMOs got from taxpayers $229 million. In April they got $229 million. Still no Medicare drug benefit, which does not go into effect until 2006, but the HMOs were getting subsidized by the Federal Government. In June, $229 million. In July $229 million from seniors and taxpayers to the Medicare HMOs, to the health maintenance organizations, yet still no Medicare drug benefit. July $229 million. August $229 million. This month, $229 million more, and still no prescription drug benefit for seniors. September, October, November, December and all of next year Medicare HMOs, private insurance companies, will continue to get a subsidy from the Federal Government of $229 million extra that they were not getting before this Medicare bill took effect. Of course, the President had to increase premiums 17 percent to pay these insurance companies subsidies. Why would the President raise Medicare premiums to give money to insurance companies? Well, it might be the fact that insurance companies have given tens of millions of dollars to the President's reelection, tens of millions of dollars to my friends on the other side of the aisle. It might have something to do, too, with the fact that this Medicare bill was written by the drug companies, written by the insurance companies. Drug company profits will go up $180 billion over the next 10 years because of this prescription drug bill. Insurance companies subsidies, subsidies directly from seniors through higher premiums and taxpayers will go up literally tens of billions of dollars to those insurance companies, to those HMOs. The whole Medicare bill, middle of the night debate, vote at 6 o'clock in the morning after the rolls were kept open for 3 hours. One Republican Member accused his own leadership of trying to bribe him on the House floor; arm twisting in the middle of the night; and then the secrecy of trying to foist this 17 percent Medicare increase by announcing it sort of under the cover of darkness, late in the afternoon, right before Labor Day weekend; the secrecy of this whole administration, and ultimately the payoff that this Medicare bill has done, the payoff to the drug and insurance industries because of political contributions. Remember, a 17 percent increase; a record in the history of Medicare; never an increase this big; 17 percent, the largest premium increase in Medicare history in order to subsidize the insurance companies, in order to give even bigger profits to this country's drug companies. Mr. Speaker, it is shameful.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, Republican leadership in the Senate confirmed last week they have no intention of acting on prescription drug importation legislation. Senate leader Frist said there just is not time to take it up. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it has been 400 days since a bipartisan majority in the House passed legislation giving Americans access to safe, affordable medicine from Canada and other allied nations, 400 days. Since then, the Senate has passed legislation commending a sculptor, a painter, its own staff, the nation of Bulgaria, and Smokey the Bear. The Senate has recognized the importance of motorsports. The Senate, as has the House, has spent many days renaming post offices and Federal buildings from sea to shining sea. There was time for all of those things, but for an issue as important to the American people as relief from the exploding price of prescription drugs, the other body simply could not find the time. This importation issue is just one example of the three Ds of the Bush administration's health policy playbook: denial, disinformation, and dodging responsibility. Here is one example: the Bush administration suppressed the new true cost of the Medicare law. The bill was originally tagged at $400 billion. The President told us that. The President said he would not sign it if it cost more than that. The government's own Medicare actuary and the President surely knew, the President's staff knew, that the bill actually cost $530 billion. So what did they do? They suppressed it. In a nutshell, the President's gag order worked, the bill passed, and the President signed it. And do my colleagues know what we got? Seniors got a 17 percent increase in their premiums, the largest increase ever inflicted on America's senior population, simply because the President of the United States did not tell the truth when he signed that bill and when he lobbied Congress for that bill. Importation is another example of the Bush disinformation strategy. The drug industry has no better friend than President Bush. Of course they do not. The drug industry has given President Bush $30 million for his reelection, has given millions of dollars to my friends on the other side of the aisle. Of course President Bush will do the drug industry's bidding. That is why we ended up with a 17 percent increase, the largest premium increase ever inflicted on America's seniors. Dodging responsibility is the third play in the Bush administration's health policy playbook. The best example is a 17 percent increase. The President announced the 17 percent increase on Friday afternoon before Labor Day. The press had gone home, people had turned their TV sets off if they were watching any of these announcements, and the President thought nobody would notice. Well, people certainly noticed. But the President then said, because people did notice, he said, it is not really my fault. I was the hapless victim, he said, of a formula written into the law. It happened to be the law that he pushed through Congress and that he signed, the Medicare law. That is like stomping on the gas pedal and blaming the engine for getting a speeding ticket. President Bush championed the Medicare bill. He twisted arms. We remember in this Chamber, my friends on the other side of the aisle remember this, we had a 3-hour vote starting at 3 in the morning, and it took until 6 in the morning. One Member was bribed on the House floor. Member after Member after Member had his arm twisted, her arm twisted, yet the President says it is not my fault that we had this 17 percent premium increase. The fact is, the President is responsible for that 17 percent premium increase, and the President needed to get that increase so that the insurance companies and the drug companies could get their money out of the bill. So basically what happened is the money is taken out of seniors' pockets; that is why we have this record 17 percent premium increase for every one of America's seniors. The money is taken out of the pockets of seniors; and then that money is taken together, billions of dollars, and put into the coffers of the drug companies and the insurance companies, direct subsidies for the drug companies, increased profits to the insurance companies, and then it comes full circle, and those companies then put millions of dollars in President Bush's campaign, in Majority Leader Delay's campaign, in the campaigns of Republican leadership in the House, in the other body, and for the President of the United States. Mr. Speaker, it is scandalous that seniors are inflicted with a 17 percent, a record increase in premiums so that George Bush could have his campaign funded by the drug companies and funded by the insurance companies. It is wrong. They should be ashamed.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the time of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the President spent some time recently taking, and I concede this, well-deserved credit for last year's Medicare bill, for foisting last year's 678-page, $534 billion Medicare law on seniors and the rest of the American public. The fact that he is proud of this law, a law that hands HMOs $12 billion in bonus payments, HMO insurance companies get $12 billion in bonus payments while raising seniors' premiums by 17 percent, a record amount, raises a larger issue: How have seniors fared under the last 3\1/2\ years of the Bush administration? It is not a difficult question to answer. The facts speak for themselves. We remember several months ago the President actively lobbied for the Medicare overhaul that would treat seniors without drug coverage like second-class citizens, forcing them out of traditional Medicare and into private insurance company HMOs. Members will remember that vote. It took place in the middle of the night. It was a 3-hour vote, the longest in congressional history. There was more campaign payoff money on that vote from insurance companies and drug companies to Republican Members of the Congress. We all remember that. The President put his weight behind that new Medicare law that lines the pockets of HMOs to the tune of $12 billion, that lines the pockets of drug companies to the tune of $182 billion, and explicitly blocks seniors from access to competitively priced prescription drugs. The insurance companies, as I said, got a payment of $12 billion. The drug companies' profits went up $182 billion and Republican leadership and the President did very well in this campaign year with contributions from the drug companies and the insurance companies. They could certainly afford it after legislation that will create and bring to them those huge profits. After that, the President spends millions of dollars of our money, of taxpayer money, of dollars that could have gone to a prescription drug plan, could have gone to seniors to reduce the cost of seniors' drugs, but the President spends millions of dollars of our money on ads touting the new Medicare bill with the slogan ``same Medicare, better benefits,'' even though the President and his advisers knew his handiwork would be directly responsible for the largest premium increase in Medicare history, 17 percent, the largest premium increase in Medicare's 38-year history, not to mention deductibles that will for the first time that seniors have to pay increase year after year after year. Do not believe anyone that tells you the Bush administration is not responsible, in spite of the ads the President is running, is not responsible for the 17 percent premium increase just because he says premiums are calculated by a formula. Yes, they are calculated by a formula written in the bill that the drug and insurance companies wrote that the President pushed through. That is like pouring gasoline on a campfire, then blaming someone else when the forest burns down. The President's Medicare law, inflated by a $12 billion HMO slush fund and an outright prohibition on bulk rate prices, bringing the price down, swelled the overall cost of Medicare which in turn increased the premium that seniors pay. America's seniors know it. You and I know it. Everyone in this Chamber knows that is why premiums went up, because of the deal the President made with the drug companies and the insurance companies. In his budget proposal this year, the President recommends cutting $60 billion from the Medicaid program, $60 billion, even though Medicaid covers 70 percent of the nursing home care provided in this country. Without Medicaid, two-thirds of America's seniors in nursing homes would have to find some other source of care. For many of those seniors, there is no other source of care. For others, families have to patch together the care any way they can, even if it means they become impoverished. Medicaid provides health care, nursing home care and home health care to nearly 5 million seniors living below the poverty line, 149,000 people in my State of Ohio alone. The recession and massive job losses have left States struggling to finance their full financial obligations to Medicaid. If the Federal Government does not do its part, the Medicaid program is in jeopardy. The Bush administration is simply not doing its part because of its budget cuts to Medicaid and because of the tax cuts which have gone overwhelmingly to the 1 percent wealthiest Americans. The President's hand-picked Social Security Commission came up with a privatized plan to drain $1.8 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund over the next 5 years. Privatizing Social Security, privatizing Medicare, cutting Medicaid is no benefit to seniors. It is the wrong direction for our country.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 441, 442, and 443, I was in the Cleveland airport awaiting a flight which was delayed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on 441, ``yes'' on 442, and ``yes'' on 443.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin, for yielding me this time. For the first time, under the San Manuel decision, workers at Indian casinos, Indians and non-Indians alike, enjoy the full protection of the NLRA's right to organize and right to engage in collective bargaining. The right to organize and collectively bargain, those rights are internationally recognized ILO human rights. Many tribes have established tribal labor ordinances pursuant to State gaming compacts. Basic labor rights, including the right to free association, the right to collective bargaining, and labor rights that are reflected in both the NLRA and many tribal labor ordinances, are the rights that we insist on in international trading with our international trading partners, including underdeveloped nations. We insist that labor rights be enforced in international trade agreements. We include provisions in trade agreements to protect those rights. We debate those rights on the House floor. We insist upon that, yet this amendment denies those rights to workers in the United States. This amendment leaves workers with no enforceable right to organize or to engage in collective bargaining. So we are saying to other countries, do it there, but in our own country we are not preserving and protecting those labor rights, the rights to organize and the rights to bargain collectively. Rather than pass this amendment, Mr. Chairman, we should be working with both tribal and labor representatives to discuss solutions to the potential conflict between workers' rights and tribal sovereignty. The Hayworth amendment pits workers' rights against tribal rights. Ultimately, it damages both. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.