Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the fact that the Bush administration has close ties to industry is not, in and of itself, a problem. Part of the administration's job, to be sure, is to support American business as long as doing so coincides with what is best for the American people and does not compromise the principles and the values upon which this Nation was built. With the Bush administration, that is where the problem arises. The interests of the American people should outweigh the interests of individual industry. Too often, with this administration, industry prevails regardless of the impact on consumers. One of the most disturbing examples of priorities run amok is the administration's kid glove treatment of the pharmaceutical industry. Last year prescription drug costs increased in this country 17 percent while the overall inflation rate was only 1.6 percent. Rising drug costs fueled double-digit increases in the health insurance premiums. Rising drug costs are putting State budgets in the red. Rising drug costs are bankrupting seniors on fixed incomes. Rising drug costs are costing American business literally billions of dollars. The Bush administration's response to this situation? Well, they spent the last couple of months putting together a study arguing that American consumers, get this, American consumers must continue to pay the highest prices of any country in the world for prescription drugs because, if we do not, medical research and development from the drug industry will dry up. The study is available at www.hhs.gov. I encourage every Member of Congress and every voter to read it. If my colleagues had any questions about how closely aligned this Republican administration is with the big drug companies, this study makes it clear they are in lock step. I wonder if it is any coincidence that this study came out of the Department of Health and Human Services planning office which is managed by a former employee of the drug industry. This study, which quotes drug industry-backed experts and trivializes the attempts of every other industrialized nation to secure lower drug prices, says that the best bet for American consumers is the status quo. We do not want to change. Drug prices keep going up. Private insurance strategies to reduce costs are okay, it says, but anything more aggressive than that will stop R&D in its tracks, the drug industry, I mean HHS, warns us. The drug industry does not mind private insurance strategies, because these strategies have not prevented double-digit increases in prescription drug spending, but if we go any farther, the drug industry, I mean the administration warns us we will be responsible for killing research and development. Drug makers topped all three measures of profitability for 2001, return investment, return equity, return on sales almost every year. By far the most profitable industry in America. They pay the lowest tax rate of any industry in America. The overall profits of Fortune 500 companies went down 53 percent in 2001. Drug profits went up 33 percent in 2001. They spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research and development. U.S. tax dollars finance almost half the R&D through the National Institutes of Health in this country, but American consumers are thanked and should be grateful when they pay twice and three times and four times what prescription drug consumers in any other country in the world pay. Regardless of whether this administration thinks the cost control methods other countries have used are good or bad, how could it possibly be in America's seniors' interests, in American prescription drug users' interests for our administration to say to drug makers, as they said, price your products however you want, there is just nothing we can do about it? Congress today is debating competing drug coverage proposals. The Bush administration and the drug industry support the same proposal. They helped each other write it. It is the Republican bill, the one that forces seniors to go outside of Medicare to turn to prescription drug insurance HMOs to purchase private drug plans, the one that cuts costs not by bringing prices down but by offering the benefit that is only half as generous as Members of Congress receive. That is the point. The drug benefit in the Republican plan is only half as good as the one that Members of Congress receive. The drug industry recently financed a $3 million ad campaign touting the Republican bill. The Bush administration recently released a study saying that the best seniors can hope for is the Republican bill, because the Federal Government would rather provide a bare-bones drug coverage than stand up to the drug industry and demand lower prices, something that Republicans will not do, something President Bush will not do, because the drug industry does not want them to do it. Where do the best interests of American consumers fit into this picture?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it has been almost a week since President Bush went to Wall Street to present his plan to curb executive greed and corporate misgovernance. The response, unfortunately, has been pretty underwhelming. The markets dropped by several hundred points day after day after day. The press and the American people have openly questioned the President's commitment to real change. Even Wall Street workers who attended the speech, mostly Bush supporters, wondered aloud about how much of the speech was just politics and how much was about real change. Why was this speech so poorly received? One, because so many officials in the Bush administration are themselves former corporate CEOs, lawyers, and accountants who lack the moral authority or the will to change corporate practices, or even to enforce current law. Second, because in the middle of the current crisis, the President and the Vice President, both former oil company CEOs, have been forced to answer questions about their own ethics and business practices in the private sector. Third, because, despite his rhetorical calls for corporate America to clean up its act, President Bush continues to oppose real reform on Capitol Hill. He has refused to support meaningful pension and accounting reform; he opposes legislation to halt offshore tax avoidance by huge corporations; and, to make matters worse, even though America's capital markets lost $2.4 trillion last year, more than the gross domestic product of Germany, the President continues to favor turning Social Security over to Wall Street in a privatization scheme. This is the same Wall Street that advised American investors to buy Enron and WorldCom and Adelphia and others while their analysts privately ridiculed those companies. In addition, the President has supported a whole slew of bills that have been written by and for big industry. He supports energy legislation written by the oil companies, he supports environmental legislation written by the chemical companies, he supports privatization of Social Security written by Wall Street bankers. Most recently, the President endorsed a prescription drug benefit to be administered by the health insurance industry, the same people who brought us HMOs. This plan would provide seniors with totally inadequate coverage, making no provision for dealing with the outrageous prices Americans are paying for their prescription drugs. It would undercut seniors' purchasing power and enable the drug industry to sustain its outrageous drug prices. Apparently, the President has been convinced by the brand-name big drug companies that prices are not a problem. Democrats are more concerned about the burden on seniors and their families who are being gouged by the predatory pricing of the prescription drug industry. The Democratic plan provides a direct prescription drug benefit inside Medicare and combats high prescription drug prices. The Republican plan, written by the drug companies, calls for a privatized system that coddles industry and leaves gaps in coverage for seniors. The Republicans claim they are offering the best drug benefit possible under current budgetary constraints; but a year ago, when the Bush tax cut plan, the tax breaks, which went overwhelmingly to the richest 1 percent of people in this society, when that was being debated, we were assured by the President and Republican leadership of huge budget surpluses. We were told these surpluses would be enough to address long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security and still have the money for education and the money for a prescription drug benefit. Since then, these projected surpluses promised by President Bush and others have evaporated, mostly because of the overly-generous- to-the-most-privileged-in-this-society tax cut. Maybe the President and his administration, full of corporate executives, were using the same accounting practices as America's big companies. Maybe, Mr. Speaker, this is what President Bush and Vice President Cheney meant when they said that, under their leadership, the country would be run like a corporation.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, this morning in Birmingham, President Bush gave another speech aimed at restoring investor confidence at the same time the country's equity markets were well on their way to a sixth day of losses. Why is that? Could it be because so many administration officials in the Bush White House are themselves former corporate CEOs, lawyers, or accountants who lack the moral authority or the will to change corporate practices, or even to enforce current law? Or could it be because in the middle of the current financial crisis, the President and the Vice President have been forced to answer questions about their own ethics and business practices as oil company CEOs? Or could it be, because despite his rhetorical calls for corporate America to clean up its act, the President continues to oppose real reform on Capitol Hill? Maybe, Mr. Speaker, with the recent spate of corporate collapses, the American people have begun to wonder whether running the company like a corporation, as the President and Vice President have promised, is all that good an idea.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday of this week President Bush gave a major speech on his administration's plans to curb executive greed and corporate misgovernance in America. Why, one should ask, was the President's speech so poorly received? Why did the market drop several hundred points in the 3 days since the President gave his speech, including a couple of hundred points actually the same day that he delivered the speech on Wall Street? Why did so many Wall Street workers who attended the speech ask afterwards how much of this speech was just politics and how much of it is about real change? Despite the President's calls for corporate America to clean up its act, President Bush, at the behest of his corporate sponsors, continues to oppose real reform on Capitol Hill. He has refused to support meaningful pension and accounting reforms, even though a bipartisan bill just passed the other House. He will not support other legislation to halt offshore tax avoidance. His budget severely underfunds the SEC; and to make matters worse, the President has pushed to turn Medicare over to the health insurance industry, which brought us HMOs and has brought us disaster in many, particularly rural, communities around the country. Why is all this happening? Why would all this be? It is pretty simple. The President and Republican leadership have invited corporate interests into the inner sanctum of government to help them run this country. Insurance companies write the legislation that Republicans and the President try to get through this Congress to privatize the Medicare system. The chemical industry has written legislation that the Republican President and the Republican leaders in Congress have tried to push through on environmental policies. The oil industry has written legislation for the President and written legislation that the President and Republican leadership have tried to push through on energy policy. At Wall Street, bankers have written the legislation on behalf of Republican leadership and the President to privatize Social Security, but worst of all is what Republican leaders in the House have pushed through on behalf of the prescription drug industry. Let me relate a story of an event. About 3 weeks ago, as the senior Democrat on the Subcommittee on Health, I have worked extensively with my colleagues on legislation to provide a Medicare prescription drug benefit and do something about the outrageous prices that the drug industry, the most profitable industry in America, with the lowest tax rate in America, has inflicted upon the public. During the markup of the Republican plan, because they are in the majority in committee, at five o'clock in the afternoon, while we still had 15 to 20 hours of work to do, as it turned out, Republican leaders adjourned the committee so the Republican Members could go off to join President Bush and Vice President Cheney at a big fundraiser underwritten by the drug industry to the tune of at least $2 million, maybe $3 million, and sponsored by the drug industry and chaired by the CEO of a British drug company who, he and his firm, contributed $250,000 to the Republicans. Other drug companies, the drug industry trade association and others contributed hundreds of thousands of additional dollars. When we returned the next day to our committee to continue the work on the prescription drug bill, on every single major amendment consumers and seniors lost, and the drug industry won issue after issue after issue. Amendments such as saying that Medicare beneficiaries should have a prescription drug plan as good as a Member of Congress, voted down on a party-line vote, Republicans opposing because the drug industry wanted them to. On issues such as dealing with bringing the price down, perhaps Medicare, the 40 million Medicare beneficiaries, the government could negotiate prices on behalf of all of them and bring the price down like they do in Canada. Republican party-line voted no because the prescription drug industry wanted it that way. Issue after issue after issue, the Republicans sided with the prescription drug industry against reform, against seniors, against American consumers. This government, the Republican leadership in this House of Representatives is too close to corporate America. It is too close to the oil industry when writing energy policy. It is too close to the chemical industry when writing chemical policy. It is too close to the drug industry when writing Medicare prescription drug policy. It is too close to the insurance industry when they try to privatize Medicare, and it is too close to Wall Street when they try to privatize the Social Security system. Mr. Speaker, the Democratic plan does something about Medicare by providing a benefit and doing something about the outrageous pricing.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, almost every day we hear about another major U.S. corporation sell out its stockholders, lay off workers, destroy pension funds for those workers. Almost every day we see my Republican friends do the bidding of another corporate interest and fail the American public. I call on this body to pass H.R. 808, the Steel Revitalization Act. In my district, RTI Technologies, a steel producer, has seen, its workers have seen their pension and their health benefits in jeopardy. This body which every day acts on behalf of corporate interests on behalf of Republican leadership has failed workers in this country, has failed pensioners in this country, has failed to correct health care abuses by corporate America in this country. It is time that this body pass H.R. 808, the Steel Revitalization Act.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, why was President Bush's speech on Tuesday so badly received? Why did worker after worker who attended the speech just say it was mere politics and not substance? Why did the market drop hundreds of points after the President made his speech on Tuesday? It is because of a lack of confidence in the Bush-Cheney team that it will demand accountability from its big contributors on Wall Street and its CEO friends; because of the coziness that the Bush-Cheney team have with wealthy interest group after wealthy interest group. Let me give an example. Three weeks ago, President Bush and House Republicans trooped off to a big fund-raiser where the prescription drug industry gave $2 million to the Republicans. The next day, on a party-line vote on amendment after amendment after amendment, the consumer side lost and the drug industry side won. The oil industry is writing energy legislation for the Republicans, the chemical industry is writing environmental legislation, Wall Street is writing Social Security privatization legislation, the insurance companies are writing Medicare privatization legislation, and the pharmaceutical companies are writing prescription drug legislation. Mr. Speaker, it must stop.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday of this week, President Bush gave a major speech on his administration's plan to curb executive greed and corporate misgovernance in America. Why was the President's speech so poorly received? Why did the markets drop by several hundred points in the 2 days following the speech? Why did so many Wall Street workers who attended the speech ask, How much of this speech was politics, and how much of it is about real change? Because despite his calls for corporate America to clean its act, President Bush, at the behest of his corporate sponsors, his major contributors, his political base, his political friends, continues to oppose real reform on Capitol Hill. He has refused to support pension and accounting reform and takes millions of dollars from the securities and accounting professions. He will not support legislation to halt offshore tax avoidance, while receiving contributions from many major companies who have moved offshore to avoid paying those taxes. His budget severely underfunds the Securities and Exchange Commission. To make matters worse, the President has pushed to turn the public program of Medicare over to the health insurance industry and to HMOs, again while receiving millions of dollars from that health industry for his campaign and for Republican campaigns in the House and Senate. The President also advocates turning Social Security over to the same Wall Street banks that advised American investors to buy WorldCom, Enron, Adelphia, and Bristol-Myers, and all those others companies over the last few years, while their analysts have privately ridiculed these companies and investors. More recently, the President endorsed a prescription drug plan that would be administered by the health insurance industry and would make no provision for dealing with the skyrocketing prices American seniors pay for prescription drugs, simply because the President and Republican leaders in this Congress do not want to upset the prescription drug industry. Apparently, the President has been convinced by the brand-name drug industry that prices simply are not a problem. The plan would undercut seniors' purchasing power and enable the drug industry to sustain its outrageous drug prices by permitting the continued abuse and manipulation of drug patent laws. Three weeks ago in the Committee on Energy and Commerce as we were marking up the drug bill, the chairman notified us that we would be quitting at 5 p.m., even though we had 20 more hours of work to do, because all of the Republican Members trooped off to a $30 million fundraiser headlined by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and underwritten by the prescription drug industry. The Chair of this fundraiser was the CEO of Glaxo, a British drug company which donated $250,000 to that event. The next day when we returned to business and our committee continued its markup on the prescription drug bill, amendment after amendment after amendment that was pro consumer was defeated because the drug companies wanted those amendments defeated. The insurance industry has written legislation for the White House and the Republican leadership on Medicare privatization. The chemical industry has written legislation for the Republican leadership and the White House on environmental policy. The oil industry has written for Republican leadership and the White House legislation on energy. Wall Street has written for the White House and Republican leadership legislation on privatizing Social Security; and the prescription drug industry has written legislation dealing with pharmaceuticals for the White House and Republican leadership. Coincidentally, Mr. Speaker, the most recent example of the President taking industry's side comes from today's headlines and also concerns prescription drugs. To avoid more questions about corporate accountability, President Bush left town today to give a speech in Minnesota on prescription drugs, and of course to headline a Republican fundraiser, his 34th this year, while we fight the war on terrorism. The speech is timed to coincide with the release of an administration report, which conveniently concludes that the drug industry, America's most profitable industry year after year after year over the last 20 years, and an industry which enjoys the lowest tax rate of any industry year after year, his report concludes that the drug industry will be harmed by additional regulatory burdens, by lower prices imposed in part by this Congress. Democrats are more concerned about the burden on seniors and their families who are being gouged by the predatory pricing of the pharmaceutical industry. That is why we support a direct prescription drug benefit with guaranteed coverage inside Medicare, not an insurance policy plan written by the drug industry. Mr. Speaker, when will the administration do work in the public interest rather than on corporate interests?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, President Bush gave a major speech on his plan to curb executive greed and corporate misgovernance. Someone should tell the President, actions speak louder than words. Responding to his corporate contributors, President Bush supported weak pension and accounting reform bills in the House. He refused to support legislation to close loopholes that allow American companies to avoid U.S. taxes by moving offshore. He has openly supported the idea of turning Medicare and Social Security over to the private sector. Apparently, the President and his Republican allies in the House believe Medicare would be better run by the health insurance industry, major Republican contributors; and Social Security would be safer in the hands of Wall Street, again major Republican contributors. So my colleagues understand if I view the President's plan to deal with the recent spate of corporate scandals a bit skeptically. To borrow a famous line from a long-ago civil rights speech, ``Don't tell me what you believe; tell me what you do, and I'll tell you what you believe.''

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, earlier today President Bush gave a major speech on the administration's plan to curb executive greed and corporate misgovernance in our country. This plan could be a tough sell, considering the President's own record as a businessman and his record of regulating industry. Shortly after taking office, President Bush made clear how he felt about any kind of government regulation. His first budget proposal contained the elimination of 57 staff positions at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency charged with reviewing his corporate financial problems of the 1980s and reviewing all corporate financial reports today. His Treasury Secretary moved immediately to shut down intergovernmental efforts undertaken by the previous administration to monitor offshore tax havens at the heart of the financial maneuvering that led to Enron's collapse. This President let chemical companies write legislation that dealt with arsenic in the drinking water, let insurance companies write legislation about the privatization of Medicare, let the drug companies write legislation that had to do with prescription drug coverage, let Wall Street write legislation to privatize Social Security, and let the banks write legislation relating to bankruptcy. This laissez-faire antigovernment attitude of the Bush administration also created a permissive environment clearly making companies like Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and others believe they could mislead investors with impunity as long as President Bush was in office. Even after the Enron scandal was revealed last year, the President proposed a zero-growth budget for the SEC. He supported publicly and aggressively weak pension and accounting reform bills in the House, even though thousands of employees in this country, turning into tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of employees, are losing their retirements to fraud and mismanagement by the President's friends at Enron and other corporations. He refused to support legislation that would close the loopholes that allow American companies to go offshore to avoid U.S. taxes. He has declined to support reauthorization for the Superfund tax, requiring corporate polluters to pay for cleanup of the messes they make. Instead, he has chosen to have taxpayers pay to clean that up. To make matters worse, the President's advocated turning Medicare and Social Security over to the private sector. As evidence of this bias in his political contributions from the insurance industry, the President recently endorsed a Medicare prescription drug plan that would be administered by the health insurance industry. This plan undercuts seniors' purchasing power and enables the drug industry to sustain its outrageous drug prices by permitting the continued abuse and manipulation of drug patent laws. Why? It just might have had something to do with our committee 2 weeks ago considering the prescription drug bill. The committee chair decided to quit at 5 p.m. so all the Republican members in the committee could troop off to a fund-raiser, a Republican fund-raiser headlined by George Bush, where the chairman of the fund-raiser was the CEO of a prescription drug company in England. That chairman and that company contributed $250,000 to House and Senate Republicans and to President Bush. Other prescription drug companies contributed $50,000, $100,000, and $250,000, while Congress was considering a prescription drug bill. No surprise that the next day, when our friends returned to our hearing, that on issue after issue after issue the Republicans voted down the line for drug company interests against seniors' interests. The President and his administration have a long way to go to convince the American people they are serious about cleaning up corporate abuses in large American business or even enforcing current law. So as the country considers the President's plan for reversing the current trend of corporate greed and misdeeds, I hope my colleagues will understand that I view his conversion from a proponent of laissez- faire economics in letting corporations run roughshod over government regulations and roughshod over the public, his conversion from that to chief regulator and enforcer of these laws with a healthy degree of skepticism. A famous civil rights leader years ago said, ``Don't tell me what you believe. Tell me what you do, and I will tell you what you believe.''

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, later today President Bush is scheduled to give a major speech, it is billed, on corporate responsibility. His advisers have told us he is going to get tough on corporate wrongdoers. He is even calling for jail time for those who defraud shareholders and who violate Federal law. In addition, the President's advisers let slip recently he is reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt who had a well-deserved reputation for battling corporate greed. All of this must mean that the President is very serious about ending this season of executive greed and corporate misgovernance in America. But to use the bully pulpit like Teddy Roosevelt did, you have got to have credibility on the issues at hand. For many of us, the President's credibility on corporate issues has been a problem since his vast, but inexplicable, success as a businessman was revealed a number of years ago. As recently as yesterday, the President and the White House have sought to offer new explanations for why he did not report in a timely manner his 1990 sale of $850,000 worth of stock in a Texas-based energy company just weeks before its value plummeted. It sounds a lot like Enron. It sounds a lot like WorldCom. It sounds a lot like Adelphia. It sounds a lot like these corporate scams that we have all been so critical of. Previously, the President said he thought regulators lost the documents. He pointed at the regulators. Then last week the White House said it was a mix-up by the lawyers, the son of the President's lawyers; and then yesterday he gave the most plausible explanation. He said, ``I still haven't figured it out completely how I made the $850,000.'' He has not figured it out. While there are many decent and honest corporate executives and accountants in this country, those who lack integrity have only been emboldened by the permissive environment created by this administration and by those on the other side of the aisle in congressional leadership who never met a regulation that they liked. Companies like Enron and WorldCom and Arthur Andersen obviously believed they could mislead investors with impunity as long as this President, this friend of corporate America, was in office. And why would they not? In the middle of the Enron scandal, President Bush, on behalf of his corporate friends, proposed a zero-growth budget for the Securities and Exchange Commission even though the SEC itself complained it was too short-staffed to go after these corporate abuses. President Bush supported a weak pension reform bill in the House even though thousands of employees in Texas and around the country lost their retirements because of fraud and mismanagement by the President's friends and his single major contributor and fundraiser at Enron. And the President endorsed an accounting reform bill in the House that had no teeth since it was strongly supported by his friends in the accounting industry. Does it sound familiar? President Bush has refused to ask for reauthorization of the Superfund tax which would require corporate polluters, again friends of the President, which would require corporate polluters to pay for cleanup of the messes that they make. Instead, he wants to saddle taxpayers with those cleanup costs. The President joined the prescription drug industry, for whom they had a fundraiser raising literally $3 million from the drug industry itself 2 weeks ago, in supporting and pushing through the House a Medicare prescription drug plan that, first of all, privatizes Medicare, and second undercuts seniors' purchasing power and enables the drug industry, the most profitable industry in America, to continue to sustain its outrageous drug prices. The President has openly supported the idea of turning the Medicare program over to the health insurance industry, again friends and major contributors of the President, and the Social Security program over to Wall Street, again major friends and political supporters and contributors of the President. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, the list goes on and on and on and on and on. So later today as the country listens with rapt attention to the President's plan for reversing the trend of corporate greed and misdeeds, you will understand if I view this speech with a healthy degree of skepticism. Civil rights leaders said years ago, ``Don't tell me what you believe, tell me what you do and I'll tell you what you believe.''

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, today, President Bush gave a major speech on corporate responsibility. He tells us he is going to get tough on those who have misled and defrauded shareholders in violation of Federal law. This could be a tough sell, considering the President's own record as a businessman. Yesterday, the President was still trying to explain why, in violation of Federal law, he failed to report his 1990 sale of $850,000 worth of stock in a Texas-based energy company just weeks before its value plummeted. Earlier he said he thought the regulators lost the documents. Last week, the White House owned up and blamed it on Mr. Bush's lawyers. Yesterday, President Bush gave maybe the most plausible explanation. He said, I still haven't figured it out completely. He hasn't figured out how he made $850,000 in a probably illegal stock sale. As the President spoke in New York today, I thought of the words of a civil rights leader who said, ``Don't tell me what you believe. Show me what you do; I will tell you what you believe.''

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the prescription drug industry has come up with a new lobbying technique. Three weeks ago, the drug industry dumped almost $3 million into a Republican fundraising event. Two weeks ago, in a party-line vote, the drug industry and Republicans pushed through a prescription drug Medicare privatization bill. Now the drug industry is pressuring medical schools and teaching hospitals and doctors to write Congress urging us to continue permitting drug companies to engage in anticompetitive behavior. They have convinced a few of these health care providers that unless the U.S. lets the drug industry keep competition out of the market, my colleagues guessed it, research and development will dry up. Fourteen years of patent-protection monopoly prices apparently is not enough. The same industry that consistently earns profits five points higher than other profitable industries argues that if they do not exploit America's seniors they cannot and will not do research and development. That excuse, Mr. Speaker, is wearing thin. Private and public resources for health care are not infinite. Drug companies continue to cheat American consumers, employer-sponsored health care plans and State governments and every other health care purchaser out of billions of dollars each year. Enough is enough.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, 37 years ago, the majority Republicans voted against the creation of Medicare, which has turned out to be probably the single best program the U.S. government has ever sponsored. Republican leader Newt Gingrich said that Medicare should wither on the vine. The Republicans, in the late 1990s, proceeded to cut $250 billion from Medicare. Today, our Republican leader in the Committee on Rules labeled Medicare a Soviet-style program. In my 10 years in Congress, the only people I have found that are hostile to Medicare, that do not like the Medicare program, are my Republican friends on that side of the aisle. Today, we have a choice. We have a choice between a Medicare prescription drug plan written for America's seniors or a private insurance plan written, the Republican's private insurance plan, written by and for the drug companies, which will privatize Medicare. Let us keep Medicare public, let us pass a prescription drug benefit that works for seniors, not for the drug companies.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from New York for yielding me this time. Last week, the Committee on Energy and Commerce was marking up the prescription drug bill. Last Wednesday, we stopped at 5 p.m. in the afternoon when we should have been working into the evening. Why? Because my friends on that side of the aisle went to a Republican fund- raiser underwritten by the prescription drug companies. The Chair of that dinner was the CEO of a British drug company who donated $250,000 to the Republican Party. There were hundreds of thousands of other dollars donated by drug companies that night. The next day, Mr. Speaker, when we went back for the markup, every amendment that Democrats offered that the drug companies did not like, surprise, was voted down. An amendment that said seniors should get the same drug benefits that Members of Congress get was voted down on a party line vote because the drug company sat in the back of the room and said no. Every amendment we voted on that the drug companies did not like, to close the gap in all the out-of-pocket expenses that seniors had to pay, if the drug companies did not like it, they sat back in the back of the room and said no. Vote for the Democratic plan written for seniors.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to my friend, the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. Inslee).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I notice that my friends on the other side of the aisle talk about giving free coverage to poor seniors except for the $2,700 out of pocket they would have to pay under the Republican private insurance plan. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Ms. McCarthy). (Ms. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), who will explain why the Democratic plan is written for America's seniors and the Republican plan is written by and for America's drug companies.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Vote ``no'' on the Republican plan written by the drug companies for the drug companies.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. The Republican HMO drug plan does several things. First of all, it begins the process of privatizing Medicare. The Republican HMO drug plan gives 30 percent less choice, 30 percent less choice for seniors' prescription drugs. The Republican HMO drug plan is an entitlement for insurance companies, not for America's seniors. It does nothing to bring drug prices down. In fact, prices in the United States will continue to be, under the Republican plan, the highest, two, three, four times what they are in other countries, the highest prices in the world. And the Republican HMO drug plan gives benefits almost twice as good to Members of Congress as it does to America's seniors. As we can see on this chart, Members of Congress have a plan worth about $2,100. The Republican plan provides for America's seniors a plan worth about $1,300. Now, why would our friends on the other side of the aisle come up with a plan like this that privatizes Medicare, that gives seniors 30 percent less choices, an entitlement for insurance companies, that most outrageously gives a much better plan to Members of Congress than it does to America's seniors? Why would they do that? I think the answer to that, Mr. Speaker, came last Wednesday afternoon when our committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, adjourned early at 5 o'clock so that all of the Republican Members could troop off to a $30 million, that is $30 million fund-raiser underwritten by the American drug and the prescription drug industry where the money went to feed the coffers of Republican Party candidates. This fund-raiser was chaired by the CEO of one of the world's largest drug companies, the CEO of Glaxo, a drug company located in England, a foreign drug company. His company gave $250,000 to this Republican event. He was joined by $250,000 contributions from the trade association representing the drug companies and many others. The question, Mr. Speaker, is of voting for a plan that is written by and for the drug companies or a plan for America's seniors. So, the next day, when Members of Congress from our committee returned to vote on legislation, to vote on this prescription drug bill, surprise: every vote cast by my Republican friends, whether it was to make the seniors' plan the same as Members of Congress, whether it was to bring prices down, whether it was to reduce out-of-pocket expenses, every time these Republican Members of Congress voted with the drug companies. It is a question of, do we vote for legislation written by and for America's drug companies, or do we vote for legislation written for America's seniors?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, last Friday morning, while most Americans were still asleep, the Republican plan to create a drug benefit was pushed with brute force through the Committee on Energy and Commerce. While the Republican plan has too many flaws to mention in 1 minute, its most glaring inadequacy is that it makes no provision for dealing with the outrageous prices Americans pay for prescription drugs. Apparently, Republicans and their corporate sponsors in the brand- name drug industry do not believe high prices are a problem. Yet last year, prices for the 50 most prescribed drugs for seniors have risen three times the rate of inflation, and the prices for some popular drugs rose by 10 times the rate of inflation. Last week I sought to introduce an amendment that would have reduced drug prices for all Americans by reducing patent abuse and enhancing market competition. But the Republican leadership, which loves to champion the virtues of the free market, would not even let the Committee on Commerce consider the amendment. If we need another reason, another reason to oppose the Republican plan, which was written by and for the big drug companies, let it be known that the Republican plan does absolutely nothing to reduce drug prices.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the prescription drug bill we are introducing today is straightforward. It is easily distinguishable from the Republican bill introduced last week. There is no fine print in our bill. There are no holes in our prescription drug coverage. There are no question marks where the premium and cost-sharing requirements should be. The availability of coverage does not hinge on the Federal Government, unlike the Republican plan, showering the insurance industry with tax dollars so they will offer stand-alone drug plans. One of the strongest points of the Democratic plan is that it is not endorsed by the drug industry. That is because we hold down drug costs by bringing down drug prices, not by shortchanging seniors on coverage. Our bill creates a drug coverage option for Medicare beneficiaries that is affordable, it is reliable, and I emphasize is at least as generous as the coverage available to Members of Congress. Our bill strengthens Medicare, rather than snubbing it. It minimizes the hassle involved in getting drug benefits. We add the drug coverage option to the Medicare benefits package. Seniors are not forced to go outside of Medicare and enroll in an insurance company HMO to get their drug benefits as they are required to do under the Republican plan. Our bill takes action against inflated drug prices on behalf of every senior and every American consumer. The brand name drug industry has taken to exploiting loopholes in the FDA drug approval process to block generic competition and keep drug prices high. So not only the drug companies charge Americans the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, while those drugs are still under patent, these companies, these drug companies continue to charge Americans ridiculously high prices even after the drugs have gone off patent, even after the patents expire, because they block generics, block competition from entering the market. This gaming of the patent system is not theoretical. It happened with Paxil; it happened with BusPar; it happened with Prilosec; it happened with Neurontin; it happened with Wellbutrin. These are top-selling drugs. Seniors and other consumers who need these drugs have paid twice, three times, four times more than necessary for these products for months and sometimes for years because brand-name drug companies block legitimate generic competitors from the market. These big-name drug companies supported by Republicans over and over game the patent system. While the Congressional Budget Office has not formally scored these provisions, their estimate suggests Medicare alone could save tens of billions of dollars if we make drug companies play fair. Needless to say, these provisions to bring drug prices down are not in the Republican bill. The drug industry, in fact, has ponied up $3 million, $3 million to back an ad campaign touting the Republican's bill, which protects the drug companies. If drugmakers thought there was any chance the Republican's bill would reduce drug prices for Medicare enrollees, do my colleagues think they would endorse it? Of course not. The Republican bill has the drug industry's fingerprints all over it. Our bill is admittedly more expensive than the Republican bill. It should be more expensive because our coverage is better. The Republican bill is dirt cheap for a reason. Their bill is most notable for the coverage it does not provide. It is basically one big disclaimer. The last thing we want to do is to reduce the number of uninsured in this country simply to increase the number of underinsured. If we can afford $4 trillion in tax cuts, we can afford to create a real drug coverage option in Medicare for retirees and disabled Americans. It is a matter of priorities. This Congress made a choice between tax cuts for the richest one-half percent of people, the most privileged people in this country, a choice between giving them tax cuts and providing inadequate prescription drug benefits for seniors. Republicans chose the tax cuts for the most privileged. Democrats are choosing a prescription drug benefit for 38 million Medicare beneficiaries. It is a question of priorities. Let us do the right thing and pass the Democratic substitute.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, let us call this vote what it is. This is a brand-new fast track bill. Rules do not include 191 pages of never-before-considered legislative changes to a bill that passed the House by a single, weeping, arm-twisted vote. No one here can remember any rule that has ever employed the procedural deceptiveness of this rule. No hearings on these provisions. No opportunity to offer amendments. No opportunity for substantive debate. Members are being asked to accept that the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means is the best judge of the needs and concerns of House Members and their constituents. Right. This rule would only complicate efforts to convene a cooperative, bipartisan conference on fast track. Defeat the rule.