Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This motion to instruct is parliamentary procedure only to reemphasize the importance of the process that we presently find ourselves. Today, unfortunately, President Clinton vetoed the Foreign Operations bill and with that veto he made the statement that we did not have enough money in the funding for the things that he wanted in terms of foreign operations. As we have struggled this year to limit the spending in this Congress so that we do not touch Social Security money, part of the way we have done that is to flat-line the amount of money that is spent on the Foreign Operations bill. In fact, it is the only bill that we sent to the President that is somewhat less than the spending from the year before. That bill, as I recall, was $200 million less than what we actually spent last year. As we think about the options, spending money and the $1.7 trillion budget that we have, I think it is important to look at what the President said in his own statement of administration policy which was issued August 4, 1999, in terms of his desires for the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill which this motion to instruct is directed at. On the second page of that, he talks about international affairs programs which ties back into what he vetoed today in terms of the Foreign Operations bill. It is his message that the ``committee underfunds activities to support the ongoing conduct of effective diplomacy and does not fully fund payments to international organizations necessary to ensure U.S. leadership in international affairs.'' This weekend I happened to share my weekend on call that I do every 4 weeks in my medical practice in Oklahoma. Starting Friday night about 11:30 and finishing up about 4:30 this morning, 10 young Oklahomans came into this world. The debate we are going to be having with the President, whether we want to or not and whether we talk about it now or whether we talk about it in the future, is going to be focused on these 10 young lives. The fact is that the Congress and the President all too often make decisions in the short term and in the short run. What we find in the Commerce, Justice, State bill is many international organizations. I thought I would just kind of look at what the bill as coming out of the House funded in terms of international organizations and affairs programs that the President objected to. I just want to spend a minute talking about those. There is $1,949,000 for funding the following programs: The International Copper Study Group, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Lead and Zinc Study Group, the International Rubber Organization, the International Office of the Wine and Vine, the International Rubber Study Group, the International Seed Testing Association, the International Tropical Timber Organization, and the International Grains Council. The amount provided includes funding for travel and for arrears. As we looked into some of these, I think it is very important that the American public knows what these organizations do and, remember, this money very likely, if the President has his way, will come from the future benefits of these 10 babies that I delivered this weekend. Their future is going to be compromised, because we are going to borrow money from their future to actually pay for this $1,949,000. Let me give my colleagues a little outline of what the International Office of the Wine and Vine does. First of all, remember that the wine industry in America exports $537 million worth of wine each year and it is growing each year. In 1999 we sent $64,000 to this international organization. I want Members to know what we got for our money so we did a little research. It turns out that the International Office for the Wine and Vine wrote the rules for the chardonnay of the world competition. That is a healthy, very important thing for our taxpayers and these 10 new babies from Oklahoma to be saddled with in the future. A qualitative confrontation of the world's best chardonnay. That is where the American taxpayer's dollars are going. But that is not all. The International Office of the Wine and Vine also wrote a press release touting a Danish study that confirmed that the consumption of wine has health benefits. Well, our own Surgeon General said that 15 years ago. We know that. And actually that was all we could find that they actually did for 1999 for $64,000. Now, let us talk about the rubber. The administration has proposed funding not one but two rubber organizations dedicated to supporting the rubber supply industry; not the rubber manufacturing industry but the rubber supply industry. We spent $300,000 on the International Rubber Organization last year, $111,000 on the International Rubber Study Group. The first organization we spent $300,000. What is their job? To keep the price of rubber high. To keep the price of raw rubber high. We are a total importer of rubber. Raw rubber, we produce no raw rubber in the United States, so we spent $300,000 asking that organization to help keep the price of our imports high. The third organization, the International Copper Study Group established in 1992, we spent $77,000. What did we get for our money, you ask? According to the web site, you can order a number of products from the International Copper Study Group. We spent $77,000, but you cannot get any of that information unless you pay them big-time bucks. $350 for a report, a directory of the copper mines in this country is $350, and if you want to use their database, another $550. The American taxpayer has already paid for it. These dollar figures do not sound like much, but when we put it in perspective, it does. I want to pull up a couple of charts for a minute and let the Members of the House see just in these international organizations, 475 American families, their tax rate if the average family is earning $55,000, they are paying $4,100 in Federal income taxes, that is what they are paying to fund this. Looking at it a different way, the average senior in this country earns $9,396, receives that in terms of Social Security payments. If we look at the amount of seniors, that is the equivalent of shipping 207 seniors' receipts overseas, for programs that the President wants us to spend more money on in terms of international organizations. Mr. President, we are not going to spend a penny of Social Security. This motion to instruct is to reaffirm what the House has already done and to say that we are going to stand by the appropriated amounts and not go any higher than the House level. The Senate version actually is somewhat lower. We would expect you to be a better steward of our international moneys. All we have to do is look at what has happened in Russia. We do not need more money for foreign aid because the money that we are sending in foreign aid, whether it be through the International Monetary Fund, whether it is through the World Bank, we are not a good steward of it. All we have to do is trace the $3 to $4 billion that has been absconded from the money that we sent to Russia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I find it very interesting that we did not specifically hear a denial of the claims that I made just in this one program. I was trying to be very, very general and not going into details on a lot of programs because that in fact is the priority of the appropriations process. I also was one that happened to vote to send this bill to conference. But I would also note that the gentleman from New York did not agree that we should reduce nonessential spending, he did not agree that we should reduce spending on international organizations that are wasteful, that do not have a purpose for our children and our future, and he did not say that he was opposed to increasing the spending. Where does he think the money is going to come from? The money is going to come from these 10 children I delivered this weekend. They are going to pay for it. The fact is if we want to talk about authorizations, the reason the appropriations process is so hard is because the Congress does not do its job in terms of sending authorizations to the appropriators. And, in fact, if we followed the strict rules of the House and did not give a rule on every appropriation bill that would not make it a point of order to strike those bills which are appropriated that are unauthorized, we would in fact have a budget that is much easier to handle, we would be doing our jobs in terms of the authorization committees, and we would not be forced to play the line to where we have to walk up to the edge of stealing Social Security money. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I am going to be the closing speaker, so would the gentleman like to yield back the balance of his time?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The first point I want to address is the motion to instruct is an approved parliamentary procedure, and I hope the gentleman from New York would grant me the right to use the procedures within the House that are available to me to try to do a motion to instruct. We have the rules of the House, and this otherwise would not have been approved and would have been stricken down. The next thing I would say is the American people need to know where we are on this. Last year we spent $34.9 billion on CJS, this appropriation bill, and what passed the House was 35.7 billion. The House passed that. What we are saying with this motion to instruct is: Do not go any higher. Now we understand my colleagues have been given the ability within the conference to go to $37.2 billion; we understand that. What we are saying is: If we are ever going to control the spending, if we are ever going to truly balance the budget, let alone not touch Social Security, because what the American people do not know is just because Social Security is not being spent this year, that does not mean the Inland Waterway Trust money is not being spent and the retirement program for all Federal workers that are unfunded is not being spent that we are going to have to come back and get sometime. All these things are still not accounted for, and even though we do not spend one penny of Social Security, the national debt is still going to rise something like $40 billion this year. So we can claim that we are not going to touch Social Security, but is that good enough for our children? Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to see this one graph because it tells greatly what our problem is. If we do not become frugal with our taxpayers' money and with our children's money, look what happens in the year 2014. That is when the amount of money coming in for Social Security and the amount going out starts exceeding. So we would not have the ability to spend Social Security money in 2014 because the amount going to seniors would be less than what is coming in, and if we look on out to about the year 2030, what we see is a trillion dollars a year in general tax revenues. A trillion dollars above and beyond what is paid in Social Security is going to have to be available to take care of our seniors, and we have not begun to address the problems associated with Medicare. So what we are trying to do is to slow the increase in the Commerce Justice State appropriation to about a 2 percent increase instead of a 6.6 percent, which is about to come out of conference. Is it not interesting in our country when the Senate passes a bill at $33.7 billion, and the House passes a bill at $35.7 billion, and when they get together the tendency is, we are going to spend $2.5 billion more, and that is exactly what is getting ready to come out of that conference. So again, I would ask the Members to think about the new children born across this country in the last 72 hours and what are we leaving them. We can do better, we have to do better, and this motion to instruct says do not spend one penny we do not have to, do not send money overseas for the International Wine and Vine or the International Rubber Council because it does not benefit Americans. It is a token we throw down in the international market that brings us no benefit. I am not an isolationist, and I believe that America has to lead the world, but if we are bankrupt, how can we lead the world? And this is too important of an issue. We should not walk away from it. We should walk up to the line, and we should make sure that we secure the future for our children.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of Rule XXII, I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 2670, the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill. The form of the motion is as follows: Mr. Coburn moves that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2670 be instructed to agree, to the extent within the scope of the conference, to provisions that-- (1) reduce nonessential spending in programs within the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and other related agencies; (2) reduce spending on international organizations, in particular, in order to honor the commitment of the Congress to protect Social Security; and (3) do not increase overall spending to a level that exceeds the higher of the House bill or the Senate amendment.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove my name from H.R. 1275 and H.R. 1304.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. COBURN. No, no. I understand very well that this is a guaranteed loan or an insurance against a loan. The fact is if they made $147 million on their own, why should we be guaranteeing their risk when they are in a return and they are going to get the benefit? As my colleagues know, the world is global today, and we should not be giving the richest of our corporations a free ride when they go to take a risk. That is what the whole purpose of their investment strategy is. I know we are going to do that to the American farmer. Not very many other businesses in this country do we guarantee them that they are going to have their loans paid off, do we guarantee them that they are going to make a profit. There is a reason why we do it for farmers, because we have an investment in the infrastructure that the farmer in this country supplies us and the quality of life. There is not a good reason for us to do it for the largest, the wealthiest, and the most profitable companies.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, it is a loan guarantee that one cannot get, the taxpayer cannot get; only if they lost everything in their life like the people in North Carolina, they are going to get some taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and some grants, but to give it to the wealthiest corporations in this country, absolutely not. This is a sham as far as protecting big business. If big business wants to invest in a foreign country and they think it is a good return, have them do it.

Mr. COBURN. ITT.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, as my colleagues know, I looked at OPIC every year since I have been here, and I can honestly say, although its goals may be worthy, it is pure corporate welfare. We just heard it said that it did not lose any. It actually lost almost $50 million last year. It showed money on Treasury bonds of money that we have given them showing interest, but the actual losses, true losses were $54 million; $54 million of people's money in this country OPIC lost last year. Okay, that is the truth about what they actually did. Did they earn money on bonds, on money that we gave them? Yes, they did, but their net cash difference was $54 million. Now I understand, if we work in a family, we are going to operate on the cash, and I understand we play all sorts of games in Washington, but the real fact is it is $54 million of the taxpayers' money went out the door last year with OPIC. Let me explain also where some of it went. Coca-Cola, their profits in 1995, the last year we have all the numbers, was $2.9 billion; but they get $246 million from OPIC. Coca-Cola? We should be funding that when we hear time after time that we are not funding education well enough, that we are not funding the social needs of our country well enough; but we are going to stand up and say we are going to justify giving $246 million worth of insured assets to Coca-Cola? How about Anheuser Busch? We gave them $49 million. They just made $642 million last year, and yet we are saying that we have a vested vital interest in building a beer factory outside of this country? Come on, give me a break. This is corporate welfare. We should not have welfare for the richest in our society, and to see the other side of the aisle defending sending this kind of money? ITT Corporation, $160 million. They only made 147 million last year. Had they not had this money, they would have lost money. So now what we are doing, we complain about the European Common Market, and I will be happy to yield when I finish my point. We complain about the EU and how they subsidize their farmers and that our farmers cannot compete with them. There is no difference in what we are doing, and we know it. Let us talk about Levi Strauss. We are paying tons of money in the Northwest for displaced workers, and we give $47 million to build a factory to build jeans to come into this country and Turkey. That is what OPIC does. OPIC takes jobs from America and puts them somewhere else. So the fact is that OPIC as an arm of our foreign policy is well intended, but like so many of the programs that the Government creates, it gets gamed, and it is gamed. If we are going to use it as a foreign policy tool, let us do it in a way that does not copy what the Soviet Union used to do. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing when it comes to OPIC, and in terms of foreign policy there is no question this is absolute corporate welfare.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, this is an issue that is very important to many of us. I have spent 21 years of my life in the medical field. Myself and one other doctor in this body goes home and practices every weekend. We all agree that there needs to be certain basic things changed. Everybody that voted on the last bill all know that all those basic things need to be changed. Why? Because there were four Members in this body that really wrote them: The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske), the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg). They constitute the entire base bill of all the bills that are written. We all agree on that. What we do not agree on, however, is what the risks are of going too far. I believe that all in this debate are well-intended. And other than the statements made by our friend from Massachusetts, I believe all the motives are good. He said our motives are not good, we have been pulled. We have not been pulled. We care about patients immensely. The question is do we care just in the short-run? Are we only going to solve the problem now and then have to come back and fix a bigger problem? I am known for my independence in this body. I have taken the AMA foursquare for their position, which puts people's future health care benefit at risk. And why are they doing it? They have a persecution complex. They have been sued out the kazoo. And if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for everybody else. I am a pro-business conservative. I have had the ``little you know what'' beat out of me from the people who are my friends. Why would I position myself in the middle of those two? Because I want to fix health care. Not just now. I want to fix it down the road. And I do not want what we are about to do to end up being the reason why the Government is going to have to run health care. Mr. Chairman, I want to tell my colleagues, if they do not believe that is true, listen to this: The closest the Health Care Financing Administration has ever come on any estimate of any cost with Medicare/ Medicaid, they missed it by 800 percent. So just take .3 or 1 percent, multiply it by 800 percent, and that is what we are going to see. There are motivations other than caring for the patients in this debate, and they are big business not wanting to pay the cost of full care. There are HMOs who oftentimes, too often, the bottom line is the most important thing. And there is the trial bar who will extort, we cannot deny it, they will extort businesses. And they will raise costs. And under the claim of a good purpose but all too often as a lawsuit that is intended to only do one thing, extort money because it costs more to defend than it does to settle. I do not deny that there are serious problems in our health care delivery system. I have worked hard with my friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), and the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) to try to solve those. But I beg this body to consider what we do. If we go too far and if we do not go far enough, we have failed. And if we fail, everyone in this country loses. Government-run health care will kill the quality and leading nature of this country's health care. That is really what we are talking about. We are not really talking about lawsuits. We really are not talking about employer-based helped care. What we are talking about is getting over the brink to where what is going to happen is we are going to fulfill our obligation with a Government-run program. And then talk about costs, talk about the ability to control care, talk about meeting our obligations to Social Security. We cannot even meet our obligations in Medicare now. How are we ever going to do that? So as my colleagues consider this vote, think about why I would place myself against both sides of my friends, both sides. Because it is right and because it is correct. It does not do everything that the Norwood-Dingell bill does. We know that. But let us go here first. Let us hold plans accountable. There is no denying that we hold them accountable. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) knows that. It is how we hold them accountable and what are the costs associated with that. I would beg my colleagues to look and walk before we leap. Our patients are worth that much.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding this time to me. As my colleagues know, several times today we have asked ourselves why we are here, and what we have already heard in the first part of the debate is some of us are here to take a cheap partisan shot, some of us are here to build a career in Congress, some are here to get an electoral advantage. I am here to help patients, and I have already heard that the only bill that can do that is the bipartisan bill, and I adamantly and flatly disagree with that. The American public needs to ask themselves why the persecution complex of the American Medical Association would say because we get sued so much we want everybody else sued. There is a 1990 study out of the University of Indiana that says American doctors at that time ordered $33 billion worth of tests that were unneeded because of the fear of being sued. It is a legitimate concern to consider what the unintended consequences of uncontrolled lawsuits are going to be. Some will say we are going too far. That is what people say about the bipartisan bill. Some would say we are not going far enough. That is what they say about the Boehner bill. What we have to do is find a balance between both extremes, one that holds plans accountable, that does not raise costs and in fact can be enacted. There is some perverse incentives out there that my friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), and the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) have worked hard to try to change with their bills, and I applaud them in their efforts to doing that. But to get a bipartisan bill, what happened is the group of people that they listed in support of their bill, they just happened to fail to mention that the trial lawyers are in strong support of their bill. Why would they be? Because one out of every $3 that is ever going to come out of this system to, quote, ``protect patients'' is going right into their pockets. So there needs to be a balance; there needs to be accountability. We can do that. And some have talked today about poison pills. We need to be real careful with that because, if in fact we care about patients, there is no such thing as a poison pill, there is no such thing as a poison pill. If my colleagues care about fixing the great inequality in our laws for patients, if my colleagues care about the future of voluntarily giving workers benefits, if my colleagues care about restoring the responsibilities on both sides of the doctor and patient relationship, then we cannot have too far reaching either way. We have got to have a balanced approach. There is going to be several votes that we are going to take. If my colleagues care about fairness and finally again if my colleagues care about patients, they are going to consider the one that is just right, the one in between, the one that holds plans accountable, that does not raise the costs. And, Mr. President, I would say to him, When you talk about vetoeing a bill that has access, that has limited liability, what you are saying is you really don't care about patients either. What you care about is a partisan political advantage and the fact that we will not enact a law that will save our patients and give them the freedom that all the rest of us have.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I think we just need to address what was just said because what was just said was misspoken. The State of Texas allows a suit on quality of care only, not on benefits. The Norwood-Ganske-Dingell bill covers both of those. The coalition bill allows any State to set up the same law that Texas has, but it reserves the right for benefits to the ERISA plans where they should be reserved. So any State can do what Texas can do under either of the two options.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I love the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood). What he just expressed to my colleagues in his heart is right. The conclusion he has drawn on how we accomplish what he wants to accomplish is dead wrong. Let us just use their definition of protecting employers. I happen to have a son-in-law that is a lawyer. He likes their bill because he knows he is going to make a lot of money off of it, because the very subtleties of going to State court to solve the problem that the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) so eloquently just described, which we all want to solve, we all want to solve that, says that that lawyer is going to file a suit against that company, not because he thinks he can and not because he thinks he will win, because that is the person with the deep pockets. Then he is going to work hard, and then he is going to extort, and he is going to say I am going to settle. They do not care about the patients most of the time. What they care about are their pocketbooks. The reason we are in this shape is too many doctors in this country care about their pocketbook more than doctors in the first place, or we would never have had HMOs, or we would never have had the abuses of HMOs. So if my colleagues really care about patients, and if they really want a solution that will meet the needs of those patients and not the needs of the trial bar, then we have to back up. We have gone too far. We have created a system that is going to result in the extortion of dollars from every employer in this country. Mark my words, those guys are smart. They are going to find every crack every time. They are going to claim it under doing something good. But the motive is not going to be pure; the motive is going to be money. Just like the motive today with too many HMOs is money. It is not about patients to either side, but it should be about patients to this body. The only way we have to fix it is with a middle ground that protects the very supplier of that care in the first place, does not undermine it, does not cut it. If they truly make a medical decision under the Coburn-Shadegg bill, they are held liable. They cannot be penetrated unless they are not. So let us hold them accountable. Let us do it in a way. Let us get a good bill to the Senate. Let us get a good a bill that the President is going to sign. Let us fix the problem. Let us reverse the cynicism of this body. Let us talk about patients and not politics.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I would make two notes. Number one, the American Academy of Family Practice has endorsed our bill as well, the Goss-Coburn-Shadegg-Thomas bill. Number two is, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) is an internist, not a family practice physician. Number three is, we do have cancer clinical trials. And, number four is, we in fact have network adequacy which is not in the consensus bill, which is if there is not an adequate network there is not care.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I think it is very important the American public really gets to see how we got in the mess we find ourselves in with health care. In America today, we have a Soviet-run government-mandated health care system which has resulted in the loss of freedom of choice for millions of Americans. This rule to provide access is hopefully a step in moving back in that direction. But I also want to make sure that the American people understand the two extremes on this debate. On one side, we have corporate America and small business who is afraid that the costs are going to go through the roof if we change anything. On the other side, we find the legal profession licking its chops to take money away from people who normally act responsibly. We are going to hear all sorts of things during this debate. The one thing that we are going to hear claimed said many times is we are doing this for patients. We are going to find out if we are really doing this for patients, if we are really trying to restore freedom of choice, if we are really trying to restore accountability, and we are trying to do that at the same time that people do not lose their health care. The partisanship of this body is terrible, the claims made on the basis of some premier principle when they are really a veiled partisan dig for a political purpose. We are going to find out if one group or another really cares about people. We are going to find out on these votes if my colleagues really want to have a compromised piece of legislation that solves the problem of accountability, that restores choice and does not bankrupt the payroll of the American people who are supplying health care in this country. We are going to get to hear all the stories that will touch our hearts that say why we should go one way. We are going to hear all the threats about why we cannot go another because health care is going to be taken away. But in the long run, what it really comes down to is not the next election, which is what we are going to hear most about but nobody is ever going to say, what it really comes down to is will we have the courage to look and risk our seats to do what is in the best interest of patients in this country, not what is in the best interest of the Democratic party, not what is in the best interest of the Republican Party, but what is in the best interest of the people of this country. That rings hollow to members who have been here; I understand that. But the only true measure of whether or not we have done our job well is that when we look in the eye of somebody that is out in our district and say, You have more freedom, you still have your health care, and you are still going to get it when this debate is all over. By the way, access is in the Senate bill. So anything we would merge is already there, and the opposition knows that. So the claim rings very hollow. Without access, no matter which bill in terms of Patients' Bill of Rights is passed, without access provisions, fewer people will have insured coverage in America tomorrow than have it today. This access bill is not perfect. AHPs are a terrible idea when we think about what it is going to do to disrupt the private insurance market regardless of the fact that the National Federation of Independent Businesses wants it. We make no adjustment for high-risk pools in the States. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg) is actually right. One cannot do AHPs unless one is willing to put something else back there to help take care of the risk. But, politically, the bill that comes out, although needed, is not in the best interest of patients either. So let us quit playing the game of partisan politics, and let us define this debate back down about what we are really supposed to be here for is the people who need and should get care and choose, and not take it away by something we might foolishly do either for the trial lawyers or for big business.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to thank the authors for this bill. My home State has a bill that protects unborn children in the case of the death of the mother. I have been involved in delivering five babies to dead women, five. Three of them died, one of them is essentially going to be totally dependent all the rest of her life, and one is a bright, alive, awake child. Four of those deliveries happened before Oklahoma had a law. There was nothing that happened to the person that killed the mother, ultimately, or the child. So what we are attempting to do here is a right thing; it is not a wrong thing. We ought to talk about half-truths. The gentleman from Texas said that all we had to do was agree with the President on partial-birth abortion, that the health of the woman as an exception, and he would have signed it, which totally renders that bill useless. What it says is if you want to abort a late-term baby, you can; and you can just rationalize and say it is for the health of the mother, because she does not want the baby. So I understand the gentleman's quest for consistency, but before we ask for a quest for consistency, we ought to ask for a quest for the fullness of all the facts before we make the statements. The life, there is no question about it. There is no question about it genetically that life begins at conception. Based with the knowledge we have now in our country, we define death as the absence of brain waves and the absence of heartbeat. Before most women ever recognize the signs and symptoms of their pregnancy, their baby has those two things, a heartbeat and brain waves, and when our technology catches up with our hearts, then we will be able to prove scientifically that in fact a baby at conception is a human being. I will grant, we cannot prove that now, but we certainly can at 41 days post-last menstrual period. We can prove that scientifically, just by using our definition of death. So, again, I want to thank the gentleman for bringing this bill to the floor. It is way too late, it is way too late for all those children whose opportunity for life is going to be taken away in this next year, but maybe incrementally, and maybe when we have somebody of conscience that will sign the bills of conscience, we will have saved the lives we should be saving.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I said the attrition rate in the Federal Government versus private industry is about one-fifth. Number two is, we did need to raise military pay, but we do not pay military on average anywhere close to what we are paying Federal civilian employees. And to say because we are trying to bring them up to retain when we do not have the retention problem in the rest of the government I think is not an accurate argument. The final point I would make: In last year's appropriation there was over $400 million for buildings in this bill that are not in there this year. So the real expenditure that the American people needs to know is this bill has gone up $640 million. Because we are not buying $400-plus million worth of buildings this year. We are applying that to run the IRS and some of the other agencies that we run. So even though the net is only up this additional $240 million, I think it is accurate to say that. And I am not saying we do not necessarily need to do that. My complaint was on the $330 million, Mr. Chairman, not the $240 million.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I would make two points. I would concede that there is a difference in mix. I do not deny that. But I also say that if we look at the attrition from the Federal Government, it is one-fifth the rate of private industry today. So that, on an economic sense, says that they are not running away and that they are not being underpaid.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) for yielding me the time, and I do want to express my appreciation to him and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). They had a difficult job this year within the parameters that were given to them. In the Treasury, Postal, there is no question of very key important facets to our Government agencies. I, however, wanted to speak, because I am adamantly opposed to this bill as it is written, and I wanted to spend a minute so that my colleagues can know why. In this bill, we have a 4.8 percent increase for federal workers. A third of them will receive another 3 percent increase. That is a 7.8 percent increase. Now, as we look at what the average federal worker, and this comes from the Federal Government statistics, not my statistics, the average Federal Government worker who works in the D.C. area, Maryland, Virginia and the D.C. area, their present average salary is $57,371. With this increase, which is four-tenths of a percent above what the President asked for, they will receive on average a $2,754 a year raise. That is $1.40 an hour is what the average federal employee is. Now, I want to contrast with, we are going to give our seniors in Social Security a 1.8 percent increase. That is what we are going to give the seniors that are out there struggling to make it on their Social Security. The money that is going to be used to enhance the federal employees far above the level of the other people's average salary, and if my colleagues look at the whole average federal employee salary in this country, $44,886, which is 2\1/2\ times the average family income in the State of Oklahoma, that is what the average federal worker's salary is, they will receive over $1 an hour increase. The four-tenths of a percent increase above what the President requested, and do not get me wrong, I think we should increase the pay for federal employees, is a $330 million bill. Do my colleagues know where that money is going to come from? It is going to come dead out of Social Security. So not only are we not supplying our seniors with what they should have through an equitable Social Security system, but what we are doing is we are taking $330 million that ultimately will come from Social Security, because the agreement reached between the Congress and the President of the United States will be violated by the end of this year as far as the budget caps. We just had the President say he is not going to pass the tax cut; and, yet, he is going to ask the Congress to spend more money. So if we are not going to give a tax cut to the American people and we are going to spend more money, then if we are going to do that, let us pony up a little bit more for the seniors. If we are going to steal their Social Security money anyway, why do we not give them more than a 1.8 percent cost of living adjustment that is not even covering their Medicare costs or their prescription drug costs. There is a second reason that I am against this bill. I am not against child care. The Morella idea is a good idea. We should care for our children. But the extension of that idea will not work without ultimately what her bill, which will eventually be on the floor to authorize this, says, that there will be a federal mandated standard for federal child care centers. The other thing about the Morella language that is in this bill is that it is discriminatory. Only can one have the federal benefit if one goes to a federally approved day care. If one wants one's neighbor to care for one's child, if one wants one's children to care for one's child, one does not get the benefit. So only if one comes to Big Daddy, Big Brother, will one get that benefit. I would hope that the Members of this body will vote against this bill and put it back into perspective. We are not in position where we can give a $2,000 a year raise to every federal employee.

Mr. COBURN. Probably significant. I do not know what the average doctor's salary is. But I also know that the average doctor has 8 years additional education and debt that the average Federal employee does not have, the average.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I value the Federal employees that work in my district. This is not about any individual employee. But the average Federal employee's salary in this country is greater than the average salary in this country by $4,000. So they may be unlike comparisons, but there is an unfairness inherently when the average American makes $4,000 more than the average Federal employee. That is number one.