Jim Greenwood

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), an active member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), another active member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure and honor to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the most distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me also return the kind word of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott). We have worked together long and hard. There were a dozen issues in which it would have been a relatively easy matter for us to collapse our negotiations and collapse our talks and walk away and give up, which is sadly too often what happens in this body. But each and every time that I went to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) and said we have to work this out, how can we do this, let us put our heads together, can you yield a little bit here if I yield a little bit here, can you get your Members to go along with this compromise if I can get my Members to go along, without exception, every single time the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) was there to do that. I have made a good friend of one of the best Members of this House, and I am proud to be associated with the gentleman in this work and thank him again. Mr. Speaker, we are at a time of national crisis; and, ultimately, our success will depend partly upon our superiority when it comes to technology and to our military equipment. Ultimately, our success over the coming months and years and decade will be a function of the character of the American people. When we talk about the character of the American people, we have to remember that that means everyone. No one can be absent from the national cause to develop the strength of character and to see us through these dark times and to resecure America's place in the world. As a former caseworker who has worked with abused and neglected and troubled and delinquent children, I know firsthand that what these kids need more than anything else is adults in their lives who care about them, who are interested in their future, who believe in them, who have confidence in them, and who do not throw them away into the dark dungeons of the juvenile justice system but, in fact, spend time with them to teach them discipline, to teach them self control, to teach them about the need to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. I believe that this legislation will promote those efforts in every State and county in the country so that the young people who find themselves, generally because of difficulties in their home situation, with histories of abuse and violence and neglect and terrible home situations, find themselves in trouble with the law. These provisions in H.R. 1900, I think, will help these young people become full-fledged members of society who can contribute to our national security and well-being, rather than drain resources for important and vital needs. Again, I thank all of the Members and the staff who have worked on this. I urge passage of H.R. 1900.

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

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, President Kennedy once observed that there were two moments that the children of his generation would never forget, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and the day that Franklin Roosevelt died. Now it can be said that the two moments that my generation will never forget are the day President Kennedy was assassinated and yesterday's murder of the innocents. The visions from the hell that was visited upon us yesterday will remain in our memories for the rest of our lives. Among the most horrifying of those images is that of the second Boeing 767 crashing into the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. When flight 175 took off from Boston with its 56 passengers and 7 flight attendants bound for Los Angeles, its pilot was my constituent, Victor Saracini. Before becoming a pilot for United, Mr. Saracini had served his Nation as a Navy pilot. As all commercial pilots, he was responsible every day for the lives and the safety of others. I am certain that this Navy man did not relinquish his helm without a fight. Mr. Saracini leaves behind a wife, Ellen, and two children, Kirsten and Brielle. Today, it is our duty to remember and honor and grieve for all those who were torn from their families and from this life, even as we here who were ourselves targeted for destruction struggle to find some purpose in all this madness. But tomorrow we must dedicate ourselves to the reality that civilization and freedom cannot exist side-by-side with deranged and vicious assassins. We owe it to our children and to the children of those whose lives were stolen yesterday to rid the world of those who thirst only for our destruction. As I stood on the steps of the Capitol last night, I thought of another dark hour in our history and the haunting words of Abraham Lincoln, who had stood there more than 100 years before and spoken these prophetic words: ``With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him that has borne the battle; and for his widow, and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.''

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. In my State of Pennsylvania, it was not very long ago that when I looked at the medical community I saw a group of folks doing pretty well. They seemed to have a nice income. They seemed to be enjoying their profession. They seemed to be on top of the world. In the last 15 years or so I have seen a dramatic change in my doctors from the State of Pennsylvania. I have seen them hit with medical malpractice rates that are phenomenal, a 45 percent increase in the medical malpractice rates just in the last year in the State of Pennsylvania. I knew a physician. He was a good orthopedist, one of the best. All he liked to do was get up in the morning and fix broken bones. His medical malpractice rates got so high that his daughter secretly paid his premiums for him just so he would not give up and quit. Finally, when he found out how high those premiums were, he left the State of Pennsylvania and we lost one of our finest physicians. The doctors in my State of Pennsylvania have had it. We have got to pass this medical malpractice tonight.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time. I also want to thank my opponent in this debate, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon), for letting me use one of his charts to which I will refer in a moment. This rule makes in order the Greenwood-Deutsch substitute. The Greenwood-Deutsch substitute, just like the base bill, makes it illegal to create a human being through cloning. We all, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) and I, and all of the speakers we will hear from today, all believe that it is not safe and it is not ethical to create a new human being through cloning. We need to ban that. What we do not want to ban is, as has been said, the somatic cell nuclear transfer research, because that, my colleagues, that is what gives us the most promising opportunity to cure the diseases that have plagued humanity for centuries. Every one of us has had the experience that I have had in my office over and over again: a mother and father bring in their little diabetic child, sometimes with a big bottle of needles showing how many times they must inject themselves while they buy time to see if diabetes will eventually kill them. Every one of us has had the experience that I have had where a beautiful young mother comes into the office, she cannot raise her arms for Lou Gehrig's disease, and is trying to raise a child and trying to race death that is certain to come from Lou Gehrig's disease. We have all had people in our office trembling from Parkinson's. We have all had people in our office tell us the tragic stories of their parents with Alzheimer's. We have all had people come to visit us in wheelchairs, quadriplegics, paraplegics, with life-ending, life- destroying spinal injuries. We work on people who have suffered from head injuries, never to regain their normal function, and people in coma. We have all heard these stories. What do we do? We do the best thing we can think of. We say, let us double the funding for the National Institutes of Health. Let us spend billions of dollars to save these people, to save future generations from the scourge of premature death, disability, torturous pain. What is the research that we think is going to be done to find these miracle cures? Mr. Speaker, it is somatic cell nuclear transfer. Let us look at this diagram. What the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) did not say in his explanation of the diagram is that when we take the skin cell, the somatic cell, and put it in the nucleus of the denucleated or enucleated cell and allow it to divide for 5 to 7 days, when we get to this point, when we get to the point where we have that cell division, we stop the process of cell division and extract from that blastocyst pluripotent stem cells. When we have those stem cells, the scientists do research where they look at the proteins and the growth factors at work; and they say, what made that skin cell from someone's cheek become a stem cell, a magical stem cell that can become anything? And then, what miraculous proteins and processes can convert that pluripotent stem cell into a specialized spine cell or brain cell or liver cell? When they unlock that secret through this research, what they will be able to do to our constituents is that little child with diabetes will be able to have some of its skin cells taken, turned in with these proteins, no more eggs, no more embryonic work at all, take her somatic cell, convert it into a stem cell, and convert it into the islets for her liver, convert it into the cells that will cure and repair her spine, convert it into the cells that wake a comatose patient back into consciousness. That is what this research holds for us. Now, why would we kill this research? Why would we condemn for the world and for future generations not to have the benefit of this miracle? We would do it because some will say, but wait a minute, once we put the cheek cell of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) into this empty cell and it divides, we have a soul. That is the metaphysical question here, do we have a soul there? Mr. Speaker, I would be mightily surprised if we took my cheek cell and put it in a petri dish and it divided, that God would choose that moment to put a soul on it, and say, Mr. Greenwood's cheek cell is dividing; quick, give it a soul. It has to have a soul. Then we can hold hands and circle it and say, It must now become a human being. Mr. Greenwood's cheek cell is dividing. It has a soul. It has to live. That is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It does not say that in the New Testament. What the New Testament says is love; and with this therapy, we make the love a reality.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, this is a matter of values. It is a matter of how much one values our ability to end human suffering and to cure disease. No one in this House should be so arrogant as to assume that they have a monopoly on values, that their side of an argument is the values side and the other's is not. This is a matter of how much we value saving little children's lives and saving our parents' lives. There has been talk on the floor about creating embryo factories. Most of that talk I think has been conducted by people who do not understand the first thing about this research. Here is how one could create an embryo factory. We would get a long line of women who line up in a laboratory and say, would you please put me through the extraordinarily painful process of superovulation because I would like to donate my eggs to science. Does anybody think that is going to happen? Of course it is not going to happen. We are going to take this research, and this research involves a very small handful of cells. In the natural world, every day millions of cells, millions of eggs, are fertilized, and they do not adhere to the wall of the uterus. They are flushed away. That is how God does God's work. In in vitro fertilization clinics, every day thousands of eggs are fertilized, and most of them are discarded. That is the way loving parents build families who cannot do it otherwise. No one is here to object to that. Thousands of embryos are destroyed. We are talking about a handful, a tiny handful of eggs that are utilized strictly for the purpose of understanding how cells transform themselves from somatic to stem and back to somatic, because when we understand that, we will not need any more embryonic material. We will not need any cloned eggs. We will have discovered the proteins and the growth factors that let us take the DNA of our own bodies to cure that which tortures us. That is the value that I am here to stand for, because I care about those children, and I care about those parents, and I care about those loved ones who are suffering. I am not prepared as a politician to stand on the floor of the House and say, I have a philosophical reason, probably stemmed in my religion, that makes me say, you cannot go there, science, because it violates my religious belief. I think it violates the constitution to take that position. And on the question of whether or not we can do stem cell research with the Weldon bill in place, I would quote the American Association of Medical Colleges. It says, ``H.R. 2505 would have a chilling effect on vital areas of research that could prove to be of enormous public benefit.'' The Weldon bill would be responsible for having that chilling effect on research. The Greenwood substitute stops reproductive cloning in its tracks, as it ought to be stopped, but allows the research to continue, and I would advocate its support.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Would it be appropriate for me or permissible under the rules for me to yield 15 minutes of my time to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch)?

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) be permitted to control 15 minutes.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We have had a good 2 hours of debate, and it has been encouraging to see the extent to which Members of Congress have been able to grapple with this very complicated issue. Unfortunately, the Members who are speaking are the ones who have mastered it. We will have a vote within the hour and unfortunately most Members will come here pretty confused about the issue. Let me try to simplify the issue once again and ask that we try to avoid some of the ad hominem argument that I think is beginning, and the hostility, frankly, that is beginning to develop on the floor on this issue. This is not a question about who has values and who stands for human life and who does not. It is a very legitimate and important and historic debate about how it is that we are able to use the DNA that God put into our own bodies, use the brain that God gave us to think creatively, and to employ this research to save the lives of men, women and children in this country and throughout the world and to rescue them from terribly debilitating and life-shortening diseases. We have an extraordinary opportunity to do this with the research technique that does not involve conception. It is an interesting question to look at, when is it that people over history have defined the onset of life. The Catholic Church used to say that it began with quickening, when a woman could feel the motion of the fetus in her womb, and that was when ensoulment occurred. When scientists discovered how fertilization worked, the Church changed its opinion and said life actually begins at conception, at fertilization, and for those who adhere to that position, they have my utmost respect. I do not think they ought to put their position into the statutes of the Federal Government, but they certainly should be respected for that belief that they have. But now we have moved the goalposts again, and now somehow we are supposed to be required to, A, believe that ensoulment occurs when a somatic cell taken from someone's skin divides in a petri dish, and for those who want to make that leap of faith, or leap of whatever it is, belief, they are welcome to do that. But to put into the statutes of the Federal Government a prohibition against using the state of the art research that is wonderfully brilliant, fine and inspired, and noble researchers are trying to employ in the laboratory for the very purpose of saving the lives of people, to put into law a Federal ban against that, I think, is immoral. I think it is wrong, and we should not do it. Now, the Greenwood-Deutsch substitute is very simple. All we have been trying to do from the very beginning is prohibit reproductive cloning. That is all we do. That is all we do, is say thou shalt not create new babies using cloning, because it is not safe and it is not ethical. I said months ago to the leadership of this House, if you want to do what we all agree on, we all want to stop that, then we need to shoot a silver bullet and a rifle shot and stop that legislatively. We could do that. I said then but if we get mired down into the stem cell debate, the result is predictable. The legislation will go nowhere, this bill when it passes the House today will not be taken up in the Senate. I cannot believe the Senate is going to get into this issue. So what will we have done at the end of the day? We will have done nothing. We will not have banned reproductive cloning, because it is more interesting to get into this extraordinary metaphysical debate whether life does or does not begin when a skin cell divides in a petri dish. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished and scholarly gentleman from California (Mr. Horn).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Stupak) asked for an example of how this research is working. Dr. Okarma, who testified at our hearings, spoke of how they have taken mice who had damaged hearts, they used somatic cell nuclear transfer to take the cells of the mice, turn them into pluripotent stem cells, and then into heart cells, and then they injected those heart cells into the heart of the mouse. What happened? Those cells behaved like heart cells. They pumped blood and kept the mouse alive. All we are asking for here today is to give the people of the world, the people of this country, the same chance that the mouse had.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I have 4 minutes which I will use in my closing.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives has debated this issue for nearly 3 hours today. It has been a good debate. Again, as has been said, it is impressive how many Members have become knowledgeable about this subject. It is time to summarize that debate. Let us think about where it is we agree and where it is we fundamentally disagree. We all agree that we want to ban reproductive cloning, that it is not safe, it is not ethical to bring a child into this world as a replica of someone else. A child deserves to be the unique product of a mother and father and should not be created by cloning. We agree. It is unanimous. We all agree that stem cell research holds promise. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) did not bring a bill to the floor to ban embryonic stem cell research. He did not do that on purpose, because it would not fly with the American people. The American people understand that stem cell research holds enormous potential. I do not think we have heard disagreement about that on the floor today. The question seems to be, and it has been reiterated repeatedly, is it ethical and should it be legal to create in a petri dish an embryo, or in a petri dish to allow the process of human cell division to begin? Interestingly enough, that is not part of this bill either. The Weldon bill does not say one cannot create a embryo, that it should be illegal. Why is that? Because the American people would never stand for that because it would be the end of in vitro fertilization. We are not here to say we will never create an embryo. People have said it, but they did not mean it because nobody has brought to the floor a bill to ban in vitro fertilization. There are too many Members of this body who have benefited from it. So we say it is okay to create embryos because there are couples in this country and around the world who have not been blessed with a child born of their relationship in the normal way. So they are able to avail themselves of this wonderful technology where we can create their child for them, in vitro in a petri dish, implanted in the woman and out comes a beautiful child. So many families in this country are now blessed by beautiful children who are now brought into the world in this way. It started in a petri dish. What a magnificent thing for mankind to do. Children get sick and when those same children find themselves stalked with a disease that fills them with pain, that wracks their bodies, that tortures their parents with the predictability that they will watch their children slowly suffer and die. These same children whose lives had begun in petri dishes, who were created by in vitro fertilization, get sick. Now the question is, would we stop the research in petri dishes in laboratories that would save their lives, these same children, that would end their suffering, that would bring miracle cures to them and bless their families with the continued miracle of their own children? That is what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) and his supporters would have us do today. Over and over again it has been said, I am not against stem cell research. I think a majority of Members of this House are not opposed to stem cell research. They have told me that. I have talked to pretty strong pro-lifers who say, I am going to vote, if I have to, for stem cell research. What they do not understand is that stem cell research, whether it is done with embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells, needs somatic nuclear cell transfer research to make it work. What do Members think is done with a stem cell from an embryo? It needs to be made into the kind of cell that cures these children, and somatic nuclear transfer technology is needed to do it; and if Members kill this substitute, they kill that hope. Please do not do that.

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

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Paul Markloff, whose honesty and character have made him a hero to an elderly woman in the wake of Hurricane Allison. Mr. Markloff is a nineteen-year employee of Nationwide Insurance and a resident of Sellersville, Pennsylvania. On June 19 he was assigned to the case of a woman whose apartment had been flooded and then burned when the water caused a natural gas explosion in the building. She had no family to help her recover from the damage. Her apartment was devastated by the fire and she told Mr. Markloff that she had lost everything. She mentioned that she had $8,000 in cash inside her apartment. When Mr. Markloff and a maintenance worker went in and searched the charred furniture, they found a total of $420,000 cash in a dresser. Despite the fact that the woman had not mentioned this much money--she said, in fact, that she didn't even know she had that much--Mr. Markloff gathered the money together and drove her immediately to her bank. He made sure that all the cash was carefully deposited in a special account and then took her to dinner and found her a room for the night. Mr. Markloff's actions in assisting this woman in a time of crisis would have been commendable even had they not also included such an impressive display of honesty. Had he only helped her find housing, he would have earned our praise. By returning her savings, about which she herself was unaware, he has shown himself to be a man of high moral and ethical standards. It is always inspiring to know that there are people like Mr. Markloff, who are generous enough to do the right thing without thought of personal gain. Mr. Markloff told a local newspaper that he didn't expect any reward for his actions because he was ``just doing his Job.'' Perhaps he was not rewarded monetarily, but he certainly deserves our recognition and thanks. His actions remind us how much good is in all of us and I am honored to pay tribute to him today.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I applaud the motives of the makers of the amendment. I voted for the measure of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) last year. I have looked into the issue a lot further since then and now oppose it. The previous speaker talked about the ability to assure that these drugs are safe. Our seniors need safe and cost-effective drugs, affordable drugs. Here is what we found out. Institutions like this, counterfeiters, are able to produce drugs in vermin-filled, filthy, and unhygienic conditions. This is what they produce. They produce drugs, counterfeit drugs, that look exactly like the real thing. There is another example of that that we will put up of a drug that looks exactly like ours. The point of the matter is, if we want seniors to have affordable drugs and safe drugs, help is on the way. This morning's Washington Post says, ``Bush Has Pharmacy Discount Card Plan.'' We are on the verge of providing senior citizens affordable drugs. We can assure that they are safe, and they are not dangerous drugs that are imported from rat-infested, filthy laboratories like this one.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Speaker, on Thursday last week, June 14, 2001, the following cosponsors were incorrectly added to H.R. 2172, and I ask unanimous consent that they be removed at this time: Frank Wolf Major Owens Carolyn McCarthy Frank Pallone Richard Neal. Also, the following cosponsors were incorrectly added to H.R. 2118, and I ask unanimous consent that they be removed at this time: Henry Waxman Martin Frost.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order at any time on the legislative day of Wednesday, June 20, 2001, for the Speaker to entertain motions that the House suspend the rules relating to the following measures: S. 1029, H. Res. 124, H. Res. 168, H.R. 1753, H.R. 819, and S. Con. Res. 41.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, let me strip this debate down to its essentials and talk about what it is really about. Mr. Chairman, the great religions of the world differ on when and if and under what circumstances a woman should have or it is moral for a woman to terminate her pregnancy. The Catholic Church thinks one thing. My church, Presbyterians, think something else. Jews think something, Muslims think something, and within those religions there are differences of opinions. Mr. Chairman, our country was based on religious tolerance and religious freedom. That is why most people came to this country initially. Let us talk about what this debate is about. This debate is about religious intolerance. This debate is about saying, because my religion tells me something about abortion, I as a Member of Congress have a right to impose my religious views on the women of America, regardless of their religion, and now the women of the world; and that I have the power of the purse to say to women overseas, regardless of what their religion tells them, we are going to deny their country and where they might go for their health care family planning funds because of our narrow religious views. That is unAmerican. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this motion.