Jim Greenwood

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time and for his hard work. He has really been the leader on this. Mr. Speaker, this is one of the happiest days for me in the House in 8 years here, because of the importance of this bill for America's children. It does so much that none of us can do it justification in a few minutes so I just want to just focus on the autism part. Autism is not a rare disease. It is the third most common developmental disorder to affect children, following mental retardation and cerebral palsy. Autism currently affects over 400,000 individuals in the United States. One of every 500 children born today will be faced with autism. The third most common developmental disorder, autism is more prevalent than Down syndrome, childhood cancer or cystic fibrosis. It is a life-long, severe neurological disorder that usually manifests itself in children during their first two years of life and causes severe impairment in language, cognition and communication. Mr. Speaker, I have a friend. His name is John. He lives in California. He has a little boy named Dov. He told me about how this young son of his was coming along, developmentally meeting all of the milestones. And as a father, I can relate to that. I think the greatest joy of childhood is watching your children move along the developmental milestones. John said that at a certain stage his son just sort of drifted off, and it was like watching him on an ice flow drifting away, because he could no longer communicate. He could not say ``Mommy,'' could not say ``Daddy,'' and he has been impossible to really reach ever since then. John and his friends, other parents of autistic children, formed an organization. Theirs is called Curing Autism Now, CAN. In my district, we have mothers and fathers who created Caring and Sharing. They are committed to doing something about these children. They are committed to trying to find a cure, to find a way to identify this disorder early. Mr. Speaker, what this bill will do for these parents who have struggled, because for many, many years doctors actually did not understand what autism was, did not recognize the symptoms and blamed the parents. Blamed usually the mothers and said that they were cold and dispassionate and that is why their children were regressing. What a cruel thing to do to a parent struggling with this awful malady. Doctors still are lacking in their ability to recognize childhood autism early. What this bill will do is create five research centers geographically dispersed around the country, so that parents who know that there is something wrong with their child can go to get diagnosis, to get their child in an early clinical program to find out what the state of the art is in treatment, and what the state of the art is in curing this disease. I am delighted and proud today that the House of Representatives is going to answer the prayers of these parents.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the House Committee on Commerce, the committee of jurisdiction, I wish to clarify my intent in voting or H.R. 4365. Section 3207 imposes new requirements on residents of certain facilities with respect to the use of techniques of ``restraint'' and ``seclusion.'' While such practices should be avoided whenever possible, I trust that the regulatory agencies implementing this law will do so in a reasonable, practical manner. New Section 591(d)(1) of the Public Health Service Act defines ``restraint'' to exclude ``any . . . method that involves the physical holding of a resident . . . to permit the resident to participate in activities without the risk of physical harm to the resident . . .'' I construe this phrase to allow facilities covered under this section providing services to children and youth with serious emotional disturbances to continue using a practice known as a ``therapeutic hold'' when appropriate to allow a resident to resume activities as soon as possible.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, this evening, several of my colleagues and I want to talk about prescription drug coverage. I want to talk about one of the most important issues that this Congress is deliberating upon and one that we believe there is a solution to and particularly a bipartisan solution. I want to begin by reading from a letter that I received from a constituent of mine, a 70-year-old widow. She actually has some prescription drug coverage, but it is a $500-per-year limit, and this is what she writes: ``I am in pain daily, and I cannot correct the problems because of financial difficulty. I have stopped taking Prilosec, which cost $285 per month, Zoloft, which costs $100 per month, Lossomax, which also costs $100 per month, Zanaz, which costs $100 a month and Zocor, which costs over $100 a month. I need these drugs filled monthly and simply cannot afford them. I am also in need of a pain pill, Viox, approximately $89, and I have not been able to purchase it. I have cried myself to sleep over this dilemma.'' Mr. Speaker, those words touched my heart when I read that letter, and that is why I have read it today, and I read it in many places across this country. My constituent does not care whether Republicans solve her problem or whether Democrats solve her problem or whether the Congress solves her problem or whether the President solves her problem. What she cares about is whether the pain goes away. What she cares about is whether the glaucoma that is making her eyesight weak is cured. What she cares about is whether she's depressed. We have an opportunity now, right now, still this year, to put people before politics and solve the problem of my constituent, and solve the problem of elderly women and elderly men and disabled men, women and children all over this country if we can provide a prescription drug benefit. This House has passed a benefit. I just want to talk about how we got here. In 1965 the Medicare program was created and it was a milestone in American history. Prior to that time, if you became elderly and you lost your health care, you lost your job, you retired. Unless you were among the fortunate, you really were without and devastating illnesses shortened life and certainly lessened the quality of life for many of our elderly. So the Congress, in 1965, did exactly the right thing, created the Medicare program, a wonderful thing, a wonderful part of Americana. But in those days, I do not think they even really gave serious consideration to creating a prescription drug benefit. Why? Because prescription drugs were not used nearly as frequently as they are today, and also because they had just bitten off a pretty big piece, in terms of the cost and the complexity of the program, to assure hospitalization care, to assure doctors' visits were going to be paid for. It was a huge accomplishment. Now, in the 35 years that ensued between the creation of Medicare in 1965 and today, our constituents have told us, with increasing frequency, with increasing poignancy, that they are making horrible decisions between choosing to pay for the prescriptions that their doctors tell them they must have and putting food on the table; between taking the three or four pills that they are prescribed per day or maybe only taking one because they are trying to stretch out their medicines, which really is not in the interest of their health. The Congress has not done anything. Congress has not done anything for 35 years. Why not? Well, the fundamental reason is because Congress, in most of those years, was spending money like mad and plunging this Nation into what seemed like an irreversible dive into debt, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt every year to the point where the public debt was approaching $6 trillion. There was just no way for Congress to seriously consider adding a new entitlement to the Medicare program, no matter how important it was, when we did not have any idea how we were going to pay for what we were already spending here in Washington. Well, that has changed now; and since 1995 there has been a big change in this country. In 1997, we balanced the budget. In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that this year, I think that the deficit, the annual deficit that we would add to the national debt, was going to be something in excess of I think $240 billion or something like that. That was the projection. Today, because of the steps that we took in 1995, in 1996, in 1997, we balanced the budget and, in fact, this year, in 2000, we do not have a quarter of a trillion dollar deficit; we have a quarter of a trillion dollar surplus. Now, we took the next step, this fiscal year, we said and we will not spend another penny of the Social Security revenues for anything else, as Congress had done for years and years, except Social Security. We locked it away, and we still have this surplus. We are paying down the debt. We have surplus. We have given some tax relief where it was needed and now we are in position to provide this benefit, and we can do it. I have something in my wallet. It is a prescription drug card. I take a prescription for my cholesterol level, and when I go to the drugstore to fill out my prescription I take this little card out of my wallet and I give it to the pharmacist and the pharmacist gives me a prescription, and I give the pharmacist a few dollars in copay for that prescription. When my wife needs her prescriptions filled or my children are sick, we do the same thing. I am a fortunate man. My family is fortunate. But every American in this country needs to have one of these. Every American, particularly the elderly, I mean I have one prescription, but my 70-year-old widowed constituent has numerous prescriptions, obviously, and she does not have one of these, except that it is good for $500 for the whole year. Mine is good all year around. The bill, the legislation we passed in this House earlier this year, would make sure every American senior and every disabled Social Security beneficiary has a card just like this to take to the drugstore to provide for their drugs. That is what we are going to talk about this evening. Mr. Speaker, I am going to next yield the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood), my distinguished colleague.

Mr. GREENWOOD. And if I may, that is before we even apply the Federal contribution to the actual price of the item. So that 75 is cut in half. And, of course, we pay 100 percent of the remainder for the low- income and for middle-class folks, a half. So now we are talking about going from paying 100 percent of retail price to paying 37\1/2\ percent of retail price. It is almost a two-thirds reduction in the cost of the pharmaceutical product to the average American.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood) has made a really important point here on the floor of the House with regard to our State of Pennsylvania. If we take the legislation that we passed and match it to our current program, our PACE program, which by the way is the best program in the whole country, there are, I think, 300,000 low-income seniors in Pennsylvania who receive almost virtually cost free drugs under the PACE program financed by our lottery, the PACE Net program elevates the standard, so with some copay even more middle-class Americans, Pennsylvanians, I should say, get the benefit. And the legislature, because the State of Pennsylvania also has a surplus, has just proposed even raising the levels higher to reach into the middle class. So by the time we take this Federal legislation that we have passed here and relieve the State of Pennsylvania, our State, of the burden of the lowest income and then you add all of those new State dollars and the existing lottery dollars to that, we will have virtually cost free or certainly no premiums, no copays, no deductibles for a very significant portion, well up into the middle class, in Pennsylvania, and so it makes these benefits completely affordable to every one of our constituents. I know that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood) shares that. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. The fact is that two out of three of our elderly, as the gentleman mentioned, already have some kind of coverage. Some, as we have mentioned, have coverage through the PACE program. Others who are so low-income that they qualify for Medicaid get their drugs through the Medicaid program. Some have a fee-for-service Medicare program, and then they buy a Medigap insurance that in many cases provides prescription drugs; and others have a Medicare HMO, we call it Medicare+Choice, and they get their Medicare benefits through an HMO and many of those HMOs have been providing a prescription drug benefit. The problem, as the gentleman well knows, because he has had me to his district to visit his district and to discuss this problem and its solution, the problem is that the Medicare+Choice programs have been ratcheting back their benefits. They have been providing, they used to provide relatively generous prescription drug benefits, but they are pulling back. They are pulling back because they feel that the Congress, frankly, and the administration has not been providing sufficient funds to pay for the full health care benefits of today's seniors in managed care Medicare. So then the gentleman and I understood that both in my district and in his district and throughout Pennsylvania and throughout the country, many of these plans announced, just in July, that they were going to leave areas.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, if I may, the legislation is ours. I serve on the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Commerce, and it was the gentleman who came to me and said this is a real problem in my area; this is a real serious matter, and we put our heads together and we wrote that legislation. The fact of the matter is, and I do not think the gentleman is even aware of this, but it is my expectation that on Tuesday of next week, yours and mine, will be taken up by the Committee on Commerce, by the full committee, will be part of a comprehensive bill to try to restore a variety of payments, probably $21 billion into the Medicare program to help our hospitals, to help our nursing care facilities, to provide better benefits for home health care, as well as to expand the likelihood that these HMOs will be able to stay in place and continue to offer that benefit. So I am cautiously optimistic. I am actually very optimistic that, as the gentleman says, we will do that. We recognize the problem in your area and in mine and throughout the country, and we will hopefully report that legislation from committee on Tuesday. It will pass this House of Representatives, it will be signed by the President, and we will have made a real difference. Mr. Speaker, it is my fervent hope that those health insurance plans, those HMOs that provide the Medicare+Choice benefit all over the country, once that is done, will be able to reverse the decision that they made, that they announced in July, because they have to do it in July, according to law, we require them to make that announcement; but they will be able to reverse this judgment and continue to provide service, good quality health care for our seniors in the gentleman's district and mine.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for participating in this special order this afternoon and for all of his hard work on behalf of his seniors in his district. He must be known for that one thing in his district, because he sure talks about it here in the whole of the House. We are joined tonight by another of our colleagues who wants to participate, fortunately, in our special order, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Bryant). And I yield to him at this time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, it certainly is an election year. I think the thing some of us find so discouraging is we have a tendency sometimes to take our eye off the ball and remember that these are real people out there. I read a letter from a real constituent who, in her letter, said she cries herself to sleep because she cannot afford the medicines. That story is repeated all over this country. The wealthiest country in the world, the most powerful Nation in history, and we have our grandmothers who are making these painful decisions, and they are suffering from arthritis. They are suffering from all kinds of health problems because they do not have access to these prescriptions. Now, we did pass a bill. It happens to be the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Bryant) and I are Republicans, but the bill is a bipartisan bill. It had both bipartisan sponsors as well as both Republicans and Democrats that voted for it. It is, I believe, the only comprehensive prescription drug add-on for Medicare that the Congress has ever passed. It is our bill, and we passed it, and that is terrific. Now, we happen to like our plan better than some of the other bills, and that is what one would expect in a democracy where one has the lively debate of issues and different points of views and philosophies. But what troubles me, frankly, is that what tends to happen, because it is an election year, is people say, well, let us take a look at their bill and see how many holes we can punch in. Let us take a look at their bill and see how many holes we can punch in that. Then we can use it in the campaign and see who gets elected to President over this issue and see who gets elected the majority in Congress over this issue and see how many Republicans and Democrats we can knock out of office over this issue. That is pretty cynical, and it does not do the issue justice. I still believe that if President Clinton wants to, that we can sit down and we can find the common ground and we can split our differences and we can take the best issues, the best ideas from each side and at least solve a good portion of this problem in this year and, if we do not solve it all to everyone's liking this year, to continue that next year. But we ought not to lose this rare opportunity. We are finally one Chamber, the House of Representatives has passed the first bill to provide this prescription drug benefit.

Mr. GREENWOOD. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Bryant) for his contribution and his very great work in the committee. We are joined now by the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), another colleague of mine from the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the Committee on Commerce, who really does work very hard day and night on this issue. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

Mr. GREENWOOD. The point that I was thinking about making right now is that this conversation almost always turns towards the senior beneficiary of Medicare, and the gentleman has frequently in his remarks cojoined the fact that there are seniors and there is the disabled population that in fact are eligible for Social Security. And what is important to remember, when we think about that disabled community, that disabled community includes those who have very serious physical disabilities, frequently because of complicated and debilitating illnesses; and these are people who are under the age of 65. We forget about the fact they do not have prescription drug benefits either. And they are less likely to have prescription drug benefits coming from a an employer, because they are less likely because of their disability, obviously, to have worked for an employer long enough to have had a prescription drug benefit that carries into the years when they cannot work and they are on disability. So this is another group of people who certainly need this benefit and they need it soon. And some of those, a good number of those, their disability is the result of a mental health issue, and of course the treatment of mental illness is more and more pharmaceutical. There are more drugs coming on to the market all of the time that can help with these serious debilitating mental illnesses and in fact help those folks get back into the workforce. So our ability to provide a prescription drug benefit that also provides the benefit to the disabled population as well as the senior population is an important component of what we did pass in this House, and I commend the gentleman for remembering to remember that Medicare applies to the disabled as well as to the elderly.

Mr. GREENWOOD. If I can reclaim time for a moment, the thing that is ironic is that, as we have said, in the history of the Congress, certainly in the last 35-year history of Medicare, it is only the one bill the gentleman and I helped to author that has passed in the House. Now, there has been plenty of talk for 35 years from politicians on the stump running for this House and the Senate and the presidency. They have all talked about this issue. But when it came to sitting down, as we did, and saying how would we actually write this; what would the words be that we would choose to put in the bill; what would the provisions look like; how would we pay for it; how would it be flexible; how would we be able to make it affordable to the lower- income and still be affordable to the taxpayers; how does it reach into the middle class; how would we take care of the catastrophic end of things; how do we make sure it is appropriate for the disabled population as well; how do we make sure that by offering this we do not create a disincentive for employers to continue to provide the benefit; how would we do that, we grappled with all of those questions, as the gentleman knows, and we had to make decisions. We put those decisions into a document and we said, now, can we get 218 votes out of 435 Members of the House to pass it. That meant we had to talk to various constituencies within the House to make sure that it worked in the Northeast, and that it worked in the Southwest, and it worked in the Southeast and the Northwest, and across the country. We had to do that. But when we did that, we had a document and, of course, no good deed going unpunished, we become subject to criticism. Because now people had an actual document instead of just words, and they could take that document, and they could look at it, and they could criticize this aspect or that aspect. I think that that is what has happened, to a large extent; and I think that is unfortunate, that having put something together for the first time in history and getting it to pass the House, that we have become subject to some criticism about all of that. The hard part for us is that right now the President does not have a proposal. We do not have a bill from the President that says on paper, a document that thick, this is how I would answer all those questions about making sure that it is affordable and making sure that it meets all of these needs. We do not have that. So we have a real document against just rhetoric, and it is making for an unbalanced debate. I think if we can get the Members at the other end of this building, as well as the gentleman at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House, to in fact give us some documents, we would have the basis about which we could sit in a room and combine them and merge them and work out the differences, as we do regularly and is our job. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. GREENWOOD. I believe our time has just about elapsed. I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his participation, as well as my other colleagues from around the country. This clearly is, if not the number one issue in America, certainly ought to be. There is still time to resolve this issue. All we need to do is to work with the House and the Senate and the President together and, in fact, we can all be proud of meeting a need that just cries out to be met; and we think we have made a good start.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, in its annual meeting in San Antonio, on October 28, 2000, the American Society of Dentistry for Children will honor the life's work of George W. Teuscher. Born in 1908, Dr. Teuscher received his dental degree from Northwestern University in 1929. Subsequently, he received an MSD degree in pediatric dentistry, an MA in educational psychology and a PhD in education, with major areas of study in administration, and English and American Literature. Since the 1930s, Dr. Teuscher has been a dental clinician, researcher, educator, dental school dean, writer, editor, and lecturer to dentists all over the world. In 1968 he became Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Dentistry for Children. In the thirty two years since, Dr. Teuscher's editorials regarding child advocacy have expounded on preventive dentistry and medicine, child behavior, parental concerns, the importance of education, special needs patients, ethics, social responsibility, and other topics--all relating to children and their well being. His writings in the Journal have served as a veritable archival conscience for the dentist: a thought provoking stream of awareness regarding children in modern societies. Dr. Teuscher's writings, along with articles he has selected for publication, have made the Journal of Dentistry for Children the most widely read and important international publication in the field. Likewise, his leadership in the American Society of Dentistry for Children has made it a renowned and respected child advocacy health organization. To this day, with undiminished vigor and enthusiasm, 92-year-old Dr. Teuscher reviews and edits scholarly submissions to the Journal, from dozens of countries. His skills and talent for this endeavor seem to increase with each published issue of the Journal, as the years have gone by. As one of dentistry's great leaders of the 20th century contemplates retiring from his work with the American Society of Dentistry for Children, it is with great respect, gratitude, admiration and affection that the people of the United States and members of the United States Congress pay tribute to Dr. George W. Teuscher.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 468 I inadvertently pressed the ``yea'' button. I meant to vote ``nay.''

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) not only for yielding to me but for all of his help in moving this bill through the subcommittee, as well as the minority ranking member. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in strong support of the Exploration of the Seas Act, H.R. 2090, which is a necessary step if mankind is ever to realize the untapped potential of the world's oceans. The Exploration of the Seas Act accomplishes this goal by directing the Secretary of Commerce to contract with the National Academy of Sciences to establish a coordinated oceanographic program advisory panel comprised of experts in ocean studies, which will create a blueprint of how to implement an international undersea exploration effort. A visitor to our solar system asked to name the third planet from the sun would most certainly not name it Earth as early land-bound humans did, but rather Oceania for the dominating character of its seas. Seventy-five percent of our planet's surface and 95 percent of its biosphere is ocean. Life began in the sea, which is now the home of somewhere between 10 and 100 million spectacularly diverse species. Ninety-seven percent of the planet's water is in its oceans. The oceans are the engines for our terrestrial weather patterns, the highway for international trade. Fifteen percent of the protein consumed by humans comes from the sea. Beneath the ocean floor lies unimaginable quantities of oil, gas, coal, and minerals. Marine plants and animals possess inestimable biotechnological potential in the treatment of human illness. Coral reefs, sometimes described as the rain forest of the sea, contain uncommon chemicals that may be used to fight diseases for which scientists have not yet found a cure, such as cancer, AIDS and diabetes. While the number of new chemical compounds that can be derived from land-based plants and microbial fermentation is limited, scientists have only just begun to explore the sea's vast molecular potential. The oceans are our source, our sustenance and the key to our future survival. But the capacity of the seas to absorb our waste and fulfill our desires is not without limit. Twenty percent of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed, 20 percent and counting. Oceans are the dumping grounds for municipal trash, sewage and even nuclear waste. More than two-thirds of the world's marine fish stocks have been fished beyond their maximum productivity. If our children's children are to inherit the ocean's bounty, we must come to understand and manage it far better than we do today; and I am confident the Exploration of the Seas Act will assist in achieving that goal. I urge support of H.R. 2090. Mr. Speaker, we spend billions of dollars in outer space and NASA programs. I support that. I think it is fascinating that the Russians and Americans have achieved such amazing goals in our space station, but by contrast we spend pennies on explorations of our oceans. And yet our survival as a species depends on our oceans. This legislation will begin the process by which I hope the nations of the world, the great nations of the world, can combine our efforts and begin to devote the kind of attention that we need to devote to our oceans for our own survival and for the betterment of our species. I again thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member for all of their support.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, once again, I appreciate that. As the gentleman pointed out, the United States Congress has done a great deal, particularly with the leadership of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), in reducing the pollution that the United States adds to the oceans in reducing the over exploitation in which we engage. But the rest of the world continues in many parts, whether it is in India, or in China, in Asia. The Russians have a very long way to go, and that is why I think this international cooperation is what is really needed both to explore the oceans and to protect them for the future generations. And I thank the gentleman again for all of his support

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to share one- half the time allotted to my amendment with the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, is the gentleman aware that since 1973 it has been against the law to use one dime of these funds for abortions overseas, that the Helms amendment of 1973 prohibits the expenditure of any of these funds for abortion?

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, that is fine. Let us keep the debate honest and talk about fungibility. Let us not use language that implies that these funds can be directly used for abortion.