Rahm Emanuel

Mr. EMANUEL

Mr. EMANUEL. Remember, the same people that wrote that speech were participating in crafting this policy, and they have now set out a course of $1 billion a week of occupation, $50 billion a year of U.S. taxpayer money for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. Yet when we talk this week about increasing funding for Head Start, we are told no money. Last week when we voted and there was a 6-year freeze put on Pell Grants, college assistance for people trying to open up the doors for higher education for themselves, we are told there are no resources. Yet we will be asked later on to commit resources to the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq to the tune of $50 billion. Yet here at home, we will be told there are no resources for health care or infrastructure. The gentleman may say that the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing; I wonder if anybody knows what they are planning in Iraq and what they are planning here at home when it comes to our own economic development. The American people from World War II forward have been tremendously generous around the world, and yet they cannot continue to be asked to be that generous when their own needs and hopes and dreams for their own children are being denied, whether that is in the area of health care, investment in our environment, or our own economic development. I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, what I want to try to do is try to demystify this process. It was not like the CIA got the speech and itself edited it out. This is a coordinated process. National security does it, its team. There is a domestic team. There is an economic team. So when the CIA probably said, no, you cannot use this, everybody's eyes in State, Defense, NSE, everybody's eyes saw that it was not valid. That is the same team that edits and previews and reviews the President's speech in January. So everybody who was participatory in the October speech was the same body sitting in the room participating in the State of the Union speech. I think again people this weekend, for whom George Tenet seems to be wearing the laundry, or they are throwing him under the truck, remember, this was not good enough 2 weeks later for the Secretary of State who said, and I am quoting, ``This is crap, I am not going to use this.'' The Secretary of State threw it out. We had George Tenet sitting behind them at the U.N. 2 weeks after the State of the Union. They knew it was not good then. If it was not good enough for the Secretary of State 2 weeks after the State of the Union, it was not good enough for the President in October, but somehow it has become good enough for the President at the State of the Union, a speech on the doorstep of a war where the world was hanging on every word.

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that on the occupation, not only are our troops there, 150,000 U.S. troops now, permanently stationed there, and as my colleague noted that there are other countries who will not, like India, participate without the U.N. There is nothing that has occurred in the postwar Iraq that was not predictable or foreseen pre the war. And I think that although there is a great argument about 16 words that were legitimately said in the well of this Chamber, the people's House, and it is a legitimate question, I think one of the greatest travesties, and I would hope that we would have an inquiry in either the House or the other Chamber, any investigation, on how we went to war without an exit strategy. There has been a bipartisan agreement for a long time that we never will send American troops, at least post-Vietnam, we would never send American troops into combat without knowing how to exit. We have no plan for the peace and we have no plan to secure the exit of our American men and women.

Mr. EMANUEL

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, today along with Congressman Reynolds and a bipartisan coalition of members from the Great Lakes states, I am proud to introduce the Great Lakes Restoration Financing Act of 2003. Holding one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water supply and nine- tenths of the U.S. supply, the Great Lakes and their connecting channels form the largest freshwater system on Earth. Thirty years after passage of the U.S. Clean Water Act, Great Lakes water quality has improved, but the Lakes remain unhealthy for wildlife and people and there is clear and convincing evidence that the ecosystem is deteriorating. For example, bacteria from sewage overflows led to a record 897 beach closings in 2002 on Lake Michigan alone. Additionally, twenty percent of the Great Lakes shoreline contains polluted sediments. Further, state and local authorities have issued more than 1,500 fish consumption advisories in the Great Lakes. Clearly in crisis, the Great Lakes are the source of drinking water for 28 million people. The Everglades, the source of freshwater for much of the state of Florida, faced a similar threat in the mid-1990's. Congress responded with the creation of a massive restoration effort. Building on that successful national model, the Great Lakes Restoration Fund would establish a funding source for Lakes restoration and revitalization based upon President Bush's Great Lakes plan. Following the President's ``Great Lakes Strategy 2002'' as its guide, the Great Lakes Restoration Fund would provide states with significant funds for Lakes restoration. Specifically, the Fund would ensure the economic and ecologic sustainability of the Lakes, clean up toxic hot spots, combat invasive species, control pollution from urban and agricultural runoff, restore and conserve wetlands and critical coastal habitat, and increase public education of Great Lakes issues. The United States is blessed with tremendous natural resources. The Great Lakes undoubtedly rank among the most treasured of these resources, but if this body allows them to deteriorate further--if we can no longer drink the water, and no longer swim at our beaches--we will have failed American families. Mr. Speaker, we refuse to let this happen. This bill will begin to heal the damage done over the years. I strongly encourage my colleagues to support us in this important endeavor by cosponsoring the Great Lakes Restoration Financing Act of 2003.

Mr. EMANUEL

Mr. EMANUEL. The truth is, Mr. Speaker, that we had an original bill that was going to use market forces to bring competition between generic medications versus name-brand medications. That was projected to save the taxpayers and the consumers and the elderly $65 billion over 10 years. This concept, following that same principle of competition as the price reducer, let the market determine best price, would bring, I think the gentleman just said, a little over a half trillion dollars to the consumers, the elderly, over the next 10 years. It is using market forces. Bringing that competition to bear on the market, that would bring prices down, and no longer would the American elderly and the American taxpayer be seen as the profit guinea pig for our pharmaceutical companies. They are making up the difference where they cannot get it in Germany or in England. They are making it up, the price difference, their profit margins, on our elderly. Therefore, our taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill in one of the largest fleecings of the American people we will ever see. The principles of competition will bring prices down, I think. Pharmaceutical companies have gamed the system from the patent laws, the laws as it relates to competition and globalization, and through the tax laws. As my colleagues know, we had a provision which was to allow the NIH to recoup 10 percent on any drug that was developed and brought to market through NIH dollars. My view is anything below 30 percent in the private market is considered dumb money. The taxpayers, all the cancer drugs, all the AIDS drugs on the market were developed with taxpayer-based research. We should be recouping a minimum of 10 percent to the taxpayers. The NIH would be a self-funded agency in 10 years. But the core of what we have, the biggest dollar saver is the gentleman's amendment that we are honored to be cosponsors of. Again, this is not price control; it is choice. If you bring choice to bear in the market, consumers will flock to the lowest price, and I think that is the basic principle why you have Democrats and Republicans ready to vote for this, if we could get it to the floor.

Mr. EMANUEL. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina. (Mr. JONES of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, you should take a little solace in the fact that they have decided to go to scare tactics because they know this is not about price controls. This is about letting the market determine the price that we can pay, and they are scared of the free market. This is a large company that has a captive market and is scared of the forces of the free market to determine the best price. So they have decided to through a few Members try to play the worst and ugliest of politics because on the merits they cannot win it, and I compliment you for having the courage to stand by your principles. I would like to make a note to something earlier that our good friend the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) said which deals with the fact that we are Democrats and Republicans here. We give different views on different subjects, but the fact is what has brought us here is our common principles and our common values, and this is a bipartisan issue because we jointly think that our seniors should not be paying the highest price, and our taxpayers should not be asked to pay the highest price when you can get lower prices. As our colleague from Minnesota showed with that chart, although people cannot see the specific numbers, they get the basic gist that there is a 700-buck spread for the same drugs you buy in Germany versus what we buy here. You do not have to have a party difference to understand it is fundamentally wrong. It is not right, and we cannot ask the taxpayers as we embark maybe on the largest expansion of an entitlement program in 40 years to foot a bill that would be, in my view, the greatest, largest fleecing of America in front of the naked eye. So the pharmaceutical companies have decided to engage in this scare tactic because on the merits and on the ground they cannot win this. I would like to ask one question because they are engaged in one other subject up here. If the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) could walk the folks through that are watching the notion of safety, just to walk them through this, because that is another scare tactic. This is the first of many salvos. We are not done with their attacks, if you do not mind me interrupting, but I would like you to walk the public through the issue of safety.

Mr. EMANUEL. Well, Mr. Speaker, before I try to catch that last flight, when I was running for office and I was in Six Corners Jewel, which is our big grocery store with the Osco, on Irving and Organza, seniors would come out and show me what they were paying and they told me the stories about how they cut their medications in half, or a husband would skip a month so his spouse could take her medications. And the first thing they said is, you have to make this affordable. I have to be able to pay for this. They would talk about that, and ask me to make sure that whatever we did, we did not mess with their private plans. But then they would say, please, add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. In my view, if we are on the doorstep of adding that benefit, let us ensure, because it is the first thing they have all said to every one of us who has gone to meet with them, we have to make these drugs affordable. They cannot afford these prices. They would tell me, look, somehow last month my month's supply was $70 and this month it is $96, and nothing has changed. Nothing. If we brought competition, something would change.

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to thank my colleague from Texas not only for his generosity of providing this time, but for the passion that he brings to education and to working families of all ilks, and the eloquence he brought to the words about the importance of education as the stepladder to the American dream. So I want to thank him now for the generosity he provided so I can be with my family this evening and catch the last flight, and for his passion and tireless work on behalf of all Americans. Texas is lucky to have you as a Representative and a voice; not only a vote, but a voice for their values. Mr. Speaker, about 2 weeks ago a number of us came to the floor to speak on market access, and that is the ability of Americans to purchase medications anywhere in Canada, Ireland, England, France, Germany, Italy, wherever they get the cheapest price. Since the last time that my good friend from Minnesota and I were here, there was a report yesterday by Families USA that ABC news covered and the Wall Street Journal covered, and I would like to bring that statistic to the attention of the American people. It reaffirmed a disturbing trend about skyrocketing prescription drug prices in the United States. On average, the prices of the 50 drugs most commonly prescribed to seniors increased at a three-and-a-half times rate of inflation. The total spending of senior citizens on prescription drugs rose an estimated 44 percent from 2000 to 2003, when inflation was only running at collectively over those periods of time of 6 percent. Now we are projected to spend over the next 10 years $1.8 trillion by our seniors on their medications, and yet when we think about those dollars, the American elderly spend somewhere between 30 to 300 percent higher in prices than the senior citizens of France, England, Germany, Canada, Denmark, any of the G-8 countries and our colleagues in Europe. My good friend from Minnesota has brought a bill into play that allows our American consumer, our American elderly, our businesses and, most importantly, our taxpayers to get the use of market forces to reduce those prices, bring real competition and the close market that our pharmaceutical companies have brought and bring competition that would save billions of dollars to the consumer and, most importantly, to the taxpayer. To me, if we are going to have the largest expansion of an entitlement in 40 years, spend $400 billion, you would think you would want to get the taxpayer the best price, but the pharmaceutical companies have done a pretty good job of playing the political system to their benefit, and they have tried to prevent us from getting this bill to the floor, because if we got the bill to the floor, they would know what happens. In my view, this is not only good for the seniors, they would get good prices, but it would be fair to the taxpayers who are going to be asked to pay this bill. So my friend from Minnesota has a wonderful bill. I think he has been here many times to explain his chart about comparative prices. I would like to yield now some time to him to talk, and then I would like to ask some questions, if he does not mind.

Mr. EMANUEL. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, both of my colleagues we were talking a little earlier; and perhaps you could address the question, what do you think, given they have projected, I think it is $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years that seniors will be spending on medications, but if we had access to this bill and it was in place, what would be the savings to both the elderly as well as to the taxpayer, projected?

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. So what you are saying is that unless it is FDA-approved, it cannot come in, and it is FDA- approved, meaning the Food and Drug Administration, which is the overseer, the czar of what is safe, approves it, then it can be purchased through the Internet or overseas and brought into the United States, because, as you said earlier, it is manufactured at the same facilities. So there is really no pricing differences except they get price differences there than here. So they are FDA-approved.

Mr. EMANUEL. Those are the same drugs? I did not mean to interrupt my colleague. Same medication, nothing different?

Mr. EMANUEL

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, in yesterday's testimony, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted that our reconstruction costs, providing health care, education, transportation and housing needs in Iraq have cost the American taxpayers $2.3 billion, and projected over the year, $2.3 billion, that is equal to the amount we could provide in a child tax credit to the 12 million children, the 6\1/2\ million Americans who were left out of the tax cut the last time we provided a tax cut. In the middle of July, the first set of tax cuts will begin to hit the mailboxes all over America, and yet 12 million children of American families, 6\1/2\ million families of working parents who get up every day to provide for their children and do right will not get a tax cut. Now we are going to be providing the same amount of dollars for Iraq's reconstruction, for their housing, their health care, their education, for their children's future. I would hope that before we go home for our August break and our summer break to be with our families, our constituents and our neighbors that we would provide these working American families the same types of educational opportunities, the same type of economic security, that tax cut and an economic interest we are providing Iraq.

Mr. EMANUEL

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this legislation because it abandons our commitment, our common commitment to affordable college education for American families; and it abandons those values which guide us towards that commitment. Just last month, unemployment rose to 6.4 percent, the highest in 9 years. America's working-class and middle-class families are struggling to make ends meet; and yet college tuition is skyrocketing in this country. Double-digit tuition increases are a standard at public universities, with these costs rising by more than 20 percent in some States. The solution in this bill to these trends of rising unemployment and increasingly unaffordable college education is to freeze all student aid for the first time in 6 years. The value of the Pell grant, the biggest and largest Federal college assistance program and other student financial aid programs, actually decreases under this bill. It does not even adjust for inflation or counteract sharply-rising college tuition costs. I believe that this bill runs counter to the values that Members on both sides of the aisle share. I know I have talked to Members on the other side of the aisle who have expressed the importance of college education. We would not be here in this Chamber if it were not for the importance that college education provided us to move and achieve for us and for our families the American Dream. We tell our constituents that they should have to take out a second mortgage on their homes or burden their children with increasing amounts of debt to just make college education accessible. Now, I remember a family I met, a police officer and a spouse, a teacher in a parochial school. They had two kids in high school. They looked at me and they said they had no idea how they were going to pay for college education for their kids who wanted to go to a public university. I was running for Congress and I told them about the tuition deduction which ends in 2005, their ability to deduct $4,000 from their taxes. I told them about other availabilities of States programs. Now, we have talked on both sides of the aisle. We are all here because of the importance we put on higher education. We know it is the door which every American middle-class family or low-income family walks through so they can achieve for themselves and their families the American Dream. This bill is in violation of our common values and the principles that we hold true, that a higher education is the key to America. We should not convince middle-class families of the importance of college education and then place it out of reach for them. The only guarantee that that parent has is to take a second mortgage on their house. The only guarantee we provide is that child graduates from college with $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000 in debt as they begin the new adventure of their endeavors in life. According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 48 percent of qualified, low- to moderate-income students from high school do not go to 4-year colleges because of financial barriers. I believe, and I have talked to Members on the other side of the aisle, that this bill violates our fundamental commitment to make sure that college education is there for middle-class families by walking away from the commitment to make sure that college assistance is here today, there tomorrow, so they can go to college and achieve for themselves and their children what we are here doing for ourselves and our children.

Mr. EMANUEL

Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Ready to Teach Act. This bill takes important steps toward one of the most important goals for our Nation--filling our schools with committed, talented teachers. The shortage of qualified teachers in our country has reached critical levels, and it has a direct impact on the quality of education, especially in underserved areas. In urban districts, close to 50 percent of newcomers leave the profession during their first five years of teaching. This bill recognizes the importance of not only filling our schools with teachers, but providing these teachers with the resources and training that allow them to be successful and to make their students successful as well. I want to call your attention to a school in my district, The Chicago Academy, as an example of the type of positive change that can be brought about by quality teacher preparation programs. The Chicago Academy is a joint program of Chicago Public Schools and a nonprofit organization. Academy for Urban School Leadership, which is taking groundbreaking steps to address the teacher shortage in underserved Chicago schools. The President of the Carnegie corporation called this institution ``a model for our Nation.'' The Chicago Academy creates a ``farm team'' of teachers for Chicago's underserved public schools, through a teacher residency program which involves an entire year of in classroom training, instead of the typical twelve-week student teacher segment of graduate programs in education. Each classroom of 24 students is shared by one experienced mentor teacher and two resident teachers, providing an unmatched student-teacher ratio for public schools. In-classroom training is coupled with graduate work with faculty from National-Louis University. Residents are provided with a stipend for their participation in the program, and receive a Masters of Arts in Teaching at the completion of the year. In return, they commit to five years of service in underperforming Chicago schools. In the Academy's first year of operation, 82 percent of students performed at or above national norms in reading--better than any other school in the neighborhood This school is proof of the way that a quality school changes a community. Families are moving out of the suburbs and into Chicago in order to send their children to the Academy. And this effect can extend to the underserved schools that will be supplied with these committed teachers. The first class of 30 resident teachers graduated last month. Next year, a second Academy will open, and the current school will expand to include the eighth grade. As these new teachers transition into underserved Chicago schools, the number of students served by this program increases exponentially. The values embodied by the Chicago Academy are those reflected in this important legislation. I commend Mr. Gingrey, Chairman Boehner, and Ranking Member Miller for their bipartisan work to bring this reauthorization to the floor.

Mr. EMANUEL

Mr. EMANUEL. As a former staff person who worked for a President, I believe that every staff person in that White House who was sitting on the side cringed when they heard that, because you cannot but think that there was a President whose rhetoric got ahead of where the policy is and what they were saying. Nobody would ever suggest that our men and women in uniform, who are doing all of us proud, should be the focus of further attacks, this notion of ``bring 'em on.'' We have lost 70 Americans in 69 days. There are other Americans we have lost in this whole battle, but 70 Americans who are fathers, who are mothers, who are brothers, sisters, who are Boy Scout coaches, leaders in their community, YMCA leaders. And the notion that somebody would sit here in the comfort of our great country in our capital and say ``Bring 'em on'' to our soldiers I think misses what they are facing every day. And I think it was a very, very unfortunate choice of words.

Mr. EMANUEL. I can feel the foam and the lather building up. We would not be arguing for 2 weeks whether Congress should call the inquiry an investigation or not. There would be a full-blown investigation, and it would be proper. Because the President of the United States at that point, at that Chamber, at that speech, at this podium would be addressing the world as the President of the United States speaking for all of us, not just the bodies in here and the cameras up there.

Mr. EMANUEL. Well, my worry is not only do we not know the standard for our exit, and that before you get into any military engagement, you should know what your exit strategy is; that because we have 168,000 troops based now in all of Iraq, with no ability of any ally to come and replace our troops at a serious level, that our forces are stretched thin when it comes to the war on terrorism because of their occupation and being tied down in the deserts of Iraq. Now, I think we are there, and we have to help turn this country around, but clearly now our troops are being targeted from guerilla warfare and from terrorists. Our ability to do what we need to do around the world, both in Afghanistan and other corners of the world, our resources are being stretched thin and spread thin when it comes to the war on terrorism.

Mr. EMANUEL. I want to add one thing to this whole discussion if that is okay with the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. EMANUEL. But we are united in our view that an administration should not mislead the America people; that a person who gave the President the wrong information needs to be held accountable because all of our reputations are on the line when the President of the United States is talking to the world with our judgment and justification. Second, that as we plan for this occupation, that if we had done the hard work of building allies on the front end, we would have allies on the back end. And that the only faces in the occupation are American and British and others, but dominantly American, and, therefore, Americans bearing this burden alone, which it should not, in both financial and human costs.

Mr. EMANUEL. If I can add one thing to this debate before I need to go. I remember during the Reagan administration there was an open public discussion between the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, which continued in years past, about the fact that we could not get into a military operation without an exit strategy. And I think it would behoove all of us in this institution, regardless of party or regardless of position, if we could define what the exit strategy is. What is the test? What is the standard? When we have 70 deaths in 69 days, and some people, I think Senator Lugar noted that we have to level with the American people we are here maybe 5, 10 years, that does not sound very convincing for an exit strategy and a standard that says here is when we know we are done. We cannot just say to the American people that we will know when we are done when we are done. We cannot have an open-ended checkbook and an open-ended sense of lives that are to be lost. Again, I remind my colleagues that these are the days that are supposed to be flowers and kisses and hugs. A year from now we are supposed to be experiencing what we are experiencing today. Not today.

Mr. EMANUEL. I think it is very important to note this fact that 2 weeks after the State of the Union, the Secretary of State was handed that same information as he was preparing his presentation to the U.N., and he rejected that data as insufficient and inaccurate. Now, having worked in the White House, having worked on a few State of the Unions, which are the most important speech a President will give in their Presidency outside of an oval address, I cannot think of a moment in time where you can have a Secretary of State reject the information as inadequate for their presentation to the United Nations, and yet is adequate and sufficient for the President of the United States to stand in this well at that desk and address the Nation, the world, and for this speech on why we need to go to war. Now, I happened to have supported the resolution, but the entire credibility of our ability to marshal the resources of the world as we relate to North Korea and Iran are going to be heretofore questioned. And I always think it is interesting if I were giving advice, not that I would be giving advice, nor would they be seeking my advice, that before the President of the United States was back from Africa, he would have the name, the phone number and the forwarding address of the individual that gave that information because they would not be in this White House any longer.

Mr. EMANUEL. Well, heads would have rolled. You cannot allow the President of the United States to have gone up on any speech, let alone a State of the Union, to address the Nation and in this case, this State of the Union was unique, on the precipice of war, the world with information that was clearly, because of Secretary Powell's actions, inadequate, not up to snuff. Heads would have rolled. There would have been an accounting. There would have been an internal accounting to that; and I think properly so, Congress would have asked for it. I would like to note, I cannot think what is worse, the fact that they have used, since there is ample evidence to say that Saddam Hussein was a dictator who used chemical weapons on his own people and started three wars, why you would go and stretch information, damage your own case. I cannot figure out what is worse, the fact that they used this phony memo, or the fact that they have had no plan for the occupation and no strategy for our exit.

Mr. EMANUEL. Because as we talk about this memo from Niger and how it got into the speech, how it got into the British dossier for the justification for the war, what is equally telling and missing in the debate is the discussion of reconstruction in Iraq. And if you go over and pull over at USAID, an agency within the State Department, the plans for Iraq's reconstruction, I would like to cite some statistics. They call for 20,000 units of housing. Yet the budget for this country only calls for 5,000 units of housing here in the United States; 13 million Iraqis, half of the population, will get universal health care. Yet not a single penny in the budget presented by the administration or passed by a Republican Congress does anything to support health care for the 42 million working uninsured in this country; 12,500 schools will be given full resources for reconstruction and books and supplies. Yet in our country, teachers have to get a tax credit because they have to take money out of their own budget, personal budget, their salary to pay for supplies. Four million kids in Iraq will be given early childhood education. In the President's budget, 58,000 kids cut from Head Start. We have a deep water port in Iraq being built from top to bottom. Yet the Corps of Engineers in this country is cut by 10 percent, their budget. I think if we look at the history, the American people are quite generous and quite supportive of our efforts and we support the notion of Iraq having a new beginning. But I do not think they would ever support the notion that we can deconstruct America while we reconstruct Iraq.