Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders reports that some 40 million people suffer from a speech, voice, language, or hearing impediments. Many of these impairments are found at birth. Every day about 33 babies are born with hearing loss, the most common congenital disorder in newborns. For the past 75 years, May has been celebrated as National Better Hearing and Speech Month, raising awareness about speech, voice, hearing, and language impairments. Federal, State, and local governments, as well as members of the speech and hearing profession, have used May as an opportunity to educate the public about preventing, mitigating, and treating these impairments. This resolution commends their work and that of the 41 States that have implemented routine hearing screening for every newborn. I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Ryun), and others for introducing this resolution; and I hope my colleagues would support it. I would add, Mr. Speaker, as we occupy time on the House floor today doing not inconsequential things but things that do not directly have major positive impact on people's lives, passing resolutions like this, which I do support, and using them to educate the public about preventing and mitigating and treating speech and hearing loss, I think this Congress needs to do more on real health issues. That means issues like prescription drugs, issues like access to health care, issues like ensuring 40 million Americans are insured. Because to be sure, Mr. Speaker, checking for hearing, doing screenings, all of these things are programs that we can do something about. In addition to doing a resolution, I would hope this Congress would put aside its fervor to cut taxes on the wealthiest people and instead would be using some of those resources for prescription drugs, for hearing and speech screening, for all the kinds of things that will make people's health care better and make people's lives better. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, speaking earlier today, in fact, walking over from my office in Rayburn to the House floor to work with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) on the Ryun legislation today, and I was talking to some people whose families have Alzheimer's, who are advocating for Alzheimer's patients, again, this Congress is falling short on substantive kinds of issues to help people with Alzheimer's. There are some four or five million people suffering from Alzheimer's today. If we do not do the research right, if we do not take care of those people well enough, that number is going to be as high, they say, in the next few years as 14 million patients. We are falling short on what we are doing for community health centers and the National Health Service Corps, from the Community Access Program that my friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green), has worked on, the Chronic Disease Prevention program with CDC, nurses shortage, pharmacist shortage, the problems with home health care reimbursement, the problems with physician reimbursements, the problems with hospitals, especially rural hospital and inner-city hospitals reimbursement. Those are the kinds of issues this Congress should work on. Not to belittle this resolution, which is important to educate people on speech and hearing loss, but this Congress needs to get its act in gear and begin to deal with issues like prescription drugs and reimbursements issues for providers and all the kinds of public health issues that this Republican Congress does not seem too very interested in. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), the chairman of our subcommittee, has done yeoman's work in trying to bring these issues forward. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership is not nearly so interested as many of us are on the committee in moving forward on public health issues, on prescription drug issues, community health centers and community access programs and CDC, and all the things that really will make a difference beyond the passage of a few resolutions that this Congress seems intent on doing week after week after week. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for the generous offer. We have a couple more speakers. We may not need that time. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, who also is a nurse.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) who is the sponsor of this resolution. (Mrs. Christensen asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. I rise in support of the Christensen resolution. Our values and success as a Nation are a function of multiple races, multiple ethnicities and multiple cultures. The Nation's health care system, our medical research, our medical education and our medical care, should reflect that fact, but we have major work to do. Minority populations have higher rates of cancer, higher rates of heart disease, especially higher rates of diabetes, higher rates of HIV/AIDS. Minorities have shorter life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates and a high, much too high, incidence of premature death. Minorities are less likely in this health care system to receive cancer screening and monitoring. Minorities are less likely to receive childhood and adult vaccinations. Unless we initiate changes explicitly aimed at reducing disparities in health and health care, those disparities will persist. This resolution is a good start. Among other things, it would encourage the establishment of the Minority Health and Health Disparities Month. It asks the Secretary to deliver public service announcements on health promotion and disease prevention among minorities. It encourages governments to work with the private sector to recruit and to retain qualified individuals from racial and ethnic and gender groups underrepresented in health care professions. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) for sponsoring this resolution. I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation which sets the stage for a coordinated Federal research effort to combat blood cancers and launches a patient and public education campaign to get the word out on these cancers. The death of our colleague, the esteemed Joe Moakley, raised the profile in this institution of leukemia and other blood cancers for all of us. More than 100,000 Americans will be diagnosed with blood cancers this year, and more than 60,000 will lose their lives to one of these cancers. Former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, who has joined us today, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma a few years ago. Since her announcement, she has turned a very private battle with cancer into a public campaign, educating Americans and policy makers, making a difference in their lives, educating us all about the disease and the need for enhanced research on cancer. The bill we are considering today includes two important initiatives in honor of these two remarkable American leaders. It establishes the Joe Moakley Research Excellence Program to expand and intensify NIH research on blood cancers; and the Geraldine Ferraro Cancer Education Program, which will establish education programs designed for patients and for their families. It is an excellent bill. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), who was a long-term colleague, friend and employee of Mr. Moakley.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, in recent years the United States has become the world's largest steel dumping ground at the expense of U.S. jobs, U.S. families, the U.S. economy, and maybe U.S. national security. It is a fact. This fact must be addressed now. As a Nation, we import more than twice as much steel than we did in 1991 and we do so at prices significantly lower than those in 1998. This surge in illegally dumped steel has been devastating to the domestic steel industry. In the last 4 years, 26 steel companies have filed for bankruptcy; seventeen have filed for bankruptcy protection in the last year alone. This list includes three companies in northeast Ohio: RTI of Lorain; LTV Steel of Cleveland; and CSC Steel in Warren. I recently joined civic leaders, company executives, and steelworkers at a public rally for Lorain's RTI, a steel manufacturer that employs 1,500 people in my district. At the rally, I cited the President's decision to impose a section 201 steel tariff as one of the primary reasons that I was optimistic. But at the same time we were rallying in support of RTI, the President's Treasury Secretary was telling European leaders that he expected a large proportion of the tariff exemption applications filed with the United States to be decided upon favorably by the United States. As a representative of a steel-producing State that has suffered severe hardship due to illegal steel dumping, I was disturbed to hear the President's Treasury Secretary make comments shifting the administration away from its own recently imposed 30 percent tariff on imported steel. These statements have continued to be a source of great concern to those of us in Congress who had assumed, I hope not wrongly, that the Bush administration was committed to enforcing its own tariffs on illegally dumped steel. One can imagine the confusion these statements have caused the tens of thousands of already anxious steelworkers. The President's remedy excludes steel coming from Korea and Australia. The tariff remedy also excludes steel from our NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico, which opens up the very real possibility of the illegal transshipment from Asian countries or somewhere else through Mexico or Canada. A Mexican steel company, for example, could easily have foreign steel shipped to a plant in Mexico, where they then could redirect it to the United States with little or no direct value added. Administration trade officials have argued that there are appropriate controls in place to prevent this transshipment of foreign steel, but there are also controls in place to prevent the transshipment of other items and the transshipment of illegal narcotics through Mexico, and to prevent the importation of unsafe foods. The sad truth is the Federal Government, because of Republican budget cuts, inspects only 1 percent of all the imports, food and any other kinds of steel imports and anything else, only 1 percent of the imports that cross the U.S.- Mexican border. Our border agents simply do not have the resources necessary to prevent illegally transshipped steel from entering our country. The current tariff remedy has already been diluted by the Bush administration. The holes in this steel tariff that President Bush himself created severely weaken our safeguards against illegal dumping. During an October visit in 2000 to Weirton, West Virginia, then Vice Presidential Candidate Dick Cheney criticized the Clinton administration's handling of the steel issue. He pledged that a Bush administration would take action on the steel crisis, and he told steelworkers, ``We will never lie to you. If our trading partners violate trade laws, we will respond swiftly and firmly.'' The steel industry needs the administration to follow through on that promise. The domestic survival of this industry absolutely depends on it. The survival of this industry is not just an economic issue. It is also an issue of national security. We must protect the 700,000 hard- working families who rely on this industry for their salaries, for their pensions, and for their health benefits. We also must ensure that we retain the ability in terms of national defense to manufacture steel for planes and weapons and ships. In addition to strict enforcement of the Bush tariff, the Republican leadership in the House should respond to public demand, should respond to a majority of Members on both sides of the aisle, and bring the Steel Revitalization Act to the House floor. In the future, Congress and the President must respond to the public's demand for U.S. trade policies that actually support American workers. If the President is sincere about helping the steel industry, he will not allow these exemptions suggested by his own Treasury Secretary. He will not allow these inappropriate exemptions to erode the effectiveness of his tariffs. He will not back away from these measures before they have been given a chance to work. To give concerned Members of Congress, Mr. Speaker, and employees of the steel industry confidence, I urge President Bush to publicly affirm his support for his own administration's steel tariffs.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, when the House and Senate wrote their budget resolutions last year, Members were assured by the President of huge surpluses as far as the eye could see. The projected surpluses held great promise. They were expected to be large enough to address long-term solvency issues of Social Security and Medicare and for important priorities like a prescription drug benefit and education. Since then, most of the surpluses have evaporated because of last year's unaffordable Bush tax cut and the spending necessitated by the tragic events of September 11. The Republicans in the House want to cut taxes further and spend more, and be congratulated for their fiscal responsibility. While we all recognize the need to protect our country from international terrorists and rogue nations, the administration has requested a military budget of $396 billion in fiscal year 2003. This 1-year increase of $45 billion will be the largest increase in military budget authority since 1966 at the height of the Vietnam War. This increase alone, the $45 billion increase alone, is larger than the annual military budget of every other country in the world. In fact, the nations that President Bush called the ``axis of evil,'' North Korea, Iran and Iraq, our military budget will be 15 times the combined military budget of theirs. While this budget is being touted for fighting terrorism, the bulk of the funding is committed to buying weapons systems designed or conceived during the Cold War. The missile defense system, a knockoff of President Reagan's failed Star Wars missile defense program, gets $8 billion in the Republican budget, even though it is not clear that this system will ever work or ever defend the United States from any of the actual threats that we actually face. In fact, it has failed test after test after test. In addition to massive new spending on dated military technologies, the Republican budget also includes provisions that would cut taxes by $591 billion over the next 10 years, making last year's tax cut permanent and providing a host of new tax cuts to America's wealthiest companies like Enron, IBM, American Airlines, Ford, GM, and to the wealthiest individuals in this country. The share of these tax cuts going to the top 1 percent of wage earners, top 1 percent richest people, would exceed the share going to the bottom 80 percent. The top 1 percent receives 45 percent of the tax cut's benefits even though they now pay only 21 percent of Federal taxes. The bottom 80 percent gets only 28 percent of the tax cut's benefits with an average cut of only $430. Republicans claim the typical family of four will be able to get, quote, at least $1,600 more of their own money when the plan is fully effective. However, more than 85 percent of taxpayers will get less than that amount. Many will get nothing. One-third of families with children receive no tax cut at all. More than half of all black and Hispanic families will receive nothing under this plan, even though 75 percent of those families have at least one working parent. Under this plan, a single mother with two children and a $22,000 annual income gets zero from the tax cut. A retired widow with no children and an income of $30,000 would get $300 but a couple making $550,000 with no children would get a tax break of $19,000. Unfortunately, once we are done paying for military spending increases and new tax cuts, there is little left for other pressing concerns. For the last many years, literally millions of retired seniors have not been able to afford the medicines they need. We have all talked about this in our campaigns. Yet the President's budget includes only $190 billion for Medicare modernization and prescription drugs. It is not anywhere near the amount to fill the prescription drug gap in the Medicare program. Bipartisan estimates say that to ensure that retirees have access to adequate, just adequate, prescription drug benefit coverage would cost at least $700 billion over 10 years. The President's budget has only $190 billion. The Republican budget we will vote on tomorrow has only $300 billion, because of the tax cuts. It will cost the Nation much more than that if we remain indifferent to the possible trade-offs that seniors face every day when it comes to their health. Our senior citizens are being forced to ration health care, not based on cost effectiveness, but on how far they can stretch a fixed income to pay for exorbitantly expensive medicines. The U.S. is the wealthiest nation on earth. We are not a drug industry puppet. We must do better by our seniors. Investing too little in prescription drug benefits is like paying to put half a roof on our house. Mr. Speaker, I am afraid the Republican budget with huge tax cuts is taking us down the same road we traveled last year. We will not be able to do other things that Americans are demanding of us.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise to comment on President Bush's decision to levy up to a 30 percent tariff on steel imports coming into the United States. I am glad the President took a step forward, something that we hoped he would do, but he did much less than we asked. Steel companies, steelworkers, elected officials representing steel States, asked the President to levy 40 percent tariffs for 4 years, something to level the playing field for imported steel in the United States. The International Trade Commission had found that steel companies in foreign lands, especially in Russia, Brazil, Korea, and China had violated international trade laws by subsidizing and selling into our market illegally priced steel, so-called dumping. The President had the option of levying tariffs up to 40 percent for 4 years. That is clearly what we needed for LTV in Cleveland, for RTI in Lorain, for CSC in Warren, Ohio, and steel companies all over this great country from Alabama to Ohio to Michigan, to Indiana, wherever steel is made in the United States. Unfortunately, the President's decision to do up to 30 percent, understanding that it was not 30 percent in every case but up to 30 percent for only 3 years, fell short on that mark. It also fell short because the 30 percent is phased out during those 3 years. The second thing that the President neglected to do was deal with the issue of legacy costs. That is those costs of health care and pensions that companies have promised to steelworkers that in many cases the commitment will not be met. So on the one hand steelworkers with their health care are left out in the cold, those people who are retired. Second, those companies that absorbed legacy costs are in a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world because most countries have universal health coverage provided by a government program, while in the United States in our employment-employer based health care system, the steel companies and other companies pay for the cost of the health care. So that puts us at a competitive disadvantage there. It also is an argument for universal coverage because all American companies are at a competitive disadvantage when the government provides the health care in a Medicare-type system that most countries around the world have. Yet, in America, employers must pick up those health care costs. The third problem with the President's decision on steel and where he fell short and the reason for my disappointment is that the President opened up several loopholes in his tariff proposals, in his tariff enactments. For instance, there is a Mexico exception which allows companies in China, Korea, Japan and other places to sell their steel into Mexico at very low or nonexistent tariff rates. Then Mexico will sell that steel into the United States at a zero tariff because of the North American Free Trade Agreement. So that Mexico exception allows those companies which have illegally priced their steel according to the International Trade Commission to back-door their steel through Mexico into the United States at no tariff. All Mexico has to do, if even that, is a Mexican company needs to do a little value added to the steel, stamp Made in Mexico, and send it into the United States. Mr. Speaker, that could be a difficult thing to do, except that we do not police our borders well enough. We do not have tariff and customs inspectors in as nearly a comprehensive way as we ought to have. Those are the problems with the Bush tariff plan. One, it is not 40 percent over 4 years. It falls woefully short. Second, it does not deal with the legacy costs which is unfair to those retirees. LTV workers lose their health care March 31. Other retirees have already lost theirs. It does not deal with the legacy costs for those companies that are continuing to produce steel. And, third, it creates the Mexico exception. That will hurt our steel industry. It is a question of national security. That will hurt our steelworkers. It is a question of our communities.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, recently the National Governors Association passed a resolution calling for action to prevent the brand-name drug industry from blocking access to lower-cost generic drugs. It turns out that the drug industry is cheating consumers out of literally billions of dollars in prescription drug savings by illegally and unethically keeping generic competitors off the market. Shocking, is it not, that the drug industry would exploit loopholes in the law to make sure that American consumers continue to pay higher prices than necessary for lifesaving products? We are talking about the same industry that charges Americans two and three and four times what it charges in other countries. We are talking about an industry that pummels American consumers with ads on TV and in magazines and on radio promoting a handful of drugs that just happen to be some of the most expensive drugs on the market. As a matter of fact, the drug industry's use of direct-to-consumer advertising to manipulate the public is just as insidious as the tricks the industry uses to keep generic competition off the market. The European Union does not permit direct-to-consumer advertising, neither does Japan nor Canada nor Israel. In fact, only one other country in the world, New Zealand, permits direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. That is because this advertising skews health care towards the newest, most expensive drugs, regardless of whether these drugs are the best alternative for patients and regardless of the impact on America's health care bill. The industry claims it is doing consumers a favor, that direct-to- consumer advertising is a breakthrough in consumer education. In 2000, the drug industry advertised 1 percent of its 10,000 available prescription drugs. Ninety-five percent of all direct-to-consumer advertising was spent on just 50 of these 10,000 drugs. The drug industry claims its advertising is highly educational. Direct-to- consumer advertising is highly profitable, hardly highly educational. Those 50 drugs I mentioned, the ones that were most heavily advertised in 2000, were responsible for half of the $21 billion increase in prescription drug spending. And about those 50 drugs, they are not for 50 different conditions. Most of those drugs are simply copycat drugs. We see ads for Vioxx and Celebrex, $239 million worth, which are alternative treatments for the same condition, arthritis. We see ads for Claritin and Zyrtec and Allegra to the tune of $227 million, all for the treatment of allergies. Billions of dollars are spent on ads for fewer than 30 health problems. American consumers pay for those ads when we shell out two and three and four times more than consumers in any other country in the world. We pay for those ads when the 50 most heavily advertised drugs account for half of the dramatic annual increase in spending. Prescription drug inflation is fueling double-digit increases in health care premiums, it is pushing State budgets into the red, and it is forcing seniors into poverty. And behind it all are romantic images of allergy-free people digging in their gardens and playing with their puppies. The drug industry has a chokehold on the United States. They charge Americans more than any other consumer; they manipulate American consumers with questionable TV and print ads; and they block access to affordable medicines, even though 70 million Americans, many of them seniors, do not have the benefit of insurance and are paying hundreds of dollars out of pocket. So where is the Bush administration? Why is George Bush not outraged about this? Where is his administration? The administration does not like to be perceived as catering to large corporations at the expense of American consumers. The administration bristles at the notion that it turned to Enron and big oil when it formulated its energy policy. They do not like it when you point out that they turned to the chemical companies when writing their environmental policy, that they turned to the insurance companies when they wrote the Patients' Bill of Rights. And I am sure the administration would vehemently deny that their silence on prescription drug prices stems from their close ties to the drug industry. Well, the proof is in the pudding. This is a litmus test in the next year what this body does about prescription drug prices, both for the President and for every Member of Congress. We report to the American public, not to the drug industry. If the President and the Congress do not break loose from the drug industry's chokehold and reign in that industry's unbridled greed, then American voters should send us all packing. It is as simple as that.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for his leadership on steel issues as American workers and corporations try to fight back against this terrible situation that we have seen coming for the last 3 or 4 years. The U.S., as we know, has become the world's steel dumping ground, costing U.S. jobs, hurting U.S. families, and damaging the U.S. economy. During the 1998 steel crisis, the trade deficit in steel was almost $12 billion, accounting for nearly 7 percent of our overall trade imbalance. We have known from other Special Orders in this body and from other debates in this body that legislation like NAFTA, GATT, which formed the World Trade Organization, PNTR, giving special trading privileges to China, and Fast Track legislation, which passed this body by one vote last year, that this body of trade law that this Congress in my mind has wrongly passed, has damaged this country and that has put us in this situation where we have these huge trade deficits. And our steel deficit is one of the major parts of that. That means that we are buying a lot more steel in this country than we are exporting, $11.7 billion worth. The bulk of these imports in steel were subsidized by foreign governments and illegally dumped below market prices in the United States. Under Federal trade law, and international trade law too, it is illegal to subsidize a product through a variety of different means that governments do and then sell it under cost into another country, thereby undercutting that domestic industry's products. Today, we import 39 million tons of steel, more than double the amount we imported in 1991, and steel prices are below 1998 levels. The surge in illegally dumped steel has obviously been incredibly damaging to the domestic steel industry. Since 1998, 26 steel companies have filed for bankruptcy, 17 in the last year. That includes three in my State, including LTV in Cleveland, including RTI in Lorain, where there is a major plant in Lorain and the community which I call home. Steelworkers from LTV and RTI are learning firsthand how unfair competition is destroying America's ability to make steel. The White House and the Congress must respond. Congress must pass H.R. 808, the Steel Revitalization Act. It has bipartisan cosponsors, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. English), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps), who was here earlier, and 200-plus Members of this body who have cosponsored that bill. The Republican leadership, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), and others, have refused to schedule it for a floor vote. It would make all the difference in the world in revitalizing this Nation's steel industry. Because this Congress has failed to act, because the Republican leadership in this Congress has not given the means to even allow us to have a vote on these very crucial issues to protect American steel, it is up to the President. On March 6, the President will announce his decision on the recommendation of the International Trade Commission for tariffs on illegally dumped steel. We need a strong response. As the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps) and others have said, we need a 40 percent tariff, which is what the ITC has recommended, if the President goes along. A year and a half ago we heard Vice President Cheney, while in Weirton, West Virginia, say we will never lie to you. If our trading partners violate trade laws, he told steelworkers, we will respond swiftly and firmly. We need the administration's swift response; we need their firm response on steel dumping now more than ever. If they are sincere about helping steel, and I take them at their word, although there has been a pretty big delay in the President acting, he was originally supposed to act in mid-February, and every day the President fails to act, every day of delay causes more duress to the American steel industry, more layoffs, more bankruptcies, and more likely failed steel companies; but taking the President at his word, we call for him to do the 40 percent tariffs for 4 years. Anything less simply will not cut it. It does not mean 40 percent with hundreds of exceptions, as steelworker president Mr. Leo Gerard told the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. English) and me and some others this afternoon. We must protect the 700,000 hard-working families who rely on this industry for their salary, for their pensions, for their health benefits, and all of us who rely on this industry for our national security. The steelworkers at Weirton Steel, where then Vice Presidential candidate Cheney made, I hope, a genuine promise, and to the workers at RTI in Lorain, in Canton, in Madison, Ohio, the workers at LTV in Cleveland, and all over this country, are absolutely counting on the President to do the right thing to stop these unfair trade practices. Since this President took office, we have lost a million industrial jobs in this country. I wonder how many workers must file for unemployment before President Bush and Vice President Cheney honor their campaign pledge, not to do this half-baked, but to do the full 40 percent. More and more Americans are joining the ranks calling for Washington to assist this industry. Again, we ask for Republican leadership here to move on H.R. 808. It clearly will pass this Congress. It has plenty of cosponsors. We ask the President to move on section 201 on implementing it and calling in these tariffs. Now, in addition, it is important that this Congress do something about so-called legacy costs. Legacy costs are what is left for those workers who are retired; who, when these companies go out of business, lose at least 20 percent, sometimes as much as 40 or 50 percent of their pensions, and who lose all of their health care benefits. In virtually every other steel producing country in the world, especially Western Europe, we are seeing companies, as President Leo Gerard told us today, we are seeing more and more companies joining together in larger companies; and we are seeing government help with these legacy costs, with social costs, with health care benefits, with retirement. And we have to compete with those companies. The only way for Congress to do that is for us to deal with these legacy costs for these workers who simply do not have anywhere to turn at the age of 58 or 62 or 64, or even before they are eligible for Medicare. And there are hundreds of thousands of American steelworkers whose companies have gone bankrupt, who are about to lose their medical care, who are about to lose up to half, at least a quarter, a fifth or a quarter of their pensions. It is important the President do the right thing on or before March 6. We need the 40 percent tariff. We need that tariff in effect for 4 years until this industry gets back on its feet and American steel can have a level playing field from which to compete. It is important that Congress move on section H.R. 808 and override the Republican leadership to stop it. It is important that Congress stop passing legislation like Fast Track and NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, the way it was created, and PNTR for China, and all the trade agreements that have put us behind the 8-ball. It is important that this Congress and this President finally do the right thing for American workers. I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for his good work and I yield back to him.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, in the first 6 months of 2002, 2 million American workers are expected to exhaust their unemployment benefits. Even when we account for growth in the workforce, this means more workers are expected to exhaust their benefits in the next 3 months than in any first quarter since the early 1970s. Of those exhausting benefits over the next 6 months, only 4 percent, 4 percent, are expected to receive extensions through State unemployment programs. This extraordinary number of anticipated exhaustions is due to the huge number of job losses that occurred in the last 6 months of 2001. These job losses were caused by a slowing economy, by unsound trade policies and by the devastating attacks of September 11. To make matters worse, many of the jobs lost in 2001 were good-paying, high- skilled manufacturing jobs that have probably been lost forever. In my home State of Ohio and across the country, the steel industry has been devastated by a combination of foreign dumping and the current recession. According to the Department of Labor, the U.S. has lost 1.4 million manufacturing jobs since President Bush took office, 1.4 million manufacturing jobs. Total job losses from 2001 reduced our manufacturing base by 8 percent, 8 percent in 1 year, diminishing our industrial capacity to 1964 levels. In each of the last five recessions, the Federal Government stepped in to provide additional benefits to those temporarily out of work. This recession, Mr. Speaker, should be no different. Last week efforts to craft a bipartisan stimulus package failed in the Senate. The Senate did, however, approve a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits. For the last 5 months, however, the Republican leadership in this House has repeatedly promised to help laid-off workers. They made that promise during the debate of the initial disaster relief bill; then they did nothing. They made that promise during the debate of the $5 billion airline bailout bill; then they did nothing. They made that promise in the two economic stimulus bills passed by the House; again, Republican leadership did nothing. The question is, were their promises to help laid-off workers, to help America's unemployed, were their promises contingent upon simply obtaining new and permanent tax breaks for America's wealthiest companies and wealthiest individuals? To prove this is not the case, I urge the Republican leadership to bring a simple, clean 13-week unemployment benefit extension to the House floor as soon as possible. Our workers have waited long enough.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, you and I and Americans throughout the country have the power to help restore sight to thousands of people in need. That is the potential inherent in eye donation. By signing a donor card and telling our loved ones about our wish to donate, each of us can give the precious gift of sight to people like Harold Urick from Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Urick lost his eyesight as a brave soldier during World War II and later received the gift of sight after a cornea transplant--allowing him to see his family again. March is National Eye Donor Month. It is an opportunity to celebrate the gift of sight, to honor past donors and their families, and to raise public awareness regarding the importance of eye donation. Last year, through the miracle of corneal transplantation, 47,000 individuals had their sight restored. This year, thousands of Americans will require sight-restoring cornea transplants. We in Congress can help ensure a sufficient supply of precious corneas by educating the public about the importance of eye donation and encouraging more Americans to become donors. Our nation's eye banks, along with the Eye Bank Association of America, work tirelessly to restore sight through the advancement and promotion of eye banking. Through meticulous screening procedures, accredited eye banks ensure that Americans in need of a cornea transplant receive safe tissue. Eye banks have developed an informal national distribution system that ensures that tissue can be available whenever a cornea is needed for surgery, but each year the demand for tissue increases. As National Eye Donation Month approaches, I encourage my colleagues to work with their local eye banks and the Eye Bank Association of America to promote eye donation and provide more people like Mr. Urick with the miracle cornea transplantation provides. There is no gift more meaningful, more profoundly important, than the gift of sight.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, on Monday President Bush called the Medicare program old and tired. He said he wants to give seniors better options like those available in the private sector. He said he wants to overhaul Medicare. He wants to overhaul Medicare and privatize Medicare. The President has every right to push his privatization agenda but not by co-opting an issue like prescription drug coverage, as emotional and important as it is, not by characterizing Medicare as a failed program so that he can justify his goal of privatizing it. Whether it is Social Security privatization or Medicare privatization, it is disingenuous of the administration to portray privatization as improving the system. The retirement safety net was not put in place because liberals wanted to make the Federal Government bigger, nor should it be dismantled because conservatives want to make the Federal Government smaller. The safety net of Medicare was put in place because the private sector could not make a profit offering health insurance to seniors, so they stopped doing it. It was put in place because the values of this Nation are such that we believe Americans who helped build the Nation's unrivaled prosperity through their working years should not face financial uncertainty and hardship when they retire. Pooling our resources into the public program we call Medicare is the best way to provide consistent, equitable, reliable health care benefits to our retirees. The stock market and the HMO industry may be good at many things, but alleviating uncertainty and providing health care are not two of them. Now the future of Social Security and Medicare are on the line. The President says that seniors deserve better options in Medicare; that is why he favors privatization. Is Medicare inferior to the private insurance market? Would seniors be better off with a voucher that helps pay for coverage in an HMO? Medicare is more reliable than private health plans. Medicare offers more choice than private health plans. Medicare operates more efficiently than private health plans. According to survey after survey, including a recent one from nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, Medicare far outranks both employer-sponsored and individually purchased private insurance as a trusted source, a trusted source of health coverage. But the administration wants to give seniors more choice and better options in Medicare. Is it better to have your choice of HMOs than to be able to choose your doctor under Medicare? Is it better to have your choice of HMOs than being able to choose your hospital under Medicare? Is it better to have your choice of HMOs than to be able to choose where any of your health care is delivered, from whomever you want, to the way regular, traditional government-sponsored Medicare fee for service works? Medicare is a single plan that treats all beneficiaries equally, provides maximum choice and access for patients and doctors. Contrast that with the President's Medicare voucher program envisioned by the administration. Instead of being guaranteed access to needed health care services, seniors would be guaranteed access to a partial voucher for private health insurance. Medicare guarantees full choice of physicians. Private HMOs advocated by the administration do not. Medicare guarantees full choice of any hospital. HMOs, privatized Medicare; privatized HMOs do not. It appears higher-income seniors could afford this voucher plan because they could go and buy an additional decent plan. Lower-income enrollees would be relegated to restrictive alternatives. In other words, when the President uses choice, it is really a code word for wealth. Some choice. Again, Medicare is a single plan that treats all beneficiaries equally and provides maximum choice and maximum access for patients and doctors. We should not allow this administration or any administration to demonize Medicare, a program that served this Nation so well; nor should we permit this administration or any administration to use prescription drug coverage as the bait to lure us in this body to privatizing Medicare for our seniors. Medicare coverage is not old and tired. It is one of the best programs government has ever put together. It is simply incomplete without a prescription drug benefit. That is the Medicare issue. I hope the President will abandon his privatization agenda and work with us in this body to add a real prescription drug benefit for all seniors. We do not need to fight over perceived and fabricated problems in the current Medicare program. The system is not broken. It simply needs prescription drug coverage to add to the Medicare system. We need to address the real issue.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to say a word about my friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior). In 1965, a Mississippi civil rights leader said, Do not tell me what you believe; show me what you do, and I will tell you what you believe. When I hear these words I think of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), I think of his 10 years as Democratic whip, and I think of his leadership on issues of Central America, on issues of trade, on issues of social justice. He did not just pay lip service, as many in this institution do, to those issues. The kind of hard work, the kind of day-to-day effort, the kind of persistence, the kind of stick-to-itiveness that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) brought to this job, always in the name of social justice, always in the name of doing the right thing, standing on the floor doing special orders, doing meetings in his office, making calls to groups to encourage them to lobby this Congress, all that he did in the name of social justice, all that he did in the name of fair trade, meant so much to all of us. Do not tell me what you believe; show me what you do, and I will tell you what you believe. That describes the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Last year Congress passed a bill sponsored by my friend and colleague from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), a valuable member of the Subcommittee on Health, to allow organ procurement organizations to better obtain their recertification. Current practice is causing OPOs to lose their certification due to an inaccurate way of assessing their performance. This process is disruptive to obtaining organs and tissue for transplant. The gentleman from New Jersey's bill corrected the existing problems, ensuring the smooth recertification of these important organizations. But to implement the OPO organization language, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requested clarification from Congress. This language, Madam Speaker, will ensure that OPO certification will be conducted fairly and will improve the system of procuring organs for transplant and tissue. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.