Jim Greenwood

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it may be in order at any time on Wednesday, February 4, 2004, for the Speaker to declare a recess, subject to the call of the Chair, for the purpose of receiving in joint meeting His Excellency Jose Maria Aznar, President of the Government of Spain.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. About 5 hours ago, I had what I consider to be one of the greatest moments of my 11-year congressional career as I got to watch the President of the United States sign into law a Medicare reform bill that will finally provide a prescription drug benefit to our seniors and our disabled. For 38 years, every Congress, Republican, Democrat, every administration, Republican, Democrat, had failed to accomplish this. It was not because most Members of Congress did not want to do it. I dare say every single Democrat sitting in this House and serving in this House wanted to make sure that we got a prescription drug benefit delivered to our elderly and our disabled, and most Republicans wanted to do it for many years. And why did Congress fail year after year? Not because of lack of desire to get the job done, but because the job is extraordinarily difficult. It is extraordinarily difficult to craft a bill that is conservative enough to get most Republicans and liberal enough to attract some Democrats. It is very, very hard to do. We had to thread a needle, we had to say to the liberal-most Members of Congress, we cannot make you happy, we cannot spend that much money. And we had to say to the most conservative Members of our party, we cannot make you happy. We had to say we are going to do this entitlement, we are going to expand this entitlement, and it is not going to make you happy. We had to thread the needle, and the eye of the needle in this case was so narrow and the size of what we were trying to accomplish so large that yes, it took us an extraordinary amount of time to get this vote done. The Speaker did not violate a rule of the House. The Speaker is entitled to take as much time as he wishes for a vote. And in this case, in this case, the stakes were high, the cause was great. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) said she will take this message to the election. This is an election-year issue. I say to the gentlewoman, take that message; we will take the message that we provided seniors a benefit.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S. 650, the Pediatric Research Equity Act. This legislation was passed by the Senate by unanimous consent on July 23. Earlier this year, along with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Pryce), I introduced this legislation in the House. Both of these Members have been leaders on trying to get this legislation enacted into law. Children, their physicians, and their parents need to know that the drugs they use are safe and effective. Just over a year ago, a Federal court struck down the 1998 Pediatric Rule on the grounds that Congress had not explicitly given the authority to require that these much- needed pediatric studies be done. The Pediatric Research Equity Act creates a critical safety net for children by restoring this authority. Before it was struck down, the Pediatric Rule led to invaluable pediatric safety and dosing information. The rule places children on equal therapeutic footing with adults by ensuring that medicines coming into the marketplace will be labeled for pediatric use and be available in formulations such as liquids or chewable tablets that children can take. This legislation will also ensure that there will be no delay in the approval of drugs for adult use by allowing pediatric testing to be deferred until after approval if these studies would delay the availability of the product for adults. Mr. Speaker, this legislation complements the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act which Congress passed 2 years ago. That law recognizes the importance of pediatric drug testing by offering an incentive to companies who conduct tests of drugs on children. However, certain medicines are not captured by the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act and, therefore, will be left unstudied for pediatric use without the rule. Both the BPCA and the rule are needed as a strong, two-prong approach to ensure that drugs are appropriately studied and labeled for infants, children and adolescents. Mr. Speaker, this legislation was discharged from the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Many of us on both sides of the aisle had hoped that the committee would consider this through normal order as there were issues that both sides wanted to make about the legislation. But due to the Medicare and the energy conferences and the limitations those bills have created in the committees, it was necessary for this legislation to be discharged. While this was not the perfect process, I urge my colleagues to join our colleagues in the Senate and the 25 children's health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, who support this legislation. In their own words, quote, we cannot overstate the extraordinary contribution this legislation will make to children's health. I would also like to thank my staff member Alan Eisenberg who has worked very hard for a long period on this issue. I urge passage of the legislation.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 421) to reauthorize the United States Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, and for other purposes.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 421.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that we are here today to consider H.R. 421, the Environmental Policy and Conflict Resolution Advancement Act of 2003. H.R. 421 amends the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental and Native American Policy Act of 1992 to reauthorize the Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund. Specifically, the bill authorizes the fund at $4 million and extends it through fiscal year 2008. The bill also stipulates how the funding is to be distributed: $3 million to pay for the operating costs of the Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, and $1 million for grants to encourage participation of non-Federal entities in Federal environmental disputes. In 1998 the Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution was established as part of the National Environmental Foundation. The Foundation administers the Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund. The institute was created to assist in the resolution of Federal environmental, natural resources, and public lands conflicts and controversies through facilitated negotiation, mediation, and collaborative problem-solving. The Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund is maintained separately from the Udall Trust Fund and provides the financial support for the operation of the institute. I want to thank my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), for introducing this legislation and for ensuring that it was brought before us today. I want also to urge my colleagues to join me in support of H.R. 421, the Environmental Policy and Conflict Resolution Advancement Act of 2003. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), the author of the legislation.

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

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) for offering the motion to instruct and for the temperate way in which he conducted his debate on the substance, as is his style. And the debate went pretty well like that until the previous speaker kind of laid down some political gauntlets. And I cannot resist the opportunity to respond. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin) asked the question repeatedly, who will stand up for seniors, and who will not stand up for seniors. The historical record shows that Medicare was created in 1965, and in the 30 years that followed, the United States Congress failed consistently to get anywhere on the provision of a prescription drug benefit for Medicare beneficiaries. As the previous speaker and earlier speaker said, there was an attempt 15 years ago when the Democrats controlled the House under Chairman Rostenkowski. It was immediately repealed. It was a dismal, dismal failure, a great disappointment to the seniors who had hoped for something that would be useful for them. This Congress, where we happen to have a Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate and a Republican in the White House, we have for the first time in the history of the United States brought ourselves to the point where we are poised to provide the senior citizens of this country a prescription drug benefit, and they need it. We have all received letters over and over again from seniors who are forlorn and despairing over the fact that they are suffering from a variety of illnesses. They go to the doctor, they get a prescription, and they cannot fill that prescription. I remember a poignant letter from one of my constituents, an elderly woman from Bensalem, who said, I have eight prescriptions. I can afford to buy the ones that will keep me alive. I just cannot afford to buy the ones that will make my life worth living, and that letter has remained in my mind ever since, and it had driven me to work as hard as I can with colleagues interested in accomplishing this goal on both sides of the aisle to get a prescription drug benefit done. It is hard. The reason it had not been done for 30 years is because it is so difficult, because it is so complex, to figure out how to do this in a way that is affordable, that maximizes a benefit for the very poor, that provides something worth happening for the middle class, asks a reasonable contribution from them, still does not create a disincentive for employers to continue to provide a prescription benefit for their retirees. To deal with all of the rural issues, all of the provider issues is extraordinarily complicated and very difficult to do. If this body were 100 percent Republicans, it would be hard to do. If it were 100 percent Democrats, it would be hard to do because it is tough policy. I think we are on the verge of being there. Our negotiators in the conference are working with the staff day and night to get us there. I believe that they will succeed. I again respect the gentleman from Wisconsin because he is bipartisan by nature. We ought to keep this debate bipartisan, consistently. That is the only way we will succeed in doing this. There are not enough Democrats to pass a Democratic plan. There are not enough Republicans to give the seniors this benefit with Republican votes only. We need to have a bipartisan bill. We will have a bipartisan bill. On the subject of medical malpractice, the Democrats sat down year after year while the physicians of this country are going out of the profession, and we passed a bill in this House. It was a good passed bill. We did it in a bipartisan fashion, and if the Senate would come up with anything at all, we could go to conference on that bill, and it would also bring down the costs of medicine in health care in the United States. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Speaker, first off, let me suggest to the gentleman, my friend the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), that we take his motion seriously. Having said that, we all know that motions to instruct conferees are only that. They have no ultimate effect. The fact of the matter is the negotiations have been ongoing in the conference committee, and whether this motion passes or does not pass, the conferees on the part of the House and the part of the Senate, the Republicans and the Democrats, are and have been and will be continuing to negotiate all of these issues, and they will all be negotiated in the context of all of the other issues that they are negotiating. But having said that, I also want to, at least in this point in the argument, assume that the gentleman's arguments are sincere, and I would like to address them. First off, with regard to the argument that we need a fallback, a government-run fallback, for the prescription drug program, the gentleman's point is well taken. We do, and we should have, and we should guarantee that, in every region of the United States of America, every senior will have access to a good and affordable prescription drug plan. We believe that the bill as adopted by the House already does that, that the incentives that we give the Secretary to offer to the plans, in fact, does guarantee that there will be at least two programs, two plans, in every district, in every region, and, in fact, the CBO expects within the first year it will be available, the plan will be available, to 95 percent of seniors; in the second year, 99 percent. On the second issue, the gentleman from Wisconsin argues that we need to pay hospitals a fair amount, and, indeed, we should. We relied upon the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, MedPAC, who said what would be fair based on all of the data available is to include a 3 percent market basket update as opposed to a 3.4 percent, as the gentleman from Wisconsin argues. Having said that, what the gentleman does not take into consideration is that is not the only increase in payments to hospitals available under our legislation. Looking at Iowa, for instance, a very rural State, they get a 1.6 percent increase under the standard amount, an additional 0.8 percent for the labor share, and 0.1 percent for medical DSH increases, which gives the hospitals in Iowa actually a 5.5 percent increase as opposed to a 3 percent increase. In Oklahoma, that number comes to 5.7 percent; the same in Montana, 5.7 percent; South Dakota, a very rural State, as rural as you can get, 5.4 percent. So we think that the gentleman's objective in making sure that hospitals get healthy increases and reimbursements is, in fact, met by the legislation that this House passed and is continuing to be negotiated in the conference committee. On the third major point of the gentleman's motion, he suggests that each and every rural provider increase in either the Senate bill or the House bill will be incorporated into the conference committee. The gentleman's objective is to make sure that the benefits are available in the rural areas. We all share that objective. But I would note that the House-passed bill itself included nearly $25 billion increases in payments to rural providers, which will help rural hospitals and physicians, among others, continue to provide care to rural Americans. So on the substance, I believe that the bill, as adopted by the House, meets the gentleman's objectives already. Secondly, again, a motion to instruct, while fun to debate, actually will have no impact on the negotiations themselves. I think we ought to let those negotiations continue and allow the conferees to come to an agreement, and I believe that they will, that this House can adopt and send to the President. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that I am sure my friend from Ohio did not mean to misspeak with regard to my previous comments. What I said is that both the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) and Members of this side of the aisle want to make sure that there is a guarantee that our seniors in all regions have access to a plan. We think we do that adequately by the requirement that the Secretary provide incentives. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) offers another way to do it, but we have the same goal. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would compliment the speaker on his argument and suggest, though, that his constituents must be able to make choices, and thoughtful choices, because they chose him. And I suspect that if they are sophisticated enough to choose the previous speaker, they can probably choose themselves a good Medicare plan as well. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. I had not come to the floor expecting to speak; but when I heard the gentleman from Ohio speak, I really felt compelled to. I think it is sad and it is distasteful when we hear this kind of rhetoric that questions the motives of Members of the House, that makes such ridiculous statements as Republicans want to end Medicare. What a stupid thing to say. Republicans on this side of the aisle have worked so hard for so many years to improve Medicare; and the record is replete with the work that the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) has done, that I have done, that many Members on this side of the aisle have done with Members on the other side of the aisle. It is an insult to the intelligence of this body and it is an insult to the intelligence of the senior citizens of this country for any Member of Congress to stand before this body and make a statement that would suggest that any one of us, who work so hard on these issues, would want to do anything except make the program as good as possible for our parents and for our constituents. It is just absurd. Now, the fact of the matter is that we do have political and philosophical differences about whether or not what we think the role of the private sector should be in the delivery of the Medicare system. Seniors got choice, the opportunity to have prescription drugs under Medicare for the first time when we had Medicare+Choice, and it was allowing the private sector to go in and offer plans that were more efficient than the Medicare fee-for-service program. And with that efficiency, they provided the prescription drug benefit for the first time. Now, this Congress failed to fund those plans, and so they went away. Now, nearly everyone in this country who has a prescription drug benefit receives that benefit from some kind of private sector pharmaceutical benefit manager. That is the way we all get our drugs. And that is the reason that the newest drugs get quickly available to us because the private sector can compete against itself, negotiate price, and get the best newest medicines available to all Americans. And all we are suggesting is that that is the most efficient, the most cost-efficient and the most compassionate way to bring prescription drugs to the seniors. Now, if the other side of the aisle disagrees with that, fine, it is a good argument to have. But it really is stupid to stand here and pretend that there are some people in this House who actually care about the program and there are others who do not. We need to elevate this argument way above that.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. We all want safe and affordable drugs, especially for our senior citizens. And in recent years, as the price of drugs skyrocketed and seniors were without a benefit through Medicare, they became desperate, and many considered it a calculated risk to buy drugs from other countries that were not certified safe by the FDA; and this reimportation legislation grew from that desperation. But today we are on the verge of providing seniors affordable and safe drugs through Medicare. It will happen this fall. The reimportation bill is now an unnecessary relic. We do not have to trade off safety for affordability. We can offer our seniors both through Medicare, and we ought to. The risk is real. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) and I have been to airports and watched these packages come through, opened up by the Customs people, and what we saw would turn your stomach. Drugs coming from countries all over the world where there is no regulation, drugs that have incalculable content, unknowable safety. We do not need to put our seniors at that risk.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Madam Chairman, since 1969 when the program was developed with the help of the United States of America, United Nations Family Planning Fund has met an incredible need. That need is that in developing countries in Africa and Asia and Central and South America, throughout the world, women find themselves hopelessly enmeshed in poverty without access to healthcare and without access to family planning services; and the result of that, as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) said, they have more pregnancies than they can bear physically. They have more children than they can feed, and their children are condemned to another cycle of poverty. United Nations Family Planning Agency in 160 countries meets that need so women around the world have access as Americans do. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) wants to cut that program in half with this amendment, and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) wants to make sure that in 159 of those countries access to this service is cut because in one country, China, something terrible happens and that is coercive abortions. But when the President sent his team over there to China to find out what UNFPA's role was, they said we find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the PRC. In fact, it is the UNFPA that is the most effective organization in preventing that from happening, in getting the Chinese to move towards education, to move towards contraception, and away from coercive practices. If we support the amendment, what we do is we cut off that funding not only to the agency that is trying to enlighten Chinese family planning programs, but we cut it off to 159 other countries, none of whom uses money for anything coercive nor for abortion at all.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds to note that the Stanford University professor who was just quoted, Steven Mosher, was kicked out of Stanford in the 1980s for academic fraud and misappropriation of university funds.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds back to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this is one of those days when I stand on the floor and wonder what it is that we are fighting about because our values are so common in so many ways. Every one of us agrees not a penny of this money should go for abortions, and it does not. Everyone agrees that the policy of coerced abortion is an abomination. It is horrible. The gentleman from New Jersey came to the floor with an amendment that said if this administration finds that UNFPA is engaged in helping coerced abortions to occur, we would get a 100 percent vote for it. If he said that, the funding to China or the UNFPA would stop. That is not what he has done. What he has done is similar to in the movies when the bad guys come to town and somebody did something they did not like, so they line them up and they shoot them up. The Smith amendment lines them up and shoots them all. It shoots them in Haiti. It shoots the program down in Nicaragua, throughout Africa, throughout Asia, throughout the world. All of the good that the gentleman says he supports he cuts in half with his amendment. Because, despite the fact that this administration said we find no evidence that the UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of coercive abortions, he suspects that perhaps there is an inkling that they do.