Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is hard to think when this bill was written by my friends on the other side of the aisle, if my colleagues remember, during the debate on that, they started the debate at midnight. The vote was cast at 3 in the morning, not finished until 6 in the morning, so they could twist enough arms and do enough drug company contributions to get it through, it is hard to think that seniors were ever in the calculation. It was about the drug industry and the insurance industry.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, think about this. We are giving the insurance industry $46 billion just direct, reach in taxpayers' pockets, put $46 billion from taxpayers' pockets into insurance companies' coffers. I mean, there is no doubt about that, $46 billion. That is actually $1,100 for every single senior in this country. There are 40 million Medicare beneficiaries. That is more than $1,000 for every senior in this country. So instead of giving $1,000 to seniors to buy a drug benefit, which is a lot of money and most seniors have drug costs not much more than that, and many have a lot more, but $1,000 goes a long way for anybody, instead of giving $1,000 to every senior, we are giving the insurance industry $46 billion, $46 billion that could go to all kinds of things. But how much money did they give President Bush and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and the Republican leadership?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Everywhere, Mr. Speaker. And I cannot think of any other reason. It is all because President Bush has received literally millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the drug industry, from the insurance industry, and from Mr. Halbert, the CEO of AdvancePCS and his company and other companies that make these prescription drug cards. I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones). It is just incredible that the Congress has passed something to put more confusion in seniors' lives, to make the choices more difficult, more complicated. One of 50 cards that gives a small discount instead of using the buying power of 40 million Medicare beneficiaries to get one good discount that every senior can put in his wallet or in her purse and get a good 30, 40, 50 percent discount like the Canadians and the French and the Germans and the Japanese and the Israelis and the Swedes and everybody else.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman next door in Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is almost like NAFTA. People lose their jobs. We are retraining them. We are retraining seniors so they can negotiate private health plans. Think about what the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) said now. We had a choice. We could do what President Bush wanted to do on behalf of his friends that own the drug companies and the insurance companies. We could have 50 cards to choose from and seniors can go through and try to choose the best one and pay $30 and the cardholder changes the way it works and changes the discount, changes what drugs are available. We can look at 50 cards and choose and get about a 10 or 15 percent discount, or we could use one card and we could tell the government to negotiate price, tell the government to negotiate on behalf of 39 million Medicare beneficiaries a better price the way Canada does. Canada's prices are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 percent lower than the United States because the Canadian government on behalf of the whole country, 29 million people, negotiates drug prices. Why could we not use a card like this, give this to every senior, and then negotiate prices on behalf of every senior in this country, 39, 40 million beneficiaries? They go to a drug store and they show this card and they automatically get that 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 percent discount. Instead, because President Bush receives so much money from the drug and insurance industry, he has given us 50 cards for seniors to choose one of the 50, and then maybe, if they are lucky, get a consistent 10 or 15 percent discount. So we have one card that could do 50, 60, 70 percent discount or a choice of 50 that might do a 10, 15, 20 percent discount. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is hard to say that it is a good deal when the drug companies raised the price 20 percent and President Bush has a discount card that might be 12 or 13 percent, and then it happens again and again. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), who has done so much in this whole issue.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. One card for $30.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of my friend from California (Ms. Waters) and her passion about what has happened in Haiti and how our government has not been exactly on the right side of that. Equally important, I want to say something about my friend from California (Mr. Dreier) and his comments. To try to make it sound like the Democrats and Senator Kerry want the French and the German model, while he wants the red, white, blue American model is just a bit much. We are all proud of the economic growth. We are all proud of the freedoms of our country. We are all proud of our strong environmental laws, our worker safety laws, our laws to protect the public and the dynamic economy we have. No one is arguing, nobody I know, John Kerry, anybody else is arguing we want the French economy or we want to be Germany. What we are arguing is that we can do better with this economy than George Bush has done. We look back at the 1990s during Bill Clinton's 8 years and saw 25 million jobs created. We look at George Bush's 3\1/2\ years and see 3 million jobs lost, and we see a President who, during his term, will be the first since Herbert Hoover that has expressed, that has experienced a net loss of jobs. I look at my State when I hear the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) speaking about this incredible economy. Then I look at my State, and we hope we had an economy like he was talking about. I do not think very many places in this country, if any places, do have that kind of economy, the picture he painted; but we know what we need to do to make the economy better. Instead, President Bush has used the same old tired bromides, tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the society. If you make a million dollars in a year under the Bush plan, you get a $20,000 tax cut. The Republicans hope this tax cut will trickle down and create jobs. It clearly has not worked. We lost 3 million jobs in the last 3\1/2\ years. The second part of his economic plan over and over is let us do more NAFTAs, let us do more trade agreements that continue to ship jobs overseas, that outsource, that hemorrhage jobs to China and Mexico. That clearly is not working, but I understand my friend from California. I understand his viewpoint. Members of Congress do not feel the anxiety that my constituents feel. In my State, we have lost 177,000 manufacturing jobs. One out of six manufacturing jobs in my State has simply disappeared during George Bush's Presidency. Yet George Bush's answer continues to be more tax cuts for the most privileged and continues to be trade agreements that do not work and continues to be this ideological mission to give tax cuts and say that automatically tax cuts to the wealthy automatically create jobs. It simply has not worked. What we need to do is extend unemployment benefits to the 1 million Americans, fifty-some thousand Ohioans, whose benefits have expired since January. We need to, instead of rewarding those companies that go offshore and change their corporate headquarters to Bermuda so they can avoid taxes and have continued to get various kinds of Federal contracts, on-bid contracts in the case of Halliburton, and all of that, we need to pass legislation that will actually give tax breaks to those companies that stay in the United States and manufacture here. Several manufacturing companies from my State came to see me today. They cannot believe we continue to give tax breaks to these big, multinational corporations who ship jobs overseas, who outsource to India, and we do not give any kind of tax incentives to American manufacturers. I just wanted to say that in response to my friend from California. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I choose a card and I get a decent discount, even though the price goes up 20 or 30 percent per year. So you are the card maker, you can both cut the discount and you can take my drug off the discount card list totally?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. So I look through these cards. I am a senior and I decide Fosamax is here, and they also do Claritin and Zoloft, so I want this card. I pay $30 and sign up for the whole year. And then Mr. Halbert's company, if it is his card, he can change it, but I have to stay with this card, is that how it works?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, tonight I am joined by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and I want to talk about Medicare and the discount card program that has been unveiled this week. Enrollment began for the prescription drug discount card through the Medicare bill passed last year. For some seniors in Ohio, this can mean $600 in prescription drug benefits. On the surface that sounds good, and we want seniors to look into these cards. If they can get any help, that is a good thing. However, the real story about the discount cards is found in the details. The discount drug cards will further complicate an already confusing process for America's seniors. Instead of implementing a prescription drug benefit under one program, Medicare, the simplest, cleanest and the deepest discount available and possible, which 40 million of America's seniors know and trust, the administration fought on behalf of the insurance and the drug companies, who really wrote this bill, the administration fought to create an unnecessarily complex system that diverts money away from benefits and gives it to drug companies, insurance companies, and to these discount card companies that we will talk about in a moment. The big drug companies under this original $400 billion bill, the big drug companies will profit an additional $150 billion from this bill, and insurance companies will get $46 billion. The insurance companies get a direct subsidy, a direct payment of my tax dollars and your tax dollars directly into their pockets for this bill. No wonder, considering the drug companies, we hear on the streets of Washington, the drug companies are going to give $100 million to President Bush's reelection. They have already given tens of millions. No wonder the President wrote this bill so these companies benefited. The drug card portion of the bill was in part crafted by friends of the President, such as David Halbert, CEO of Advanced PCS, one of the discount card companies, a man who set President Bush up in business before he was President and before he was governor, around the time he ran unsuccessfully for Congress, Mr. Halbert set President Bush up in business and helped President Bush make his first million in an unsuccessful oil company. It is no surprise then that this system features 70 cards by 70 different private companies. It is a lot like the multiple HMO system that my Republican friends are trying to foist on Medicare beneficiaries. The gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) has said on the House floor that seniors want a choice of doctors and hospitals and prescription drugs, they do not want a choice of insurance agents or fancy brochures or insurance companies. Unfortunately, what this discount card does is give seniors a choice of a whole bunch of discount cards, and it is almost impossible to figure out which one is the best. A senior in Akron in my district will have to research through 50 cards to find one that works. Under our plan, they could have used one card. Under the Republican plan, they are going to have to go through 50 cards. They are going to have 50 cards that they need to sort through. Let me see, I am taking Fosamax. This card covers Fosamax, this card covers Vioxx, but this card covers Zoloft, but this card covers Celebrex. Why do they make this more confusing instead of allowing seniors one card, one discount, one plan. Instead, the Republicans have 50 cards, 50 plans, 50 insurance companies, 50 mailings coming to their house, 50 insurance agents knocking on their doors representing 50 different insurance companies. The answer is why would they choose this over this? The answer is pretty obvious. It just might, and correct me if I am wrong, I ask my friends from Washington and Ohio and Maine and New Jersey, it might have something to do with the insurance industry, the drug industry, and Mr. Halbert, CEO of Advanced PCS, that makes these cards, it might have something to do with the fact that they gave lots of money to President Bush's reelection. We have all read in the paper that President Bush has set all kinds of fund-raising records. One week it is 150, then he flies Air Force One out to Cleveland or Portland or New Jersey or Washington State, does a little bit of government business so he can charge it off to the government, and then he does another fund-raiser and raises another $3 million. It just keeps going up, setting records every week. No wonder he can raise $200 million when he does things like this instead of doing it right. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, last month, not too long ago, the President was asked in a news conference, only his third news conference in prime time since he took office, What would your biggest mistake be after 9-11 and what lessons have you learned from it? President Bush said, ``I'm sure something will pop in to my mind here in the midst of this press conference, with all pressure of trying to come up with an answer but it hasn't yet.'' Then on May 1, earlier this week, the President, joking about it, said, ``I was going to start off tonight telling some self-deprecating jokes.'' And the Republican crowd laughed. And then he said, ``But then I couldn't think of any mistakes that I had made to be self-deprecating about.'' Now, it is hard to believe that anyone in my State of Ohio who has lost his or her job, 177,000 manufacturing workers in Ohio have lost their jobs since President Bush took office, it is hard to think that any one of them thought that was very funny, that the President could not think of any mistakes that he made; mistakes that he could learn from, that he could correct and do something about. It is hard to think that any veterans who have seen their benefits cut under this President think this was very funny. It is hard to think that those soldiers who do not have body armor in Iraq because the President and the Pentagon did not plan for it, that they think that is very funny, to say that he could not think of any mistakes. I do not think that too many Americans of the 43 million without health care think that is very funny that the President mentioned he could not think of any mistakes that he had made. Now, there are a group of us coming to the floor tonight. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), that are going to talk about some of the mistakes, not to embarrass the President, in some sense not even to criticize the President, but just we hope to point some mistakes out tonight that the President has made so that he can correct them. Because we are all taught as children to learn from our mistakes. If the President is unwilling to admit a mistake, if the President is unwilling to acknowledge that he even made any, and then if the President is willing to sit around and joke that he has not made any mistakes when we have lost this number of jobs in my State of Ohio and across the country, when our soldiers in Iraq are in harm's way because we have not provided body armor, because we are not providing the armor underneath the Humvees and on the doors of the Humvees to protect American troops, it is not really not much of a laughing matter. Today the President was in Ohio and, again, the President continued the let us just kind of joke about this. AP reports, ``With humor and sarcasm, President Bush is trying to make John Kerry eat his own words. At every stop of his Midwest bus tour, the President is mocking Kerry to the delight of partisan audiences.'' I understand this is a Presidential race. I understand that politicians need to attack each other and make fun of each other and all of this, but in light of the fact that the President is unwilling to admit any of these mistakes he made, we, tonight, the five or six of us, would like to help him talk about, whether it is a mistakes he made with weapons of mass destruction or Medicare or veterans' benefits or the tax cuts, a millionaire gets $123,000 in tax cuts; whether it is job loss, whether it is totally forsaking both small business and the manufacturing base in this country. The entire six Democratic-member delegation of Ohio wrote the President a list of questions as he arrived in Dayton, Ohio today in his Ask the President Forum that he is beginning to hold around the country. He did the first one in Dayton today. We had some questions for the President about the new Medicare bill because we recognize that the Medicare bill was a mistake. First of all, the President allowed the drug companies and the insurance companies to write the bill. He also allowed the drug companies, that are going to make $150 billion additional profits from that bill. The insurance companies will get a $46 billion direct subsidy from this bill. But no surprise there, the President has already received tens of millions of dollars from the drug and the insurance industry for his election. In fact, the word in the street in Washington, my colleagues and I have all heard, is that the President will receive a total of $100 million from the drug industry for his reelection. Of course, he is going to support the drug industry. But, frankly, we consider that a mistake, when you write a Medicare bill that helps the drug industry, it helps the insurance industry, and then maybe you get around to dropping a few dollars for seniors. When they release this prescription drug discount card today, we asked the President a couple of questions. Is it true the Medicare law allows drug and insurance companies offering discount cards to change covered drugs and discounts weekly? Does this not mean that seniors may choose a card one week that will be worth little or nothing to them the next? In other words, seniors sign up for one of these discount drug cards. If you sign up for one of the 50 or 60 or 70 cards, you are stuck with it the entire year, even though the drug discount card company can turn around and take your drug off the list, can raise the price, can cut your discount. Mr. Speaker, the President also mentioned in this bill, this Medicare bill, there is also a prohibition on drug companies, on the government negotiating cheaper prices. We know we can get cheaper drugs in Canada, yet the President will not allow it. Something is wrong. I wish the President would acknowledge his mistake. Go back to the drawing board and write a drug bill for the seniors, not for the drug companies.

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. Madam Speaker, President Bush came to Ohio today on about his 20th trip to campaign for reelection in our State, and the reason he comes back so often in Ohio is to try to explain away his terrible economic record. Since George Bush became President, Ohio has lost one-sixth of its manufacturing jobs; 177,000 manufacturing jobs alone have left the State. Every single month of the Bush administration, we have lost manufacturing jobs. The President's answer? More tax cuts for the most privileged people. If you make $1 million, you get a $123,000 tax cut, hoping that will trickle down and create jobs. It is not working. His other solution is more NAFTA-like trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs, that send jobs overseas. We need to change the direction of this economy, to change the direction of this country. Workers should get their unemployment compensation extended. We should be giving breaks to those companies that manufacture in the United States, not ship jobs overseas.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, President Bush is in my home State of Ohio, campaigning for maybe the 25th time. He knows he has to spend a lot of time in Ohio because of what has happened to the Ohio economy since George Bush has been President. Ohio's lost one-sixth, one out of every six manufacturing jobs has left the State, some 170,000 manufacturing jobs every single month in the Bush administration; but as he travels throughout Ohio, he is going to stop in Dayton and do a little program, Ask President Bush, and the members of the Ohio delegation put a list of questions we would like to ask the President about the new Medicare prescription drug discount card that the gentleman from New Jersey asked about earlier. I would like to go through some of these questions, hoping, as we pose these to the President and wrote him a letter, that we can get answers to them. We asked the President, is it true that the Medicare law allows drug and insurance companies offering discount cards to change covered drugs and discounts weekly? Does this not mean that seniors may choose a card one week and pay for it and be stuck with it for a year that will be worth little or nothing to them the next week? We ask, if seniors are guaranteed discounts that last as little as 1 week, why must they sign up for a discount card for the entire year and only that discount card? The $600 annual benefit will mean a lot to very low-income seniors, but this benefit lasts only 2 years. Many of the same seniors may be unable to pass the assets test required for the low-income benefit that will take effect in 2006. We ask the President, why give low-income seniors help now and then pull the rug out from under them in 2 years, give them the help before the election, and after the election, the help's not there? If the Federal Government acknowledges those seniors need assistance, why are we excluding them after the Presidential election? Ohioans can save, we found, almost 50 percent by importing prescription drugs from Canada, same drugs, same dosage, same manufacturer, from what the price is in the United States. With the cost of popular drugs rising at triple the rate of inflation, we are asking the President how he can deny seniors and all Americans access to these safe, more affordable drugs from Canada and France and Germany, when all over the world people are paying so much less. The law creating the discount card program expressly prohibits the government from negotiating prices for prescription drugs, but the VA's price negotiation system has proven effective. We asked the President, why are America's seniors being denied the benefit of the government's buying power to leverage for lower prices? We pretty much know the answers to these questions because this drug discount card simply will not work. The more we know about it, drug prices go up 25 percent in a year. The discount card will give maybe 10 or 15 percent. That is not price savings. That is really an insult. When we look at this, it is pretty easy to understand why. This prescription drug bill, the Medicare bill, was written by the insurance companies and written by the drug companies for the insurance companies and for the drug companies. President Bush brought the drug and insurance companies into the Lincoln Bedroom or into the Oval Office or somewhere in the White House and let them write this legislation. It is now the law of the land that now hurts our seniors, and there is not a real surprise there when the drug industry's already given President Bush tens of millions of dollars for his reelection. The word on the street in Washington is the drug industry will donate $100 million to the President's reelection campaign. The insurance industry is not quite as wealthy, not quite as generous, but will donate and has already donated millions of dollars to the President's reelection campaign. So it should come as no surprise that this is the kind of drug bill we get. Then to add insult to injury, the gentleman who wrote the language in the bill dealing with the discount drug card is, number one, a friend of the President's; and, number two, he has a discount drug card company. So we have got the drug industry writing the drug bill. We have got the insurance industry helping the drug industry write the drug bill, and now we have the discount card company writing the language for the discount cards. That is why America's seniors feel betrayed, because this Medicare bill is not for America's seniors. It is for President Bush's reelection campaign, for his fund-raising, and for those companies that are so powerful in this city.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago the President held only his third public news conference in the evening when Americans could watch it. He was asked a question by one reporter: After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, what would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it? Mr. Bush was surprised. He stopped, he paused, he hesitated. He said, I am sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all of the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it has not yet. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), who also spoke of this, and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky). We are not here particularly to criticize the President about this. We want to help the President learn from his mistakes; and we want to outline, each of us, a couple of mistakes tonight that I think the President could learn from, if he thought about them and if he tried to act on them. Saturday marks the 1-year anniversary of the President's flying on to the aircraft carrier with the sign that his staff put up that said ``Mission Accomplished.'' Karl Rove, the President's political guru, strategist, said recently he regrets using the ``Mission Accomplished'' sign; but nonetheless, it sort of galvanized the public to think about all of what this Iraq war has been about and what the Iraq occupation is about. But I want to concentrate tonight, as we look at some of the mistakes that have been made by the White House, mistakes that, unfortunately, he has not thought about and talked about publicly to learn from, whether it is what he has done with Medicare, or veterans, shortchanging veterans, or the tax cuts only for the wealthy, the loss of jobs, the weakening manufacturing base, trade agreements and all of that. But I want to talk tonight about how the soldiers have been equipped in Iraq. Only recently, I got a letter from a mother in Avon, Ohio, my district, informing me that her son serving in Iraq receives only one meal a day. Now, much of the last year I have met with families of young men and women serving in Iraq, and those families have talked about not enough safe drinking water. That is why so many of our servicemen and -women have come down with dysentery. Many have talked about having to send food to their sons or husbands or sisters who are serving in Iraq, because the military has not equipped them and Halliburton and those private contractors have not fed them well enough. Most seriously, and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is going to talk about this, as she has other nights, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) also, how we simply have not equipped our soldiers with the right kind of body armor. I met a young man on a plane one day who did reconnaissance for the military, just left, just had gotten home from Iraq. He was given one plate of body armor, everybody in his patrol was given one plate of body armor; and he said, we decided to put them on our fronts rather than our backs, because we were not going to be running from anybody. But he had to make that choice. Our government, our military, the Bush administration, would spend $1.5 billion in Iraq every week, but did not have the foresight and the interest to outfit our soldiers and our servicemen overseas with the right kind of equipment to keep them safe. As the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) said, we have not put the armor on the Humvees nearly to the degree necessary on the doors and on the underbelly. We have not provided the kind of body armor. Month after month after month after month, Members of Congress have stood on this floor, parents wrote the Pentagon, people called the White House demanding, asking, pleading that body armor be provided for our soldiers. Some people died, some young men and women in Iraq were killed because the government, the Pentagon, the White House, simply did not provide the most basic body armor for our soldiers. Then you go to the President's budget; you go to what is really the measure of ourselves as a Nation, to provide for those men and women after serving their country when they come home. I just would like to read you four quotes that I think will help us see how we can fix the President's mistake, the mistake of not caring for the Nation's veterans. The Paralyzed Veterans of America said, ``The lack of consistent funding for the VA and the uncertainty attached to the process fuels efforts to deny more veterans health care and charge more veterans for the care they receive.'' That is the Paralyzed Veterans who gave so much to their country. We are not taking care of them. The President of Veterans of Foreign Wars said, ``The President ignored veterans in the State of the Union address and in the 2005 budget. It is further evident that veterans are no longer a priority with the Bush administration.'' The Veterans of Foreign Wars. The Vietnam Veterans of America, ``The budget proposed by President Bush for veterans health care is not only inadequate, it is an insult to veterans.'' That is the Vietnam Veterans of America. The Disabled American Veterans said, ``It is clear that vets are not a national priority to the Bush administration. The President's budget plan attempts to shift the burden for funding veterans health care,'' shift the burden for funding veterans health care, ``to those brave men and women who have served and sacrificed for our country.'' Mr. Speaker, we can fix one of these mistakes. The President could fix them by adequately funding veterans benefits and taking care of our troops.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, President Bush was in Cincinnati this week to sell his program of tax cuts and trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the most privileged Americans, hoping that it would trickle down and create jobs and more trade agreements that unfortunately have shipped jobs overseas. The problem with his economic program in Ohio and elsewhere obviously is it is not working. We have lost almost 150 jobs every single day during the Bush administration. In Ohio alone one out of six manufacturing jobs in our State has disappeared. Yet the President's solution is always the same. Instead, this Congress should extend unemployment benefits to the 50,000 Ohioans and 1 million Americans who have seen their benefits run out. This Congress also should pass the bipartisan Crane-Rangel bill which will give incentives to manufacturers that manufacture in the United States, not outsource and ship jobs overseas.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, 8 days ago at the Presidential news conference, only the third he had done in prime time since he has been President, the President was asked just sort of an obvious question that we all deal with from time to time in our lives, political or not, tell us about one of the biggest mistakes you have made. The President kind of looked a little deer-in-the-headlights and he said, ``I am sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, but with all of the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, it just hasn't yet.'' We would today like to try to help the President, not because we want to criticize President Bush, but because we want to help him learn from his mistakes. We see several of the mistakes here, from veterans cuts, to trickle- down tax cuts for the wealthy, to trade that the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) talked about, to helping keep our soldiers as safe as possible that the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) talked about. I want to talk for a bit about Medicare, not the fact that the bill, they told us it would cost $400 billion, it will cost $534 billion. That was sort of a purposeful mistake from the President. Not about Medicare privatization, that mistake. Not about the gap in coverage, that if you have $5,000 in drug costs, the government only pays $1,000 of it, you have to pay $4,000 out of pocket. The mistake I want to talk about is not even the fact that the drug and insurance companies wrote that legislation. What I want to talk about is the specific prohibition in the bill that clearly the drug industry, the President at the behest of the drug industry, inserted into the bill that prohibits the government from negotiating the price of prescription drugs. Now understand, the Canadians pay a lot less than we do for prescription drugs because the Canadian Government negotiates directly with the drug company on behalf of 29 million citizens of Canada to get the best price. But this legislation, written by the drug companies, excuse me, written by the President, this legislation expressly prohibits our government on behalf of 39 million Medicare beneficiaries, prohibits our government from negotiating the best price for our Medicare beneficiaries. That is why we pay so much for our prescription drugs. Now, when the Architect of the Capitol bought the carpet in this room, he did not take the manufacturer's word that a fair price would impair carpet fiber research and then pay whatever the carpet company wanted. When the Park Service buys rangers' uniforms, it does not take just the first bid, no matter how expensive. But with drugs, the President and his allies in the drug industry and his friends that run the House of Representatives, the Republican leadership, they say the government must pay any price the drug industry wants to charge. That is why Lipitor costs $763 here, but $438 in Canada. That is why Fosamax costs $797 here, an anti-osteoporosis drug, mostly for women, but only $323 in Canada. That is why Tamoxifen, a breast cancer drug, costs nine times in the United States what it costs in France, even though U.S. taxpayers paid for much of the research through the National Institutes of Health to develop those drugs. Now, this policy, this mistake, this mistake on Medicare that the President made that says we are not going to negotiate price, we are going to let the drug companies charge whatever they want, this mistake is a joke on the American people; and the drug companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Perhaps the reason for this Presidential mistake, the Medicare prescription drug Presidential mistake, is the fact that the millions of dollars have come from the drug industry to the Republican Party, and the word on the street is the drug industry is going to give President Bush's reelection $100 million.