John Dingell

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, the amount of the sale is $200-plus million. The amount which is wasted in selling at half the cost the government paid for it is over $100 million. That is the economy we are practicing here tonight.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, he who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it. This House has debated time after time the energy crisis which we had in the 1970's and 1980's. To deal with that, one of the principal weapons we achieved was to set aside the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was supposed to constitute 1 billion barrels. We have 592, less than half of what it is. This bill, in an improper procedure which had to be sanctified by an immunity bath given by the Committee on Rules, which waived points of order against this particular proposal, which would be subject to a point of order as legislation in an appropriation bill, has presented us a device which will encourage this country to buy oil at $33.50 a barrel and sell it for $15. The net cost of this kind of folly is two- fold. One, it is going to cost this country $106 billion that we are going to lose. The total cost of what we are going to sell is going to be double that. The loss is $106,500,000. However, the real loss is if this country gets into some kind of a crunch, because when this country produces less than half the oil that it uses, the one mechanism we have to protect our industry, to protect our military, to enable us to protect the force that is necessary to defend ourselves, and to address the problem of stabilizing the petroleum market, is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Adopt the amendment, reject the language of the bill, and let us get down to the business of legislating wisely.

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DINGELL. As a matter of fact, I think they are, because the language of the bill, if the gentleman will permit, simply bans the use of volunteers.

Mr. DINGELL. It may well be that that is so, but the hard fact of the matter is that the Fish and Wildlife Service uses them for fish surveys in the Pacific Northwest, something that is extremely important. The salmon are [[Page H 6952]] now approaching the status of endangered species in the entire northwestern part of the United States. Without that particular use of volunteers for surveys on streams, and things of that kind, to count breeding populations and things of that kind and to identify reproduction, you are going to find a major threat to the salmon resource in the entire Western part of the United States. Now, why are we not including them?

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, this is particularly true in view of the fact that the Republican Party is also talking about the need to have volunteerism. Here we have a piece of legislation which simply bans volunteerism in a very important area.

Mr. DINGELL. I applaud what the gentleman is doing, but he still has not addressed the problem.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the author of this amendment, but I think the gentleman could get greater commendation by doing rather more. I am curious, why is it that this amendment deals only with the breeding bird situation at Fish and Wildlife and the Interior Department as opposed to dealing more broadly with the entire program for the use of volunteers by the Fish and Wildlife Service? Can the gentleman inform me why this narrow limitation on this matter?

Mr. DINGELL. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DINGELL. Absolutely.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I want to make it clear, I am trying to proceed in a friendly way. I have great respect for the gentleman, and what he is doing is good, but not good enough. I yield to my good friend.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I want to make it very, very clear to my friend, and I applaud what he is doing, but I want to make it very clear to my good friend that I did not favor the idea that we would create a U.S. Biological Survey. I thought it was a step backward. I thought it created great peril. I thought it set up a target where we could do great hurt to the Fish and Wildlife Service and to the conservation efforts of this United States by setting up this kind of an entity. I opposed it on this floor and I think it is a bad idea. But that is not the problem we confront. There are a number of scientific efforts that are conducted now by this entity. I intend to try and get rid of it at the earliest possible moment. But during the time that it is there, whether you like it or not, the hard fact is this agency has to be able to perform the scientific research that has to be done in order to get the information that is necessary for us to properly manage our Fish and Wildlife resources. I am not talking about going out and shutting down somebody who has a controversy involving the Endangered Species Act or anything of that sort. I was just saying to find out about the wildlife resources of the United States, this kind of survey has to be done. This kind of survey, under the unfortunate existence of the Biological Survey, is done by the biological Survey. It is not only the breeding bird population survey which is at stake here.

Mr. DINGELL. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. DINGELL. There are volunteers in the VA hospital and you are going to find out how well you are going to do there, but the gentleman still has not answered the question. And having dealt with the gentleman over the years, I know how adept and adroit my good friend is, but I want to make it clear that he has not answered the question as to what blockhead it was that did this on this particular legislation.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, if that is so, why is this amendment necessary? This amendment is necessary to cure the mischief that is included in the appropriations bill which prohibits the use of these kinds of volunteers for this kind of work.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I support what the gentleman is doing, but he still has not answered my question. The question really is why is the gentleman just making the use of volunteers by Fish and Wildlife Service available in the case of the migratory bird survey? Volunteers are used by Fish and Wildlife Service for running refuges, for conducting a whole series of surveys, for dealing with the salmon problem in the Pacific Northwest, for addressing different problems that exist within the Service in terms of serving as guides and interpretive people at the refuges. Indeed, in many refuges these are the only people, the volunteers are the only people that are available to make the refuge system work. I am unaware of any abuse that has been committed by the volunteers or any abuse that exists with regard to this system. And If the gentleman can inform me what that abuse is, or why is it that we are terminating the use of the volunteers in the refuge system, and why the gentleman is limiting this addition only to volunteers with regard to the breeding surveys, he will help me enormously.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, but remember you have runs of spring Chinook. They will be coming in during the time in which this is forbidden. It is not Fish and Wildlife that conducts all of those research efforts. And a lot of the people that do the work are now shifted by a bookkeeping effort from Fish and Wildlife's budget over to the Biological Survey. They are doing the same work that they did when they were in the Fish and Wildlife Service, and they are doing it in concert with people in the Fish and Wildlife Service, but they are paid by the other agency. So, whether this amendment carries or not, and it is a good amendment. I intend to support it, but I would like to support it if it were better. Whether it carries or not, still the question is going to exist as to whether or not volunteers can participate in that survey. But I want to reiterate for the benefit not of my friend, because I know he understands what is going on. I understand the politics of this situation. He has been caught in a political situation where some know- nothing somewhere came to the conclusion that we had to do away with the use of volunteers by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Interior Department. I want to give my colleagues here some appreciation of the hard facts. If my colleague were to offer a similar amendment with regard to the Defense Department or the Veterans Administration and say that you could not use volunteers in a hospital run by the VA or run by the Department of Defense, people would say you are crazy. We run the entirety of these hospitals in almost total dependence on volunteers. The volunteers there do the work. The volunteers there comfort the patients. The volunteers do actually research, and things of that kind, which is extremely important to the existence of those agencies and the services at the hospitals. Now, a similar situation obtains with regard to the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Interior Department. I still have not heard from my dear friend why it is that we are prohibiting the use of volunteers in this. If the Biological Survey is bad, I will be happy to join the gentleman in offering legislation which will simply do away with it. I think it was extremely unwise it was ever adopted. But I do not think we ought to punish ongoing efforts which are extremely important in terms of efforts which are done using scientific methods to manage our living resources, not only in the West but in the East. Can the gentleman tell me why this thing was done in the first place?

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Gilchrest]. Mr. Chairman, again with great respect and great affection for my good friend, the chairman of the subcommittee, I would like to support this amendment very strongly which is offered on behalf of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] and by our good friend, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Gilchrest]. It is a good amendment. As my colleagues know, I cannot understand what it is that the Committee on Appropriations has against using volunteers to collect scientific data and information. If that is their concern, they should say so. I have asked on a number of occasions why is the language at lines 12 through 17 in the bill? There is no answer. What abuse is this language directed at? Has there been some impropriety by Fish and Wildlife or by the Biological Survey which has been committed which would trigger this kind of response? The answer is nobody knows, but all of a sudden this language shows up, and it says: You can't use volunteers at the Biological Survey to collect data and information which would be of value in understanding what is going on with regard to our fish and wildlife resources in this country. Now this language is not something which is thought lightly of in the conservation community. The Audubon Society, the Trails Unlimited, National Wildlife Federation, and the International Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies all are opposed to the language, and all support the amendment because they recognize that we need to have information to manage wildlife resources. Without it we cannot do an intelligent job of managing those precious resources. We are not talking about endangered species. We are not talking about regulatory actions. All we are talking about is the collection of information and data of scientific information and of utilizing volunteers to assist the taxpayers and the Government in carrying out the mission of this Government. Why that should cause distress, pain, suffering, and heartburn on the part of my friends on the Committee on Appropriations I do not know. Mr. Chairman, I have inquired to find out what it is that distresses so many of my friends on the Committee on Appropriations about that situation. They cannot say. The hard fact of the matter is that volunteers are used throughout the entirety of government and they serve well and honorably. They provide informational services. They serve as associates in the administration of public lands. They serve as volunteers at hospitals to assist the sick and the ill in government-run hospitals. They serve at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation. We have a large internship program here, and yet we say no Fish and Wildlife, Biological Survey, Interior Department can use volunteers. Why? Nobody knows, but it causes great distress to the Committee on Appropriations so they put in this language. Now the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, all of my colleagues' home-State Fish and Wildlife administrators, their game and fish commissions in their own States, say that is a bad thing, that that language should be removed, that we should use volunteers. My dear friend from Ohio, for whom I have the most enormous respect, cannot tell us why this language is here. Obviously he is under some sort of pressure, and I respect him for having responded to it with such grace and dignity, and I must say that there is no man who could have done a better job in handling a bad hand in a poker game, but the hard fact of the matter is this language is bad, it is unwise, it is unnecessary. The chairman of the subcommittee cannot explain why it is here. So, we ought to adopt this amendment. What we really ought to do is to strike the entirety of the language from line 12 down through line 17. Then we would have a program which would continue to make the public be able to participate in their government, to enable us to derive enormous advantage from the service of ordinary citizens to save money on behalf of the taxpayers, to gather needed information in a timely fashion so that we can protect the precious and treasured Fish and Wildlife resources in the United States. Why we are trying to deny ourselves that, I cannot explain. My good friend from Ohio, the chairman of the subcommittee, cannot explain why. I have asked him on several occasions. He suffered mightily over the question, but he cannot answer it. So my urging to my colleagues is, join the responsible people in the conservation community. Join your own home State fish and game administrator. Support the amendment offered by the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Gilchrest], and then let us try and lay to rest this cockamamie idea that we should not use volunteers in this country because some oddball somewhere gets the idea that we really should not.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my time be equally divided between myself and the gentleman from California [Mr. Stark], a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, and that he be permitted to control that time.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4\1/2\ minutes. (Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, the agreement we are voting on today extends the Medicare select demonstration program to all 50 States for a 7\1/2\-year period beginning in 1992. It does so with no appreciation of the consequences of this. Although many support this program, I believe that because Medicare cuts required by the Republican budget in the amount of some $270 billion are so drastic, and will require such fundamental reductions in the Medicare program, it is impossible to pass any Medicare legislation, including Medicare select without taking those reductions into account. In addition, Mr. Speaker, as many of my colleagues know, we argued in the committee that we should await the results of the State evaluations before expanding this program to all 50 States. It has come to my attention that the preliminary results of this evaluation are now in, but they have not been made available by the handlers of the legislation. Those results indicate that Medicare select is significantly associated with Medicare cost increases in 8 of 12 select States. Let me repeat that. Medicare select is associated with cost increases in 8 of 12 States. Furthermore, the cost increase is 17.5 percent. The cost increase is 17.5 percent. That is not fiscal responsibility. Now, while I know these results will not be final until next month, we should clearly examine the results before passing an expansion to all 50 States. How can we possibly extend a program that has the potential of increasing Medicare costs in all of the 50 States, as it has in the States in which it is now used by the amount of 17.5 percent? This leads one to the unfortunate conclusion that my Republican colleagues are willing to cut back on benefits to Social Security recipients and to Medicare recipients, but that they are not willing to lock up a program which is going to increase costs to the Medicare system and to increase profits to the insurance companies. Mr. Speaker, I therefore urge that we vote ``no'' on the conference agreement on H.R. 483, and that we reconsider these changes in the light of evaluation results and in the context of budget reconciliation. Then we can more fully examine the entire Medicare Program, which is going to be examined in extenso in connection with reconciliation, because we are going to have Republican cuts in Medicare recipients, and we should include the Medicare cost increases which will result in the additional beneficiary out-of-pocket costs that will occur under this program, along with increased utilization and limitations on the beneficiaries' choice of providers as indicated in the preliminary report. Let me remind my colleagues that Medicare select has had some peculiar consequences. It has not been the unmixed blessing which the proponents would have us believe. First of all, it has raised costs, but it has done some other things which have significant impact on recipients. It first of all starts out low and goes up. The average premium cost at the beginning is around $870 a year. But by the time the recipient has reached the age of 85, it has risen, lo and behold, to something like $2,300 a year. Now, during that time he is locked in because any preexisting conditions which he had during the time or before he got on Medicare select, he cannot carry over and have treated in any new package. So if a person joins this Medicare Select Program, he is locked in. He cannot get out because he cannot get treatment for new conditions. Those new conditions are carefully walled out by preexisting condition clauses in any new insurance policy. So he pays more and more and more and he cannot get out. If his doctor moves or his hospital closes or some condition requires him to want to go to a particular person, doctor, or facility for treatment and they are not included in this HMO, that individual cannot go. This is Medicare select all right. It is selected for the benefit of the insurance companies who are going to make lots of money. And they are going to make it, in part, off the Medicare trust fund and they are going to make it in part off of the poor little guy who is dependent on Medicare for providing his benefits. They are going to skin the public, and everybody is going to act with great surprise when we find the new returns and the new information show us that we have in fact cost ourselves a lot more money; we have in fact denied Social Security and Medicare recipients benefits; and we have benefited the health insurance industry; and we have left ourselves in a situation where we all of a sudden find that Medicare has cost a lot more. I urge my colleagues, vote this down. Let us consider it in a more temperate fashion, and let us consider it when we can have a look at all of the things, including the cuts in Medicare benefits which are coming to the Medicare recipients courtesy of my good friends and colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, how much time do we now have remaining?