Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for those comments. What is disturbing to me is that in this economic report, as the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) said, on page 4, signed by President Bush, this economic report put out by the President just this month says that there is nothing wrong with the way the global economy is operating. He said outsourcing is a good thing. Mr. Mankiw actually said, as we are seeing some of the most highly- skilled American workers, radiologists, for example, seeing their jobs threatened, Mr. Mankiw says an MRI or an X-ray will be taken that will be e-mailed to perhaps Bangalore, perhaps somewhere else, and read by a physician there who makes some minute percent of whatever the physician makes here, and then it comes back, because those radiologists are not in as much demand today as they once were. He said, well, it is a question of comparative advantage. Perhaps we just need to quit training so many radiologists. They cannot compete. We need to maybe train more general surgeons or more family practice doctors. Let me do a little tour around the world to show what the gentleman from Oregon said about how there simply are not going to be enough people to buy these goods. If a Nike worker in Oregon loses his job to a Nike worker in China, there is one less consumer to buy cars; one less consumer to buy clothes, because the Nike worker in China is not making much to buy anything. Let me tell a quick story. About 5 years ago, when Congress was considering the fast track legislation to in those days lay the groundwork to extend NAFTA to Latin America, which President Bush is trying to foist on us, I, at my own expense, flew to McAllen, Texas, rented a car with a couple of friends, drove across the border and went to Reynoso, Mexico. I went to a worker's home who worked at General Electric Mexico, one of the largest employers in Mexico. The home of these workers were about 20 feet by 30 feet. They lived in a one-room shack: dirt floor, no running water, no electricity. When it rained hard, the dirt floor turned to mud. When you walked behind the shack, you saw a ditch of human and industrial waste. Who knows what it was. Children were playing nearby, as children will. The American Medical Association said that area along the border is perhaps the most toxic area in the Western Hemisphere. Now, as you walked through this neighborhood of these shacks, you could tell where the workers worked because their homes were constructed out of packing material, boxes, wood platforms, crates, whatever, of the company for which they worked or the supplier for the company for which they worked. We then visited nearby an auto plant. These workers at this GE plant in this home were making about $45 a week and working about 60 hours a week. But we went to this auto plant, and this auto plant in Reynoso, Mexico, 3 miles from the United States of America, looked just like an auto plant in the United States, just like a GM plant in Lordstown, near my colleague's district, or a Ford plant in Avon Lake or Lorain. It was modern. In fact, it was newer than the auto plants in our State mostly. It was modern, it was clean, it was the latest technology, and the workers were productive and hard-working. There was one difference between the Mexican auto plant and an American auto plant. That difference was there was no parking lot in the Mexican auto plant because the workers do not make enough to buy the cars that they make. You can go halfway around the world to Malaysia to a Motorola plant, and you will see the workers do not make enough to buy the cell phones they make. You can come back to this hemisphere and go to Haiti and see that the workers do not make it, to a Disney plant, and the workers do not make enough to buy the toys for their children they make. You can go back around the world to China and go to a Nike plant and see the workers do not make enough to buy the shoes which they make. Now, the lesson is this continued downhill slide with globalization. If we pass a Central America Free Trade Agreement, if Congress passes the Free Trade Area of the Americas, if Congress continues the tax cuts for the wealthy and continues to allow the drug companies and the insurance companies to sit in the Oval Office, with a Vice President who is still on the Halliburton payroll, I might add, at $3,000 a week, allows them to continue to write this legislation, we are going to have a country like Brazil, with a very wealthy group at the top and a bunch of people at the bottom that are not making enough money to buy the shoes and to buy the toys for their kids, and to buy the cars, and to buy the cell phones. If that is the society we want, then I guess maybe this report says let us keep doing it. But if it is not the society we want, then we need to say no to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and we need to say no to this economic policy that has caused some of the highest unemployment rates in the country, in Oregon, and has devastated eastern Ohio and northeast Ohio where I live and damn near the rest of the State. We need to say no to that.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is clear that either the President needs to change his mind, or we need to change the President. President Bush came to Richfield, Ohio, on Labor Day, and to his credit, he created a job that day. He said he was going to start a new office called the job of the manufacturing czar. He promised the job, but he has not filled the manufacturing czar's job yet. It is pretty clear when the President's answer to everything is the same tired, trickle-down economics, tax breaks for the wealthiest people and more trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs. If he is not going to change his mind, then this country is pretty clearly going on a different course.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that means if you live in O'Leary, Ohio, and you have worked in what we used to call in this country traditional manufacturing, not ``Mc manufacturing'' is, I guess, the fast-food restaurant category. I guess there will be two categories of manufacturing, traditional manufacturing and ``Mc'' manufacturing. It will be M-c, with the arches, manufacturing. This is not really funny. It is kind of depressing that they would think that this is what we are going to, in the new era, the new Bush era, the new 21st century, that this is what we are going to call manufacturing; that these workers in O'Leary, Ohio, who have been in traditional manufacturing making $12, $14, $16 an hour, with decent health benefits, with a decent retirement, that they will lose their jobs in manufacturing, they will get another job in manufacturing, working at McDonald's for $7 an hour with no benefits, with no health care and no retirement.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, as President Bush makes his decision about sending troops to Haiti, I wish that he would look at Haiti's history and would look at the history of our relationship with Haiti. 210 years ago, Haiti was a nation as wealthy as the 13 Colonies. After a slave revolt, Haiti in the early part of the next century, in 1804, proclaimed its independence. Our government, a country with slave owners, would not recognize the government of Haiti, a country where slaves were now running the government, running the country, former slaves. We did not recognize them for more than 50 years; and then, Mr. Speaker, the United States Marines, in the early part of this century, occupied Haiti. Some years later, when Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier were in power in Haiti, U.S. interests funded and propped his government up, a bloody dictatorship. So now that President Aristide is in power, Mr. Speaker, we need to recognize this democracy. We have to deal with that as a democracy of equals.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, I do not want to argue with the gentleman from Vermont, but he has got to be fair. The fact is that the Republicans worked all summer to learn how to do this. It was not that they just figured out how to ram a bill through in the middle of the night in November to do the drug bill. If the gentleman will recall, in the middle of the night on a Thursday night in April, they rammed through by one vote a cut in veterans' benefits. Then in the middle of the night on a Thursday night in May, they eviscerated Head Start by one vote. Then in the middle of the night on a Thursday night in June, they cut education by, I believe, three votes. Then in the middle of the night on a Thursday in June or July, they did it again. Then even in the middle of the night in September, they passed $87 billion for Iraq. So they are getting pretty good at this. They may not follow the civics textbooks quite as well as we are hoping they would, but they have learned how to do things in the middle of the night when the press is gone, when the public has gone to sleep, when nobody much is in the press gallery, and then it really does not get very much attention in the papers. I hesitate to interrupt the gentleman, but I will go back to my friend from Vermont.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, if the gentleman from Vermont recalls, and the gentleman from New Jersey was there as I was that night they raised that money, we were actually in committee working on the prescription drug bill and we had to recess early that night so that they could go off to their fund-raiser and collect the millions of dollars that they raised. President Bush highlighted the event. The event was cochaired, as I recall, by the CEO of a British drug company, which also, obviously, has operations in the United States. But the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), the chairman of the committee who is soon to go work for the drug industry, shamelessly recessed the hearing about 5 or 6 o'clock. So they go out and change into their evening clothes, go off, do the fund-raiser, come back, and then we started the next morning.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey who I know has some drug companies in his State, and he has shown more courage in speaking out for the right things. The drug companies do good things, there is no doubt about it; but they also abuse the public interests in so many ways. The gentleman from New Jersey has always been there fighting for his constituents, even when many wealthy interests in New Jersey do not quite like what he does. All of us appreciate that.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I give credit to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, who wrote this bill, at least he was honest about it. He said, I sure hope it ends Medicare as we know it. Another prominent Republican on the Committee on Rules called Medicare a Soviet-style program. I wish the media would report those kinds of statements, because that is one of the few times that they are going to be honest. But in the Presidential race this year and in races for Congress, we are going to see people look into the camera and speak into the microphone and say, We love Medicare; we are preserving Medicare and protecting Medicare. We know they are not. They are not. They know they are not. That is why they are sending out, at taxpayers' expense, all of these phoney brochures, as the gentleman said, with the seal of government approval to engage in political campaigns with public dollars. That is what they are going to do all year. Seniors need to be warned when they get those mailings that they simply are not true, that they are not telling the truth about Medicare, that they want to undercut Medicare. They are deceptive. They are wrong. They are probably illegal. They should stop.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, one of the producers of the ads did the 2000 George Bush ads, and it was found out after the election that they did this subliminal message on one of those 2000 ads when they were talking about Al Gore in the George Bush campaign where they put the word R-A-T-S, ``rats,'' on the screen very quickly, so the human mind does not know that it sees it, but it actually was on the screen and it sticks in their mind without their knowing it. That is sort of the subliminal advertising that has been studied. The guy that did that is being paid by taxpayers and by seniors with Medicare money to do these ads. That is incredible, considering, as the gentleman from New Jersey said at the beginning that the Bush campaign already has $100 million in the bank. The drug companies are going to put $100 million more in his campaign. They are going to make $140 billion or more extra profits from this bill. So it is pretty clear that they could have afforded it themselves, but they let taxpayers pick it up. It is pretty amazing. Mr. Speaker, when I hear my friends talk about this, just about Medicare, I know people at home think that everybody is for Medicare, they would not want to mess up Medicare. But one of the differences of the two parties is that my friends on the other side of the aisle, and I think they are intellectually honest about it, but they really have never believed in Medicare. If we just briefly look at the history, 39 years ago when Medicare passed, only 10 Republicans voted for it. Gerald Ford voted against it, Bob Dole voted against it, Donald Rumsfeld voted against it, Strom Thurman voted against it in the Senate. They did not much like it then. Then, in 1995 when the Republicans finally had the majority, the first thing Newt Gingrich did was try to cut Medicare by $270 billion and then predicted that it would wither on the vine. So this is a group that has never really bought into the whole point of traditional fee- for-service Medicare that serves 40 million people in this country. They want private insurance to do it. They have always wanted private insurance to do this. That is why they allowed the private insurance companies to write the bill. But if this bill stays in effect, in 20 years Medicare will not be recognizable. It will be just like it was before 1965 when half the people in this country who are over 65 had no health insurance. Today, darn near everybody does, because we have this universal, beloved program called Medicare. The only people who really do not like Medicare are a few doctors that think they should be able to charge more and a bunch of Republican Members of Congress. Basically, the country likes this program. We should not be privatizing it. We should not be turning it over to insurance companies, because the government has run Medicare so well. Mr. Speaker, the administrative costs for Medicare: 2 percent. The administrative costs for private insurance: 15 percent. The fact is, Medicare is efficient, it is humane, it excludes nobody, it is available for everybody once you turn 65. It is a program that works. And Republicans, in the name of prescription drug coverage, have set this program to its early death if it continues. That is why we have to repeal this law. We have to stop it from ultimately taking effect. We have to turn the drug companies and the insurance companies, throw them out of the temple and come back and write this bill the way it ought to be written.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. You know what else? They are concerned about what happens in the election. The President and Karl Rove, the political strategist in the White House understand this bill has not gotten a very good public reception; and the reason it has not is because the public is catching on that it is written by and for the drug industry and it is written by and for the insurance industry. The public also, the seniors especially in this country, are beginning to read the fine print of the bill, and they see there is hardly any money out of this $400 billion for their drug benefit. So much of it goes to drug and insurance interests that they just really get pennies on the dollar.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I am sure it has nothing to do with the election.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank my friend from Texas and for her speaking out and leading on this and other issues. She is exactly right. If you remember this bill, a lot of us, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), a lot of us on the committee said that we should include a prescription drug benefit inside Medicare. Seniors understand Medicare. They understand premiums, copays, deductibles. They are not asking for insurance company choice. They are not asking for a choice of slick insurance company brochures. They like Medicare the way it works, choice of physician, choice of hospital, and we hoped choice of prescription drug. That was never allowed to be debated on the House floor. It is either vote for the bill or vote against the bill. Several people have talked tonight about how all that happened, but I want to share a handful of numbers that I think really sort of sum this up. First of all, when President Bush spoke from the floor of this House of Representatives, not far from where the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is now standing, during the State of the Union, he said that this new law, this new Medicare bill he signed in December, fulfilled a basic commitment to our seniors. It kept a promise, fulfilled a basic commitment to our seniors. This bill did fulfill some commitments, but, unfortunately, the commitments the President had were not to our seniors, and let me illustrate that for a moment. There are 100 Members of the United States Senate, there are 435 Members of the House of Representatives. Many people in the country know that. There are 535 Federal elected officials on this side of the Capitol and the other side in the Senate. There are 675 prescription drug registered lobbyists, 675 lobbyists, more than one per Member. In many ways, that tells the story, especially when you couple the fact that there are 675 lobbyists with the fact that the drug industry last year gave $21.7 million to Republican campaigns, and when you also factor in that the word on the street is that President Bush will get $100 million from the drug industry this year for his reelection. So I do not know why the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) or any of us should have been surprised that this bill was written by the drug industry for the drug industry. At the same time, the insurance industry had its hand on this bill. They contributed almost $26 million to Republican candidates last year. They also get a big part of this bill. So when the President signed this bill in December, this prescription-drug-Medicare-privatization bill, the President then said the cost was $400 billion. It ended up being much more than that, which I think they knew then but did not tell us for another 7 weeks. But of the $400 billion, the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan organization, said that of the $400 billion, $139 billion would go to additional profits for the drug industry. Now this is an industry that is already the most profitable industry in America. They had a 17 percent profit margin, according to Fortune. The rest of the Fortune 500 companies had a 3.1 percent margin. Theirs was 17 percent. It is pretty clear this is an industry that is doing pretty darn well anyway. But they are getting $139 billion more in profits under this $400 billion bill. The insurance industry is getting a $14 billion direct subsidy from the government. So it is no surprise that this bill turned out the way it has. It was a bill of, by and for the drug industry and of, by and for the insurance industry. You do not need a scorecard to figure that out in this business in these days in this government. I have been in politics a long time, but I have never seen this place owned and operated by interest groups the way it is. If there is a choice, if George Bush has a choice between the public interest and corporate interests, it is corporate interests every time. The prescription drug bill is written by the drug and insurance industry; Social Security privatization is written by Wall Street; energy legislation is written by Enron and Dick Cheney's other cronies. Privatization in Iraq, a $7 billion private contract went to Halliburton, a company that still pays the Vice President, still pays the Vice President of the United States $3,000 a week; and we have given them $7 billion in non-bid contracts. I mean, this place has been for sale. Never in its history has it been for sale the way it is now. As I said, if there is a choice between corporate interests and the public interest, this crowd, Tom DeLay, Bill Thomas, Billy Tauzin, the leaders of the House, the leaders of the Senate and President Bush, they choose corporate interests every single time. And that is troubling to all of us who have tried to honorably serve in this business for many years. And just to sort of crown it off, and then I will yield back my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), who has been terrific on explaining this issue and understanding this, and then to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), now this bill, the payment to the insurance industry, the President signed the bill in December. March 1st, the first of billions of dollars of subsidies goes to the insurance industry. March 1, 2004, this year, March 1, the insurance industry begins to get checks worth billions of dollars from the Federal Government. But you know what? Seniors do not get this prescription drug benefit until 2006. So the insurance companies get their money 3 months after the President signed it; seniors do not get the drug benefit for some 2\1/2\ years after the President signed it. What kind of morally bankrupt social policy, morally bankrupt Congress, can do that kind of thing to the people of this country?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, today I picked up a newspaper, picked up a Los Angeles Times, and the headline of the Los Angeles Times, I believe the second largest daily paper in the Nation, said, ``Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas.'' The subheadline was, ``The loss of work to other countries, while painful in the short term, will enrich our economy eventually,'' the President's report to Congress says. Now, I thought maybe that was just an overzealous headline writer, so I looked at some other newspapers. The Seattle Times headline was, ``Bush Report: Sending Jobs Overseas Helps the United States.'' Then I looked at the Pittsburg Post Gazette: ``Bush Economic Report Praises Outsourcing Jobs,'' sending those jobs overseas. The Orlando Sentinel in the President's brother's home State: ``Bush Says Sending Jobs Abroad Can Be Beneficial.'' Now, this is a President of the United States who in 3 years has seen a job loss of 3 million people. In my home State of Ohio, we have lost 300,000 jobs. One out of six manufacturing jobs in Ohio has disappeared to Mexico, to China, somewhere overseas generally. We have seen continued job loss in every State in this country. In fact, we have seen manufacturing job loss every single month of the Bush administration. And after I read these headlines and I read the articles which correspond precisely to the headlines, it makes me think maybe that is the Bush plan overall, that we are sending these jobs overseas. Maybe that is what he planned. And that does not make any sense, that the President of the United States would want to send jobs overseas; but this President supported the North American Free Trade Agreement running for Governor of Texas. Then he supported as Governor of Texas the Permanent Normal Trade Relations, the trade agreement with China. He supported Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority. He now supports the Central American Free Trade Agreement which will hemorrhage more jobs to Latin America. And his office is right now negotiating the Free Trade Act of the Americas, which will quadruple the size of the North American Free Trade Agreement, causing more hemorrhaging of jobs. So when the President's head of Council of Economic Advisors, Gregory Mankiw, when he prepared this report, he said in this report, ``Outsourcing is just a way of doing international trade. More things are tradeable than were tradeable in the past. And that is a good thing.'' He then goes on to claim that, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), who is with me here, points out, that this Bush plan will create 2.6 million jobs in 2004. It is another promise of job creation, but we have seen manufacturing job loss every single month of the Bush administration. And now apparently they are saying this outsourcing, this job loss overseas is a good thing. Now, the most interesting, maybe if not the most important because it is not as big as the job loss in manufacturing, but he talks about one particular group of people who happen to be radiologists. And I know of radiologists in the United States, they are the people that read the x- rays and the MRIs and all of that, who have said that when they take x- rays, when they do MRIs, sometimes those x-rays are literally e-mailed to India, read by radiologists in India, and then sent back. So radiologists are concerned about their work, frankly. In his report he said, ``Maybe we will outsource a few radiologists. What does that mean? Maybe the next generation of doctors will train fewer radiologists and will train more general practitioners or surgeons. Maybe we have learned that we do not have a comparative advantage in radiologists.'' Maybe Mr. Mankiw has read too many economics text books when he says we do not have a comparative advantage in radiologists. But the point, Mr. Speaker, is that this administration has totally lost touch with reality, if they can look in the eye a worker in Akron, Ohio, in the steel industry or in Lorraine or Cleveland or anywhere in this country, look them in the eye and they can say, outsourcing is a good thing. Your job going overseas is a good thing because then maybe you can get a job at Wal-Mart that pays $7 an hour with health care benefits. Or maybe you can get a job somewhere else part-time, or maybe you can figure out what is going to happen to your health insurance and what is going to happen to your pension. The fact is that this administration's answer to everything is more tax cuts for the richest people and more trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs overseas. We have seen enough job loss in this country without the President piling on, without the President, as the L.A. Times says, supporting the shift of jobs overseas; without the President, as the Seattle Times said, sending jobs overseas helps the United States; without the President, as the Pittsburg Post Gazette says, his economic report praises outsourcing jobs; or as the Orland Sentinel says, sending jobs abroad can be beneficial. It does not make sense for our country. It does not make sense for workers. It does not make sense for our people.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, even though I come from Ohio, I picked up the Los Angeles Times today and just could not believe the headline. It said, ``President Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas.'' ``The loss of work to other countries,'' this is the sub-headline, ``while painful in the short-term, will enrich the economy eventually, the President's report to Congress says.'' I thought, that cannot be it. It is some overzealous headline writer that really did not understand this. Well, then I started looking at some other papers. I saw the Seattle Times writes, ``Bush report: Sending Jobs Overseas Helps U.S.'' Then I looked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, just down the road a couple hours from where I live in Lorain, Ohio. The headline was, ``Bush Economic Report Praises Outsourcing Jobs.'' Then the Orlando Sentinel in the home State of the President's brother, Governor Bush, the headline was, ``Bush Says Sending Jobs Abroad Can Be Beneficial.'' Now, this is pretty hard to understand. The President of the United States, his top economic adviser would issue a report saying it is a great thing we are sending jobs overseas. I began to read about this, and it says, ``The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries,'' according to the Bush administration, ``is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation.'' Gregory Mankiw, the chief economic adviser for the President, the chief economic adviser for the United States of America, said, ``Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. That is a good thing.'' Now, I want Mr. Mankiw, I want him to look in the eyes of a steelworker in Lorain, Ohio, and look in the eyes of a computer programmer in Palo Alto, California, and look in the eyes of a telephone operator in Akron, Ohio, or look in the eyes of a radiologist and say that outsourcing is a good thing. But Mr. Mankiw has something today about radiologists, too. Do you remember when we passed other trade agreements in this Congress, past trade agreements, I always said if you get enough education, then you are all set. You just get ahead. You go to school, you get an education, you got a job. That is the way it works. Well, Mr. Mankiw, the chief economic adviser for the President of the United States, said, ``Maybe we will outsource a few radiologists. What does that mean? Well, maybe the next generation of doctors will train fewer radiologists and will train more general practitioners and more surgeons. Maybe we've learned we don't have a comparative advantage in radiologists.'' Obviously, Mr. Mankiw has been reading economic textbooks. He has not been talking to the computer programmer in Palo Alto, he is not talking to the steelworker in Lorain, he is not talking to the telephone operator in Akron, and he is not talking to any radiologists. Now, why would President Bush's economic adviser say that outsourcing is a good idea? These are the same people that support the North American Free Trade Agreement, that support PNTR, the most-favored- nation trade advantages for China, the same people that support trade promotion authority, Fast Track, and now the same people that are pushing the Central American Free Trade Agreement and are pushing the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which will quadruple, quadruple, the size of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Every time there is an economic problem in this country, every time another report comes out about unemployment, President Bush's economic advisers and the President himself says, all we got to do is do more tax cuts for the most privileged, then the benefits will trickle down to the rest of the country, and all we have to do is more trade agreements. You know what happens? Every single time they promise 200,000 increased jobs a month, and every time these tax cuts for the rich, they do not trickle down. In fact, we have seen job loss in manufacturing every month of the Bush administration. We have seen with this President the first President since Herbert Hoover to have job loss during his time in office. In my State, one out of six, as the gentlewoman from Toledo, Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) knows, one out of six manufacturing jobs in my State has disappeared since George Bush took office. But every time there is a problem, every time there are more bad news statistics about jobs lost, the President says, let's do more tax cuts for the rich, let's do more free trade agreements and hemorrhage jobs overseas. You know why? Because the people who benefit from these kinds of predictions, the people who benefit from these kinds of job losses, the people who benefit from this outsourcing of jobs, are the investors. And those are the people, the wealthiest investors in the country, those are the people that contribute money to George Bush's campaign, those are the people that benefit from the tax cuts, those are the people that benefit from trade agreements, as they line their pockets. But it might help the wealthiest in this country, it might help George Bush, but it hurts workers, it hurts families, it hurts communities, and it hurts our Nation.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, yesterday felt like Groundhog Day. America woke up, got more bad fiscal news from the Bush administration, and predicted years and years of growing Federal budget deficits. We learned this weekend that the $400 billion Bush Medicare plan passed and signed in December was, in fact, going to cost $539 billion. Americans were surprised to learn that most of that first extra $139 billion, most of the first $100 billion will go straight into the pockets of the drug companies, the group that helped to write the prescription drug bill in the Oval Office. The other $39 billion is going to shore up the taxpayer-financed payoffs to encourage insurance company HMOs to provide Medicare coverage. Well, that bad news was not much of a surprise for those of us who work regularly with the White House. President Bush, in the State of the Union, said the new Medicare measure kept a basic commitment to our seniors. The President in that bill may have fulfilled a commitment or two, but it was not to the Nation's elderly. Here are some of the key details the President forgot to tell us about: The estimated cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill over 10 years was $400 billion; the estimated increase in drug industry profits from the Medicare drug bill are $139 billion. The additional government payments to the insurance industry to participate in Medicare were originally tagged at $14 billion. There are 100 Members of the United States Senate, 435 Members of the United States House of Representatives. There are 675 Washington lobbyists working for the drug industry, and we see the influence they have on President Bush and my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle when we look at that bill. The drug industry gave to Republicans in 2002, $21.7 million in political contributions. The average elderly American's drug cost is $2,400. The portion of that average American's drug cost covered by the new Medicare drug benefit is only 45 percent. The average profit margin of Fortune 500 firms in 2002 was 3 percent. The average profit margin of the top 10 drug companies before the Medicare bill was 17 percent. The increase in elderly Americans' Social Security checks last year, 2.6 percent. The average price increase in the 50 prescription drugs elderly Americans used most in 2002 was 6 percent. Retirees with health insurance before Medicare was signed into law, 50 percent of retirees in this country had health insurance before Medicare was signed into law. Today about 97 percent of retirees in the United States have health insurance under Medicare. Medicare administrative costs are only 2 percent; average administrative costs for insurance company HMOs are 15 percent. The compensation package, including stock options for one chief executive officer of a Medicare HMO in 2002 was $529 million, even though in the last 4 years 2.5 million of America's seniors were dropped from HMO coverage. The insurance industry gave $25.9 million to House and Senate Republicans supporting President Bush last year. Most telling, on March 1 the bill that President Bush signed, only 3 months after he signed it. The insurance companies, insurance HMOs in this country, will receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. Government come March 1. But the bill that President Bush signed to take care of America's elderly and their prescription drug coverage does not go into effect for 2 years. The insurance companies get their money 3 months after President Bush signed the bill, America's elderly do not get their drug coverage until 25 months after President Bush signed the bill. It is clear that the President talked about his basic commitment to America's seniors when in fact the basic commitment of the Medicare prescription drug bill was to America's drug industry and America's insurance industry. Those are the groups that will do well under the prescription drug bill. America's elderly, by President Bush, will again be left out in the cold.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am pleased to support this legislation which is intended to, and will, help ensure that FDA's medical device user fee and third-party review programs operate as intended. The goal of these programs is to promote timely access to medical devices without compromising FDA's ability to properly evaluate both the safety and the effectiveness of those devices. Successful bipartisan negotiations produced the authorizing legislation for these programs, and it is the same with this follow-up measure today. I commend the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) as well as the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), the subcommittee Chair, for their leadership on this successful committee effort. Unfortunately, the need for noncontroversial technical corrections is not the only obstacle preventing the medical device user fee program from fulfilling its potential. It is important for colleagues on both sides of the aisle to be aware that continuation of the user fee program, and it is this program that enables patients to receive cutting-edge medical devices on a timely basis, the continuation of the user fee program does in fact hinge on the appropriations process. User fees do no incremental good if they supplant, rather than supplement, Federal spending. As in the successful prescription drug user fee program, the continuation of user fees depends on sufficient annual appropriations. Last year's appropriation for medical device reviews was insufficient to sustain the medical device user fee program in an optimal way. If this year's appropriation does not address that shortfall, the user fee program will likely fold. Hard work went into establishing this program. The existence of the program enables patients more timely access to medical devices at no additional cost to American taxpayers. We need to make sure the program does not indeed fold. I hope the President's budget includes sufficient funding for the user fee program, and I hope we follow through by allocating sufficient dollars to keep this program alive. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo), one of the architects of this bill.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, last week President Bush stood in this well and told us that he signed a Medicare bill last month. What he did not tell us was that this bill does not take effect until 2006. What he did not tell us is that this bill gives the insurance companies a $14 billion taxpayer subsidy. What he did not tell us is that this bill provides $139 billion more to the drug companies in profits, and what he did not tell us was how little coverage this Medicare prescription drug bill will give to most of America's seniors. This bill falls short because the Medicare bill was written by the drug industry and by the insurance industry, for the drug industry and for the insurance industry in the Oval Office.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, in last year's State of the Union address, President Bush called Medicare ``the binding commitment of a caring society.'' Last night in his State of the Union address, the President said the Medicare prescription drug bill that was enacted last year ``kept a basic commitment to our seniors.'' The new Medicare law kept a basic commitment all right, but as the tens of thousands of seniors who have quit AARP would likely agree, the commitment was not to America's seniors. The new Medicare law means an additional $139 billion in profit to the drug industry over the next 8 years. The President did fulfill his commitment, a commitment he had to the drug industry. The new Medicare bill the President signed means an additional $14 billion in subsidies to the insurance industry over the next 10 years, again a commitment the President fulfilled to his insurance company backers and contributors. But the President's commitment meant virtually nothing to seniors, many of whom will not have access to any benefit until 2006 and after that will have access to only a very inadequate drug benefit. The new benefit will cover less than half of a senior's drug costs. The average senior would do better traveling to Canada to purchase her prescription drugs. Of course the Bush administration has been busy pressuring Canadian pharmacies to stop selling medicine to American consumers. Again, the President's commitment to the drug companies won out. The reason drug prices are lower in Canada is because the Canadian government negotiates price with the drug industry. But the new Medicare law expressly forbids the U.S. Government from negotiating with the drug industry to bring drug prices down. Get that. This new drug bill prohibits the government from using its buying power, representing 40 million Medicare beneficiaries, this new law prohibits the government from negotiating with the drug industry to bring prices down. That is why the drug industry's profits are set to explode under the President's new Medicare privatization bill. Again, it is a commitment not to America's seniors but a commitment President Bush made to his drug company contributors. If seniors had asked the President and the Congress to shortchange them on drug coverage while giving the drug industry a free ride, it would be accurate to say that yes, he really has fulfilled his commitment to them, but that is clearly not what seniors asked us to do. Medicare HMOs enjoyed a 118 percent increase in profits last year. Yet we are about to hand them an additional $14.3 billion. According to the General Accounting Office, we already overpay HMOs by 20 percent. This new law will ensure we shower them with more money, we waste even more taxpayer dollars subsidizing the insurance industry, again a commitment to the insurance industry and the President's financial contributors in the insurance industry and HMOs, a commitment he made to them when they were so supportive in his campaign. Mr. Speaker, in the end, we have a President who always consistently makes a choice. If it is a choice between corporate interests and the public interest, this President chooses corporate interests every single time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, in April 2003, the Bush administration pledged that its jobs and growth package, its Leave No Millionaire Behind Tax Cut Plan, would create 1,836,000 new jobs by the end of 2003, last month. The administration pledged to create 5.5 million new jobs this year in 2004; but as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month, the economy had a grand total of 1,000 jobs in December. To begin reversing unemployment trends, there would need to be 250,000 new jobs each month. More than 2.3 million jobs have been lost since President Bush took office, Mr. Speaker. More than 2.3 million jobs. In my State of Ohio, one out of six manufacturing jobs has disappeared, one out of six, and most of them permanently. Despite recent good news for corporate profits and the trumpeting of the Bush administration on economic growth statistics, the labor market is still in crisis; and we have seen the worst job loss in a recovery since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression. But for some reason, I guess political reasons, the administration calls the economy strong. Long-term unemployment is close to a 20-year high. Currently, the average length of unemployment is 5 months. While the administration has touted macroeconomic GDP growth numbers, indicators most important to middle class Americans just simply are not so bright. Simply put, high-paying jobs, industrial, manufacturing jobs are being replaced by low-paying jobs like Wal-Mart. New jobs created are forecast to pay an average of $35,000, much lower than the $43,000 average pay of jobs lost in the last 3 years. The Bush administration now is deploying an executive agency to shortchange average workers, this time on overtime pay. The Department of Labor's publishing documents ``suggest ways that employers can avoid paying overtime to some of the $1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible this year.'' Think about that, a Federal agency is giving advice to employers on how to avoid paying overtime to some of its lowest-paid workers. Think about that. Among the options for employers would be to cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary. This is part of an emerging pattern of using U.S. taxpayer resources to help big business, to help them cut corners at the expense of American jobs and American workers. The Labor Department's corporate assistance documents, as we call them, come just as the administration plans to eliminate overtime pay protection to 8 million American workers. The overtime plan was opposed by both conservative and progressive lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The Department of Labor's mission statement describes itself as the primary agency to ``promote the welfare of job seekers and wage earners.'' The Department of Labor was established to represent the interest of average workers, not the interest of corporate contributors to the President. Not Enron. Not Halliburton. The Department of Labor is there to represent average everyday salaried and hourly workers. The Department of Labor now seems to represent corporations at the expense of American workers. The consequences of the Bush administration's policies for hardworking Americans are clear: first, the greatest job loss in a recovery since the Great Depression; 2.5 million jobs have been lost in the past 2\1/2\ years. Second, massive deficits to pass on to our children. The administration came into office with a huge budget surplus. It has been squandered. We now have an annual deficit of $500 billion. That means that every day of the year about $1.5 billion more is paid out by the government than is brought in. The President has added $1.5 billion every day to the national debt that our children will pay. This collapse of fiscal discipline will lead to a $5 trillion debt over the next decade. That is $5 trillion more for our children and our grandchildren to pay. The third result of the Bush administration's policy for working Americans is the rising numbers of uninsured and increasing health care costs for working Americans. There are 43 million Americans lacking basic health insurance today, with 4 million more Americans who do not have health insurance than those that had it when he took office. There were 39 million uninsured when President Bush took office; now it is up to 43 million, and it is climbing as we lose more industrial jobs, jobs replaced by low-benefit, low-wage jobs instead. This administration is steering the country down the path of fiscal ruin for the benefit of a wealthy few. It is time to right our course. When we see the statistics over Christmas that the high-end stores like Neiman Marcus stores did very well, and regular stores catering to ordinary average Americans did not do so very well, that tells the story. The wealthier in this country are getting wealthier and wealthier, while the middle class is shrinking. Poor people are doing worse than ever. It is time to redirect this country.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, President Bush, in his State of the Union a year ago, said, ``Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society.'' He then promised a prescription drug/Medicare reform bill. The gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, one of the authors of the bill with the Bush administration, said, ``to those who say this bill would end Medicare as we know it, our answer is we certainly hope so.'' I wish President Bush tonight would explain what happened to the Medicare bill that he signed in December. I wish he would explain that this legislation will mean $139 billion, that is with a ``B,'' $139 billion additional profits for the drug industry. I wish he would explain tonight to the American people why this Medicare privatization bill means $14 billion in extra payouts to the HMOs and to the insurance companies. And I wish he would explain to the American people why he let in to write this bill the drug industry and the insurance industry, which sat down with the administration, with Republican leadership and actually wrote the Medicare prescription drug privatization bill. We need answers tonight, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. This goes back to earlier comments that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) made just about the unseemliness, the conflicts of interest, the huge numbers of dollars that are at stake in this bill. $400 billion in taxpayer dollars is going to be distributed in the next 10 years, $400 billion. Not to mention the amount of out-of-pocket seniors will have, which is a huge amount of money, for their drug cost. So that $400 billion, we are going to see the drug industry is going to make $140 billion more; the insurance industry gets a $20 billion incentive pay, if you will, to write drug insurance. Employers are getting subsidized, so not as many of them, some still will, but not as many employers drop the coverage of their retirees who they have collectively bargained with in many cases. So there is so much money on the table. The way that the administration has done this has been so untoward, the way that from the minute the bill really was introduced, was written behind closed doors by the drug and insurance industry, to they are not allowing amendments, to speak of, on the House floor, to the conference committee closed out to Democrats who represent in the Senate more than half the population and in the House represent 48 percent of the population; and then all of these kinds of secret deals in the bill with the drug companies and the insurance companies winking and nodding every step of the way. I think this bill symbolizes the corruption, the sort of pinnacle of the corruption that we have seen in this House of Representatives. We are awash with corporate money, awash with all the kinds of cutting deals and conflicts of interest and billions and billions and billions of dollars available to raid the Federal Treasury. While we cannot probably get this bill repealed in the next year, I think we are going to see this Medicare issue is going to really show what the political parties stand for, what are we going to see in the election next year, where on the one hand Democrats want to see a prescription drug benefit go directly to seniors, Republicans want to run it through the drug industry and insurance industry, enriching their corporate friends and then a little bit of it trickles down to seniors. And thrown into the bargain is a privatized Medicare system.