Sam Farr

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I would reply to the gentleman from California, no, as the amendment deleted the authorization. It is in the appropriations bill. It is under the ocean analysis. It does not increase that.

Mr. FARR. Yes, there is. The bill is only good for a year, and so as the last sentence in the amendment states, it says that the Department of Commerce shall not terminate it for the fiscal year 1996 or whenever the user fees become successful, whichever comes first.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for accepting the amendment.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. We have a plan, the President's plan, and it is a good plan.

Mr. FARR. We will give the gentleman a plan as soon as he schedules that hearing.

Mr. FARR. Well, will there be a hearing on it?

Mr. FARR. My point is, we have not even had a hearing on that plan.

Mr. FARR. We have discussed the issue, but we have to look at the law. We are lawmakers. Anybody can go out and discuss the issue. That is an academic exercise.

Mr. FARR. For one term.

Mr. FARR. I appreciate that, Mr. Weldon. The gentleman mentioned he was mayor of a city, and I think the point to debate here is that America deserves the opportunity to know what the law is going to be. Your city could not adopt a city ordinance the way we are adopting the Medicare plan in America, because your city would require that the plan be published in the newspaper; that there be a public hearing scheduled on the very text of the ordinance being considered. That is what is the problem with this system. We have not been able to see that in this massive bill, and I am really surprised, and appreciate your concern about the procedure, and I would hope in the leadership the gentleman would bring about a law like we have in California that says legislators cannot hear a bill unless it has been in print for 30 days. Cannot even hear it.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?

Mr. FARR. If the gentleman would have asked for it, we would have yielded.

Mr. FARR. I cannot support it. You will not bring it to the floor.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. I just want to close in my part here, again, reminding people that these are cards from my district that I picked up just this last Monday. Here is one just out of the pile from Beth Binkert from Pacific Grove, and I think the key sentence in here is the second sentence that says: These actions represent broken promises and unfair treatment to your elderly constituency. In fact, the current cuts will substantially increase out-of-pocket expenses for the seniors you represent. These cards are to all Members of Congress addressed in care of my office, but that key point, ``These actions represent broken promises,'' and I think tonight we pointed out the promise made here is the tax cut for the rich, not the promise to keep people in their elderly years secure in health care delivery. The testimony referred to follows: Testimony on Medicare Reform by Del Martin, Medicare Beneficiary, October 2, 1995 I've been hearing some cold hard figures about drastic cuts in Medicare. I'm here to tell you what that would mean to me personally. In 1994 I received $9,373 in Social Security benefits and $8,267 in additional income for a total of $17,640. I paid $3,854 or 22% of that income on medical & dental expenses, leaving me $13,786 for other living expenses. In 1994 my doctor bills amounted to $1,130. Medicare approved only $521.34 (less than \1/2\) for payment. We hear a lot about doctors taking advantage of Medicare. In my experience that is simply not true. Medicare clients are lucky to find doctors who will accept Medicare limits. Many doctors say NO to Medicare patients. The exorbitant expense comes from hospital bills. I underwent outpatient surgery which required the use of operating room and personnel and space for a change of clothes. I was in the hospital for a maximum of four hours. The cost was $1,790. I did not receive a copy of the itemized bill, but presume Medicare did. It was paid in full without question. From past experience I have found that hospitals charge for everything within sight, whether used or not, right down to a piece of Kleenex tissue. If I were a member of Congress I would take a look at hospital costs. Hospitals are cutting skilled staff although numerous studies show that adequate staffing of registered nurses and other skilled professionals reduces mortality, infection, accident and readmission rates. Under the Republican bill to cut Medicare for a savings of $270 billion over the next seven years, beneficiaries are being pushed to join health maintenance organizations (HMOs) rather than stay in traditional fee-for-service Medicare. They say managed care is the best vehicle for improving care while containing costs. Long ago I learned the hard way that you get what you pay for. Under managed care HMOs are paid whether or not services are used--an incentive to restrict admissions to hospitals, send patients home too soon, reduce staffing and limit access to specialists. Containing costs by using HMOs means cutting services. Congress is not dealing with reality. Excessive hospital, HMO, insurer and drug company profits are the source of rising costs. For me an HMO is not acceptable. To retain traditional Medicare coverage will cost me another $1,000 or more per year. That would raise my medical expenses to about $5,000 or 27% of my present income, which will diminish in the next seven years. As a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging and a member of the Leadership Council of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, I have been closely following what is happening in Congress. Seniors are more than willing to carry their share of the deficit reduction burden. We are told Medicare is responsible for only 6% of last year's federal deficit. But Congress proposes a 35% cut, not 6%, to reduce the deficit. That is not fair. In 1994 the Pentagon was responsible for 36% of the deficit. Military bases all over the country are closing down, but defense spending is to increase over the next seven years. That is not fair. Congressional leaders refuse to even consider eliminating tax breaks and loopholes which primarily benefit the wealthy. These loopholes will cost the federal treasury $2.5 trillion over the next seven years--almost ten times the amount they want to cut out of Medicare over the same period. You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know there is something drastically wrong with this balancing act. Too large a burden is being placed on Medicare and thus on America's oldest, and in many cases poorest, citizens.

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, I was just thinking about this issue of national standards. It is too bad that they have not really gone out and asked the American public what they think about it. Obviously we have national standards for aviation. We all use it a lot having to fly back and forth from California. We respect those national standards. They do not leave those up to States. Banks have national standards. The stock exchange has national standards. Drugs have national standards. I think the American public has realized this in areas where there is a vulnerability at risk, you want some national standards. To say to the most elderly people of this country, your future, your time when you may be most vulnerable in life, most frail in life, we are going to leave this up to your State. If they like you and they have money and they want to spend it on you, they will take care of you. But what about those States--and you never know where you are going to end up in life, you do not know where you are going to end up being an elderly person, where in your hometown you may not be able to afford it. Many people move in their elderly age to other States, other locales. Is there not supposed to be some kind of equal playing field here, a common denominator that says in this country that we are going to have standards for people that are in need, that are frail and need special care? Under this proposal they take them all away. In fact there may not be any standards at all. Is it optional that you do not have to take care of people anymore? What kind of country are we developing here?

Mr. FARR. Do they end up on the streets as the homeless population we are all very familiar with? I think the security of this Nation, the domestic security is dependent on the confidence that people have in government, and a government that tells you that they are going to help you with one hand, balancing the budget, and with the same hand takes away your own ability to access prosperity is a country that is not telling you the truth.

Mr. FARR. I think the big debate here in Congress is how do we ensure that we have a society moving into the 21st century that is a responsible society. It is not just the rights of individuals that you have heard a lot about, particularly when it got into issues about Waco and things like that; it is the responsibilities of society. We are not going to have what I call the domestic tranquility of this country balanced in a style in which we can all appreciate if indeed you have disenfranchised a lot of people. If parents do not think their kids can get an affordable education, we talk about accessible education, accessible education means you can get there from here, that you have a chance to avail yourself of the great schools. And we have some wonderful ones in the State of California, some of the best in the world. But what good are they if they are too expensive to get to and the kids are not getting into because of cost. What good is a health care program if you cannot access it? So what happens is things, as we know, they get worse. I think that the one difficulty that is not in this entire Contract for America that they are trying to approach is what happens to the people that do not make it, that fall through the cracks.

Mr. FARR. I think we are really hitting on what is at stake here. It is really confidence in America. We have lost that confidence. I do not think the Contract for America buys confidence, particularly when you have in that contract this big tax cut. The American public can understand if you want to balance the budget let us stick to balancing the budget, but do not get us confused with also doing big tax cuts. To the best of my knowledge, frankly, the debate has not been very honest because there are two forms of balancing the budget. There is a fast track, which I think is the Republican form, a steep glidepath, and then there is the more moderate glidepath which the President introduced, and the American public should know what the consequences are by taking either the steep path or by taking the less steep path. Because along the way, if you hurt the most vulnerable people, and we have seen in the Contract With America that we have already hit and hurt rural America, we have hit and hurt the elderly citizens, we have hit and hurt the school children needing lunch programs, we have hit and hurt students who want to go to college by making them pay more. What difference is it going to make if you have a balanced budget if people are too sick to enjoy it, too poor to access college, everything becomes too expensive? You have not really developed this kind of wonderful Utopia that all of a sudden you are going to get with a balanced budget where interest rates come down. So I think the debate on how you balance the budget ought to be a lot more honest and it should be a lot more honest about who will get hurt if you take the fast slope toward balancing it. And along the way, we are hurting the very people that we want to help. As you said, we prohibit Girl Scouts from coming in here and lobbying in Congress if they receive any Federal grants, but the big aerospace industry, defense industry, who get billions of dollars, can come in here and lobby for B-2 bombers, even when nobody in the Defense Department wants them, and they are not taken off the list. So this is really about building confidence in America, and I appreciate both of my colleagues in northern California and the Bay Area for bringing a little sunshine and sunlight into what has been a very closed, mysterious system that I think misses a point of honesty, and the honesty is if we want to balance the budget let us talk about it, but not under the guise of just making poor people pay more so rich people can pay less.

Mr. FARR. It is essentially going to take money, saying, ``Government, you spend less, and, people, you spend more.'' For those people that are on fixed incomes that have signed these petitions that were at your hearing, what did they tell you? ``Our incomes are limited. We are on fixed incomes. We cannot go out and make more money. We do not have the ability to increase our income. Our water bills have gone up, our garbage bills have gone up, our sewage bills have gone up, our telephone bills have gone up, and [[Page H 9877]] our cable television bills have gone up. Now you are coming along and saying the most vile thing of all, our health care bills are going to go up even more. Where are we going to get the money to pay for it?'' This is the sham being played on America. It is essentially saying, ``You people, the poorest in the Nation, who have limited incomes, who cannot go out and get more, you have to pay more,'' so that they can turn around, take that money, and give tax cuts to the most wealthy people. This is not the Nation of America that takes care of people like that. It is not why we ran for Congress and why we took the oath of office to be here. Not to rob from the poor to give to the rich.

Mr. FARR. I think it is very interesting. The gentlewoman are on a city council and very involved in local government. Congresswoman Pelosi was on the board of supervisors in San Francisco County. I served the local government and then in the State legislature. There is not a city, county, or State in the Nation that does not require publication of any change in law that you are going to make, and that publication has to be available to the public, I know in California, at least 30 days before you even have a public hearing on it. In the State legislature, an analysis has to be made of both the costs and the benefits, and that is all public information. In fact, you can call up on a hot line and get it, and those bills are free to any constituent in the State of California who wants them. The point is, every time you are going to tinker with the law, the process requires that the public be aware and know about it. The one exception to that rule is right here in the U.S. Capitol, where essentially you do not have to tell anybody until the day that a vote is taken what is in the law. I think that is very confusing to most of the American public, because they are familiar with going to a school board meeting or going to a city council meeting or even petitioning their State legislature and finding out the details of the law, not what some press release says, not a public relations firm comment, but what is the law. People can read. In this case, the public of the United States has no idea what is in this great promise to resolve Medicare, other than it is going to affect their pocketbook.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. I thank the gentlewoman. I really appreciate the gentlewoman yielding this time. I hope that in our brief moment here tonight that we can bring to attention what is really going on in Congress. Like the gentlewoman, this last week I met with senior citizens in my area and, in fact, they gave me this postcard. They asked me what would I do with it, what does it matter when they go out and gather signatures and then they turn in cards, cards by the hundreds. Every one of these cards is just coming in from the districts daily. Those cards read: California seniors are willing to do their fair share to help reduce the budget deficit, but the drastic measures now proposed for Medicaid and Medicare are unacceptable. Your vote, those of Members of Congress, to devastate Medicare in this way would be breaking a campaign promise to thousands of your constituents. I got to thinking just with that first sentence in there, ``campaign promises.'' Is that not what this discussion really is all about? It is not about reforming Medicare. It is about a campaign promise that was made that this year the Republican-controlled Congress will give tax cuts to the very wealthy. That was a promise made, and when you think about it, I looked in the Webster's Dictionary of what is a promise. A promise is a legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or to claim performance or forbearance of a specific act. In order to deliver on that campaign promise, to cut Federal programs so that they can pay for tax cuts, they have to find a major program like Medicare, and attack it. Now, we know it has some problems, and we are all willing to do something about it. But if you really want to keep your promises to seniors, you would not be attacking the very program that benefits them. In fact, the first thing you would do is you would get up and say ``Look, this isn't about tax cuts. It is so much not about tax cuts that we are not even going to consider tax cuts. Take them off the table. We'll never deal with them.'' That honesty would bring us a long way. This card goes on to say, ``The current budget proposal described as a reduction in the rate of growth is nothing less than a cut, which will cost seniors and their families thousands of dollars more for their health care.'' We just heard a debate that this is not going to cost seniors more, everybody is happy about it. If everybody really believes that, where are they? They are not in here saying ``Give us this Republican proposal, give us this plan. We can't wait to have it. It is going to be so wonderful, the nirvana we are all going to live under when we do not have to spend more with less.'' The card goes on to say, ``Additionally, I am very concerned about congressional plans to cut spending for programs under the Older Americans Act, Meals on Wheels, congruent meal programs, programs to prevent elderly abuse,'' all of those programs we heard about at the hearings and out on the lawn that are under the acts. ``Please act responsibly.'' I think that is what we are trying to do here tonight, is be responsible about Medicare, about Medicaid, about the Older Americans Act. These are vital to seniors and to their families. These cards just come from my district. So when I met with these seniors this last Monday, they said, ``How can we just as individuals out here who have signed our names and have written you cards, and some of us are too old to write long letters, so the best thing we can do is sign a card, how can our plea, our voice, be heard in the U.S. Congress?'' I said, ``There is a wonderful thing about Congress, and that is there are what is called special orders. And I will bring back to the U.S. Capitol, where we are standing tonight, all of these cards and all of this poster that you put out and the signatures you have had, and you will see and the rest of the nation can see your concerns, and will be able to join in with you, as thousands and millions of seniors are doing across the country to say `don't break your promise to seniors just because you want to keep your promise to the rich.' ''

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, last week I got a check in the mail. At first I thought it was a check for having a flag flown over the Capitol. But it wasn't. Then I thought maybe it was a misdirected campaign contribution. But it wasn't. Then I looked again. It was a check from a senior citizen in my district who is so scared she will lose her Medicare benefits, she wanted to contribute $10 to the government to make the system whole again. She thought that if enough people contributed $10, everything would be all right and she could rest easy about the state of her health care. Mr. Speaker, I wish I could give her that reassurance. Not only did I send the check back to her, I had to tell her that the outlook was bleak for protecting her health care under current proposals now making their way through the reconciliation process. It's a sad day in America that we've come to this point; that our senior citizens are so scared of our actions that they are begging us not to take away their health care. I sent the check back but, unfortunately, it won't even begin to cover her Medicare cuts. My constituent is going to need that $10 check. Actually, she's going to need a whole lot more.

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to rise today in salute of one of the Nation's most outspoken and respected conservationists, Margaret Owings. A longtime resident of Big Sur, on California's beautiful central coast, Mrs. Owings is perhaps most responsible for the natural beauty that is seen in her community to this day. Residents and visitors alike know of the time and effort she has contributed in maintaining the wondrous, untouched nature that has made the Big Sur region one of California's most prized natural treasures. Before arriving in Big Sur just a few years back, Mrs. Owings had already stockpiled an impressive list of achievements from graduating Mills College to doing post-graduate work at Radcliffe College. Before turning her expertise to political activism, she was a renowned artist whose paintings have graced the walls of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Stanford Art Gallery, and the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. However, during the past 30 years, she has dedicated her life to the conservationist movement. Margaret Owings has always followed the credo that ``once you come to live in an area you have the responsibility to help preserve it.'' And perhaps not remarkably to those who know her, this is just what she has done. Mrs. Owings' contributions are immense. Confronted by a legion of hunters and a California statues enabling these hunters to savagely kill mountain lions, she battled to have a new law championing the rights of the mountain lions. Though hunters tried to have the law repealed, Mrs. Owings still did not quit. She adamantly supported the California Wildlife Protection Initiative to create a safe home for these animals. What's more, she also started Friends of the Sea Otter. This 4,000-member organization has fought to establish the coastline as a refuge for the otters. Mrs. Owings not only has made her town a safer place for animals to live. She has also made it a better place for all of us to live. She diligently argued to preserve the scenic beauty of Big Sur by preventing legislation to widen State 1. Finally, Mrs. Owings, in conjunction with her Big Sur neighbors, agreed to prevent construction of hotels and golf courses along the coast that would obstruct and rob Big Sur of its natural beauty. For this tireless effort, she has received the Conservation Service Award of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Joseph Wood Krutch Gold Medal of the Humane Society, the Audubon Medal, and the Directors Conservation Award from the California Academy of Sciences. Yet, despite these achievements I still feel it is necessary for this Congress to pay its tribute. I am proud to have people like Margaret Owings in my district. Her unfaltering dedication to maintaining the natural beauty and species diversity sets an example that we all should strive to follow.