Gil Gutknecht

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding to me. I thank him for this special order, and I thank him for this bill. I want to say a special thank you to our colleagues in the Senate, particularly Senator Grassley for his hearing in September, on September 25, where he highlighted this report. I want to point out to people who may be watching who the General Accounting Office is. The General Accounting Office is basically our auditors; and many times, they file reports. We send them out to investigate different agencies to find out if they are really doing their jobs. Altogether too often they do a beautiful job of coming back with a report and recommendations, and the reports wind up sitting on some desk somewhere and gathering dust. So I want to say a special thank you to our colleagues over on the other body for at least saying this time we are going to do something about it, this time we really mean it. I want to talk a little bit about the Packers and Stockyards Act. It goes back about 70 years, and it was designed to protect individual producers. It was not designed to protect the packers and the stockyards. As the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) mentioned, and I do not want to become repetitive, but what we have seen in the last 10 years especially is a tremendous change in what has happened in the livestock industry. Frankly, from my perspective, and listening to the gentleman from Iowa speak earlier, we came here together in 1994, and I have always thought in many respects we both come from what I thought was the Teddy Roosevelt wing of the Republican parties, whether it is fighting for open markets and more competition for prescription drugs, which I think we are winning, and I am not so certain. We seem to be waging a war, not only against the pharmaceutical industry, but the FDA itself, and sometimes our own leadership makes our job even more difficult. But the important point is we understand that markets are more powerful than armies and that competition is good. I was reading about Teddy Roosevelt this weekend; and the more one reads about him, the more interesting he is. But he really and deeply and fiercely believed that competition was a good thing, that it brought out the best, whether it was on the sporting fields or whether it was in business. He fought literally all of his life to make certain that there was adequate competition in every field. What we have seen in the last several years are really disturbing trends. Let me just share with the people who may be watching this what has happened relative to some of the large mergers. We have talked about this relative to pharmaceutical industry. It was not that long ago we had, well, let us see, there was Glaxo and there was Wellcome and Bristol-Myers. There was Squibb. There were four separate companies. If they have their way, by the end of this year, there will be one company. Now, all of those companies were big companies, and they had tremendous market power, but imagine what it is like now that there is one. We have talked about the oil industry, the same thing. People sometimes scratch their heads, and they wonder why is it we seem to be at the mercy of the large oil companies. Well, at one time we had Exxon and Mobile, and one was a $55 billion company, and the other was a $43 billion company, and now they are one company. It was Teddy Roosevelt who was behind breaking up Standard Oil. Now we see all those big oil companies coming back together. Let us talk about concentration.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. And I just want to point out that one of the things that many times people inside the bureaucracy will say is, well, we do not have enough staff or we do not have enough money. But the General Accounting Office does not say that in their report. We currently allocate 153 people and about $16 million, and over the last 2 years they have conducted a grand total of 74 investigations. Now, I do not know how many is the right number, whether it is staff or whether it is the appropriation or how many investigations that they should conduct, but I do know this; that there is enormous distrust out in farm country among our independent producers out there of the way this law is being enforced. There is a lot of concern. And I think the way to allay that concern is to make certain that at least the recommendations of our own General Accounting Office, as it relates to the investigative methodology that is used, is implemented, to make certain we get to the bottom of this. We cannot completely solve this problem of concentration. I think that is sort of a function of the way the economy seems to be moving today. On the other hand, I think we can do all within this law that is possible to make certain that if there is only going to be four major packers that are involved in beef packing, that at least there is adequate competition. Personally, I would love to see moving back to more of an auction format. Frankly, I think that is the fairest way to sell almost anything. And I say that as a licensed and bonded auctioneer. But the real key about the auction was that a person could go to the auction ring and sit there and see what cattle or hogs were actually selling for. If they paid close enough attention, they could tell who was buying them; whether they were going to Armour or Swift or Hormel, wherever they were going. If someone paid attention, they could know who was buying and how much was being paid. In today's market, that is next to impossible. They publish some prices in the paper, but, in fact, I have to tell my colleague that when we went through that period when hogs dropped to $8 per hundred, the truth of the matter was that many of the hogs being slaughtered in our facilities in Iowa and Minnesota were not selling for $8 a hog, they were selling for substantially more than that because they were on some form of contract. Even today, when we look at the cash market, that may or may not be the price that hogs are actually being sold for on that given day. The USDA has enormous power under the Packers and Stockyards Act, and what we are saying as part of this is that they need to do a better job of sharing the information they have with those independent producers. And let me just say finally about the independent producers that anybody who has spent any amount of time with these people who raise livestock, farmers in general but livestock producers in particular, these are the salt of the earth people. The truth of the matter is they do not ask for much from government. Matter of fact, if any of my colleagues were to go to the National Cattlemen's Association, if there is any group in America who says get the government out of our business, it is the Nation's cattlemen. I admire them so much. All they really ask for is a level playing field and a set of rules that are fair so that they have a chance to compete and take care of their families, perhaps grow their farms and their ranches for their families and future generations. They do not ask for much. And so I think the very minimum that we can do in this Congress is to make certain that we at least implement the recommendations of our own General Accounting Office. So I congratulate the gentleman for bringing this bill forward. I congratulate the Senate sponsors as well. Hopefully, we can get this bill passed, perhaps in the next 10 days. But I will promise the gentleman that if we do not get it passed before we are able to go home and this Congress adjourns, we will be back next year and I will be prodding my colleagues on the Committee on Agriculture, and I know the gentleman will be prodding his colleagues in the Committee on Commerce to make certain that we do follow through on this and that something happens for these great people out there working their tails off every day.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, the gentleman has done a great job of setting the stage. In this case, I should say Dr. Ganske. The gentleman probably understands this issue as well as anybody. I sort of fell into it at some of my town hall meetings. Several years ago, seniors started to talk about bus trips to Canada to buy prescription drugs. And, to be honest, the first couple of times it came up, I just sort of dismissed it. If people want to go to Canada, they can go to Canada. But then I began to learn that the FDA actually sent these threatening letters to seniors if they attempted to reorder. Generally speaking, they will allow people to go across the border with a legal prescription and go into a pharmacy in Canada or Mexico, or, frankly, around the rest of the world. But I want to take a moment to talk about the differentials. Let us take one drug. The purple pill; Prilosec. The average price in the United States now is about $139 for a 30-day supply. And one of the aspects of many of these drugs is that once a patient begins to take these, they tend to be on them for very long periods of time. Prilosec is a wonderful drug. It is for acid reflux disease and for ulcers. It is a wonderful drug. I really do not want to bash the makers of it. But the problem is this. In the United States that 30-day supply is about $139 now. That same 30-day supply of exactly the same drug made in the same plant under the same FDA approval sells in Canada for about $55. But in Mexico I am told you can buy the same drug for $17.50. In Europe the average price is about $39. I think Americans want to pay their fair share. But what is really happening right now is the pharmaceutical industry is shifting much of their cost for research and development and most of their profits are coming at the expense of American consumers. That is just wrong. When we talk about Teddy Roosevelt, we talk about competition and how competition makes things stronger. Competition in sports, competition in business. What we are saying is you have got to have competition in the drug industry. Right now they hide behind the protection of the FDA. We are saying that that has to stop. I will give the gentleman one more example. My 83-year-old father, unlike some of the politicians' stories, really does take Coumadin. It is a blood thinner. The average price here in the United States for a 30-day supply is about $28. That same drug in Switzerland sells for $2.85. The President and the Vice President and a lot of people on both sides of the aisle say, ``We've got to have prescription drug coverage for seniors.'' But one of the seniors at my town hall meetings said it so well. He said, ``If you think drugs are expensive today, just wait till the government provides them for free.'' If we do not solve this price side of this problem, we will never be able to solve the coverage side. I support the coverage side. I think it is time to have a benefit as part of Medicare that includes prescription drugs. I think that is the right thing to do. But you will never get there, you will never be able to afford that benefit if we do not create some competition in the United States so that Americans have access to world market prices. It is the only area I know of where the world's best customers pay far and away the world's highest prices. We are making progress. The President has now embraced our bill. Congressional leaders on both sides have embraced our bill. But the FDA and the drug companies are not exactly embracing our bill. As we speak, they are trying to throw more and more grit into the gears to try and slow this thing down. I do believe that ultimately, because we are in the Information Age, this is going to happen. You cannot hold back markets. Shortly after the Soviet flag came down for the last time over the Kremlin, a headline was written and it was so powerful, because what it said was, markets are more powerful than armies. If you think about it, the Soviet experiment was 70 years of the government trying to hold back markets. It cannot be done, particularly in the Information Age. We are going to win this fight. We are going to see prescription drug prices in the United States come down by at least 30 percent. And with those savings, and the estimates are next year we are going to spend $150 billion in this country on prescription drugs, a 30 percent savings, I am not good in math but that works out to $45 billion in savings for American consumers. With some of those savings we can begin to create a better safety net, a better program, some kind of a benefit that will take care of those seniors that currently fall through the cracks. I want to thank the gentleman for all his help. It has been bipartisan. We have the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), we have got a lot of Democrats who have joined us, the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Baldacci), lots of Democrats have helped us on this. It is not a partisan issue. I always tell people this is not a debate between the right and the left. This is a debate between right and wrong and it is wrong to make American consumers pay the world's highest prices.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to be present earlier today for rollcall Vote No. 498 due to a previously scheduled radio debate with my challenger in the upcoming election. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye''.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, one senior at one of my townhall meetings said it best: if you think prescription drugs are expensive today, just wait until the Federal Government provides them for free. We have got to deal with the price side first. And then when we do, we can come up with a prescription drug program that encourages competition, that allows markets to work, that gives people choices, that is available, it is affordable, and ultimately will bring down the price of prescription drugs so that people will not be falling through the cracks as they are today.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, it was a wonderful trip over there. We cannot help but be proud of the young men and women who serve us in the armed forces and the job that they do, whether it is in Bosnia or Yugoslavia, East Timor, Haiti. We have had so many deployments over the last 8 years that we are just stretching our people far too thin. I think the other issue we are raising here is the whole issue of burden sharing. Bosnia alone has costs us, as members of the Committee on the Budget, almost $20 billion now. And it is really hard for us to see any real evidence that we are making any real progress. The same is true with Yugoslavia. It is time for our allies. We are spending about 3 percent of our gross domestic product on defense. Our European allies are spending an average 1\1/2\ percent. That has made our job a whole lot more difficult in terms of balancing the budget. I just want to come back to a couple of points that my colleague raised, and I think they really need to be repeated because everybody likes to take credit. It is like the little red hen in baking the bread. Nobody wanted to help grow the wheat. Nobody wanted to help harvest the wheat. Nobody wanted to help to grind the wheat. Nobody wanted to help bake the bread. But everybody wants to take credit once the bread has been baked. If we go back to where we were in 1995 when the President proposed his budget in the spring of 1995, we were looking at deficits of over $200 billion well into the future. And we came in and said, no, we are going to slow the rate of growth in Federal spending, we are going to eliminate programs, we are going to consolidate programs. We have eliminated over 400 programs, some big ones the Interstate Commerce Commission, some small ones like the Coffee Tasters Commission, some that Americans will not miss, some that most Americans will not miss very much. But the point is we have made enormous progress. We were accused of wanting to starve children and throw grandma out into the street. We have made enormous progress, and most of it has been done in little changes that we have made along the way and slowed the rate of growth so that this year the Federal budget will grow at a slower rate than the average family budget. The real goal, as my colleagues are talking about today, and I was listening very carefully up there, the real goal of paying down this debt, I just cannot think of anything better to leave our kids than a debt-free future. But above and beyond that, I am told by Congressional Budget officers that, if we begin this process of really paying down debt, we will see real interest rates drop by at least one percent. That will save the average American family over $4,000 a year in interest payments that they are paying on their homes, their mortgages, their credit cards, all the other things that Americans have in terms of debt. And to me that is a huge tax cut. We need to really think about what it will mean when we get to that point where we really have eliminated the publicly held debt. I think we are at a very important point in history. And I hope that our leadership, the appropriators, the people serving on the conference committees will not be eager to compromise. I believe that $1.868 trillion is more than enough to meet the legitimate needs of the Federal Government and those who depend on it. And if we need to spend more in one particular category, if the President says, no, we have got to spend more, whether it is on education or the environment or whatever his particular pet programs are, then we should demand that the President show us where he is going to pay for that program out of some other area of the budget. I do not think that is too much to ask. We have come a long ways. We cannot turn back now. I really appreciate what my colleagues have been talking about tonight because I think this is at the heart of what we must do as a Congress, and that is to control the rate of growth in Federal spending, to make certain that we pay down debt; and ultimately I believe we allow families to keep more of what they earn in two ways, first of all with tax cuts and secondly by seeing lower interest rates on their home mortgages and everything else that they own. So I really appreciate this special order tonight, and I thank my friends from Georgia for having it.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I do not think the President has ever introduced a prescription drug bill. In 8 years, I think the sum total of what this administration has done on prescription drugs is they have refused to enforce the antitrust laws that are on the books. We have seen even bigger mergers of the huge pharmaceutical companies. And then, of course, when seniors try to buy prescription drugs in either Canada or Mexico or Europe via mail or e-mail or some kind of ordering system, the other thing the administration has done is they have sent those seniors threatening letters. And we have copies of those in our office. In fact, I think we have copies on our Web site so my colleagues might want to check it. So they have never introduced a bill, but they have allowed the big drug companies to merge; and they have not enforced the antitrust laws, and they have threatened seniors. That has been their answer.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I think our colleague from Georgia (Mr. Linder) says it best. In many of these issues, it really is about who decides, will it be Washington or will it be the individual. Whether we are talking about education reform, health care reform, prescription drug reform, whatever we are talking about here in Washington, most of it all comes down to who decides. Will it be Washington bureaucrats, or will it be you? The thing about this side of the aisle is we believe in individuals, and we believe that the individuals can make the best decisions.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, from a budget perspective, last year the Federal Government, through the Veterans' Administration and through other programs that are actually run by the Federal Government, we bought about $5 billion worth of prescription drugs last year. Now, I estimate if Americans had access, including the VA and Medicaid and medical assistance and some of the other programs we fund, if we had access to drugs at world-market prices, let my give my colleagues one example, Prilosec, a very commonly prescribed drug in the United States for acid reflux disease and ulcers. In the United States the average price for a 30-day supply is now about $139 a month. That same drug sells in Canada for $55. It sells in Mexico for $17.50. Now, that is just one example. But we believe that you could save easily 30 percent.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. The truth is we could save at least $1.5 billion a year. And when people talk about the prescription drug problem, the problem is that they always talk about the wrong side first; they always talk about coverage. The real problem is price. If people had access to drugs at world-market prices, we would have a much smaller problem dealing with the coverage side. The good news is I think the congressional leadership, and the Republicans in particular, now understand that if we believe in free markets for textiles, if we believe in free markets for lumber, if we believe in free markets for agricultural products, certainly we ought to have free markets when it comes to pharmaceuticals. I do not believe in price controls, but I do not believe that the world's best customers should pay the world's highest prices. And that is what is happening today, and it is partly because of the miserable job that the Justice Department has done, the administration, the FDA, and so forth in terms of encouraging more competition. So that is an issue that has huge budget implications. Because when we look at Medicare, we look at the VA, we look at how much we are already spending on prescription drugs, if we have access to world- market prices, we will see prices in the United States, in my opinion, drop by at least 30 percent. And next year the estimates are, in the United States, we will spend both from private citizens, insurance companies, the Government, and so forth, we will spend close to $150 billion on prescription drugs. Thirty percent of $150 billion is real money.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Right. I think we want to come back to this. We have known for a long time, and certainly the FDA has known for a long time, that there are differentials, so what consumers have done to try and save some money, and sometimes we are talking about thousands of dollars, they have gone to other countries. So what has this administration done about it? Well, they have done two things, and both of them, in my opinion, have made a bad situation worse. First, they have allowed some of the large pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo and Wellcome, used to be two very large pharmaceutical companies, today they are one. They have allowed these mergers to go on basically unabated.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I would like to thank my colleagues, and particularly the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), and let me just say publicly we are going to miss him a lot in the next Congress. He has been a fearless advocate for real reform of our health care delivery system. I would just like to mention before we get into the price, people need to understand and they do not have to take our word for it and I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg), for bringing up this whole issue about, let us at least deal with the facts, and everything I am going to say today I do not want people to take my word for it. The first thing I am going to say is anyone who believes that we ought to make the Health Care Financing Administration even bigger and stronger, just pick up the phone and call your local nursing home, call a registered nurse who happens to work in that nursing home.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Call anybody; call your doctor.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Call anybody who is involved with hospital administration. Just go ahead and ask them do you think it is a good idea to make the Health Care Financing Administration even bigger and stronger?

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Now, you might want to hold the phone back aways because you are going to get an earful of how the cow ate the cabbage. I mean, the people who deal with this powerful bureaucracy today will say the last thing they want to do is make it even more powerful. The other thing I want to say about this, and again do not take my word for it, do a little research, I think the best thing about the program that we are offering, and I am not going to say it is perfect, but there are three very important principles about our program that everyone needs to understand. First of all, it is going to be available to all. Secondly, it is going to be affordable for all. But, third, and I think the most important ingredient, is that it is going to be voluntary. Now, I am very fortunate. My parents are both on Medicare and because of the company that my dad worked for and the union contract that they had, he qualifies for a medical benefit now. So in many respects, they are in great shape. But if you ask the people who currently have coverage like that do you want to give it up for a program that is run by the Federal bureaucracy, the answer from most of those people is no. They like the program that they have today, and under the Clinton-Gore proposal they would lose the ability to choose the program that they currently have. I do want to talk about price, because many of us have been having a lot of town hall meetings over the last several years. I was first alerted to this problem a couple of years ago at a town hall meeting in Faribault, Minnesota. Some of the seniors stood up and they started talking about the differences between what they pay for drugs here in the United States as opposed to what people can buy those same drugs for, whether it is Canada or Mexico or Europe. I sometimes feel like that little boy who came in and asked his mother a question and his mother was kind of busy and she said, go ask your dad, and the little boy said well, I did not want to know that much about it. I feel a little bit like that little boy because the more I learn about this, sometimes I just say to myself I did not want to know that much about it. Let me just show this chart. Everywhere I have gone, and we have taken this to county fairs and town hall meetings, and the people who have seen this bear out these facts. Now, interesting, this chart now is about a year and a half old, and this is not just Canada or Mexico. This is about Europe. Again, I will come back to my father, 83 years old, he takes a drug called Coumadin. Now, he has prescription drug coverage. He does not pay full retail, but the truth of the matter is the average price for that Coumadin, it is a very commonly prescribed blood thinner, the average price about a year and a half ago in the United States for a 30-day supply of Coumadin was $30.25. That same drug, made in the same plant under the same FDA approval, was selling in Switzerland for $2.85. Now, one sweet lady at one of my town hall meetings came up to me and she said, if you think drugs are expensive today, just wait until the government provides for them free. And we need to think about that, because the answer to our problem, and let us go back to the big problem, and I think this was alluded to, the big problem is affordability. For an awful lot of seniors, if they could buy Prilosec, for example, instead at the average price in the United States which I now understand has gone up dramatically from this $109 figure for a 30- day supply, the average price in Europe at the time this chart was put together was about $39, I am told that even today you can buy it in Mexico, again the same drug made by the same company, for less than $20. Now, if seniors had access to some of these world market prices, it would go a long ways to solving this problem because seniors who are taking two or three prescriptions they might be able to afford easily $30 or $40 per month, but when that same prescription, that same drug, sells in the United States for say $200, as a matter of fact we had a gentleman at one of my town hall meetings in Winona, he came up to this chart, he pointed at two drugs and it added up to $149; and he said if I could buy those drugs at European prices, and he said that was about what I pay, but he said if I could buy them in Europe it is less than $50. Now, he said, $150 really stretches my retirement and Social Security budget. But $50 I could probably afford that a whole lot more. The real issue, though, that we need to talk about is what do we need to do to bring down prescription drug prices to a world market level. The answer, I want to make it clear, I do not support price controls, and it is honest to say some countries in Europe and the Canadians and the other countries do employ various forms of price controls. Mr. Speaker, I have wrestled with this question. In some respects, some people say if you go to an open market system and you allow people, particularly our local pharmacists to buy from other countries, are you not just importing price controls? I have to admit, to some degree, that is correct. But we also have to step back and say, wait a second. These are the same drugs. We are the world's best customers. We should not be required to pay the world's highest prices.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I think it will only make matters worse. If we were to pursue the Clinton-Gore formula, I think long term, it would drive the price of drugs even higher, even though they are trying to impose a modified form of price controls. I think the gentleman's question is a good one. We have been aware of this for several years now, that there are huge differences between Canada and Mexico, Europe, Japan, and what we pay in the United States. Now, I want to come back to something that the good doctor said. He said, we subsidize the pharmaceutical industry in several ways. One, through what we do with the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. We spend about $18 billion a year in basic research, much of which ultimately benefits the pharmaceutical industry. We also subsidize them through the price that we pay for those drugs. But there is a very important component that we sometimes forget. We also subsidize basic research through the pharmaceutical industries with a very generous research and development tax credit. So they are really getting subsidies three different ways from the American consumers. Mr. Speaker, I am not here to beat up on the pharmaceutical industry. They have provided us with miracle drugs. We in the United States and people around the world live better and longer because of the pharmaceutical industry.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. We will have taken four huge pharmaceutical companies, and now we will have one. The net result is they will have greater control over markets and products, and we will see even higher prices. They have made a bad situation worse. Mr. Speaker, let me just talk about these letters. This is a threatening letter. They have sent literally thousands, I have heard estimates as high as 300,000 of these letters have gone to seniors who are threatening them through their own FDA because they tried to save a few bucks by going to Canada or Mexico or Europe to buy prescription drugs.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Madam Speaker, how much is enough? The buzz in Washington is that the President is spoiling for one last fight with Congress over the budget. In fact, White House aides have practically encouraged suspicion that they would like a government shutdown to embarrass Republicans and boost Democratic prospects in the upcoming elections. Rumors of a government shutdown are greatly exaggerated. Congressional leaders are working in good faith to ensure principled compromise with the President on a budget that serves the national interest. Under our proposal, over $600 billion of publicly held debt would be paid down by the end of next year. It would be eliminated by the year 2013. Of course, reduced debt means lower interest rates on credit cards and home mortgages for millions of American families. The GOP debt reduction plan would also save an average of $4,064 for every American household in lower interest rates over the next 10 years. Since early last year, Congress has made its spending priorities very clear. As a member of the House Committee on the Budget, I helped craft a budget for next year in which Federal spending would grow at a rate slower than the average family budget. This budget passed the House and Senate. It serves as the blueprint for congressional spending bills this year. The President, on the other hand, will not say just how many billions of dollars he wants to spend. He submitted one plan in January, which was soundly rejected even by members of his own party. Speaking for congressional Democrats during the debate on the President's proposal earlier this year, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley), a Democratic, confessed on the House floor, and I quote, ``We did not propose the President's budget. We do not want any part of the President's budget,'' closed quote. Indeed. The House Democrats offered four substitute budget plans this year. Not one of them was the President's budget plan. It never even got a vote. Since that time, the President's spending plans have been a moving target. He is currently asking for between $20 billion and $30 billion more than he asked for in January, though he cannot say how much or exactly what he needs it for. If we cannot move forward on lowering and simplifying taxes, let us at least not go backwards on spending. A balanced budget with the surplus devoted largely to paying down debt would make perfect sense under these circumstances. Last week, in an effort to reach agreement on total spending, congressional leaders went to the White House to propose reserving 90 percent of next year's surplus for reducing the national debt. This compromise would provide some limited room for additional spending, while paying down billions more dollars of the Federal debt and keeping a lid on Federal spending. This should have been an attractive idea to the President. He claimed in the last few weeks that fidelity to the national debt caused him to veto the bills eliminating the marriage tax penalty and the death tax which Congress sent to the White House. But, the President seems decidedly cool toward the 90 percent debt reduction plan. Quote: ``Whether we can do it,'' that is, use 90 percent of the surplus to pay down debt ``depends on what the various spending commitments are,'' the President said earlier to the New York Times. So let us be clear. When presented with a choice of more spending or paying down the national debt, the President chose more spending. Ultimately, the budget debate comes down to a very simple question: how much is enough? I believe that $1.68 trillion should be more than enough to fund the legitimate needs of the Federal Government. Unfortunately, it is still not clear how much more the President thinks is necessary. Congress is committed to working in good faith with the President to reach a reasonable budget compromise. The question is, is he?

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, today the House is taking up a bill which would ensure that 90 percent of next year's budget surplus goes to paying down debt. With this bill, over $600 billion of publicly held debt would be paid down by the end of next year. It would be entirely eliminated by 2013. This means lower interest rates on credit cards and home mortgages for millions of Americans. I can't think of a better gift for our children. Unfortunately, this debt reduction measure has been attached to H.R. 1102, the Retirement Security Act. In my district, constituents have voiced concern over certain pension provisions included in this bill. Some recent pension conversions have been a grave injustice to American workers, especially mid-career and older employees who have planned for retirement based on the benefits built into their original pension plans. While H.R. 1102 provides some much-needed disclosure requirements, we need to be tougher on those companies who have taken advantage of pension conversions to fatten their bottom lines. I will continue to fight for those tougher provisions. When H.R. 1102 was being considered, I fought to ensure that all vested employees have the choice to remain in their current defined benefit plans. I brought an amendment to the Rules Committee which would have done just that. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to bring it to the House floor for consideration. In the end, I cast a protest vote against H.R. 1102 because it lacked this important provision. Today, there is no opportunity to amend this bill. I wish that these pension reform provisions had not been attached to debt relief, but it has. The importance of this bill in locking in debt reduction and increasing the ability of Americans to save for their own retirement will carry the day for most Members of this House. I will support this bill because it is critical that we offer our children a debt-free future.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I must say to my friend from Ohio (Mr. Portman), this is not about more computers. It is not about more people. It is about the IRS doing its job. I have here the dictionary definition of vested, and it says, law, settled, fixed or absolute, being without contingency, as in a vested right. What this is about, ladies and gentlemen, is forcing the IRS to finally offer us a ruling on whether or not the conversion of some of these pensions violate the age discrimination laws that we already have on the books. That does not require a new computer. That does not require more staff. It simply requires that they do what we expect them to do, and that is interpret the law the way I think most of us would say. I would say to all of my friends on either side of the aisle, could we imagine what would happen if we started tinkering with Federal employees with their vested pension rights? I might to say to some of my friends in the military, what would happen here in this very Chamber if we began to tinker with the vested rights for some of our people who serve us in the Armed Services. But that is happening right now in violation, in my opinion, of age discrimination laws, and this IRS and this administration has refused to do anything about it. This is a simple amendment. It is supported by the AARP, and, frankly, it will be supported by millions of Americans. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this amendment.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Let me clarify that. It is actually in Europe. Those are all European prices. Now the price in Canada, I believe, is about half what it is in the United States. The point is, it is even cheaper in Europe. Now, Synthroid is a drug that my wife takes because she has a goiter, an enlargement of her goiter, and many Americans have to take that drug. As long as she takes her drug, she has no medical complications because of that. So it is a wonderful drug, and we are certainly appreciative of that drug and that it is available. We can afford the $13.85 or whatever the price is here in the United States. That does not really break us, but it does begin to bother when it has to be taken all the time. Literally, she has to take that drug probably for the rest of her life. When one looks at the differences between what the Europeans pay for exactly the same drug, made in exactly the same plant, under exactly the same FDA approval, one begins to ask the question, why is it the world's best customers, the Americans, pay the world's highest prices?

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank the gentleman for allowing us to talk about this tonight. Actually, it all started several years ago at a meeting with some senior citizens at one of my townhall meetings, and they started talking about the differences between what prescription drugs sold for in the United States compared to what they sell for in Canada, in Mexico, in other countries in the world. So I began to do some research and began to do some work, and I came to the realization that they were in fact telling the truth; that there was a huge difference. What the gentleman has next to him there is a chart based on some information that we got from the Life Extension Foundation. These actually compare some of the prices of drugs between what the average price is in the United States. As a matter of fact, I might say that those prices on that chart are probably about a year old now. They are actually probably worse today in terms of the actual prices, but I want to pick out a couple of them there that are important to my family. The first one is Synthroid.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, it is an incredible tragedy in America today that the IRS knows more about one's personal finances many times than one's spouse. Which leads me to the next point. I hope we have made some progress in terms of simplifying this Tax Code. But it is very small progress. I would hope that in the next Congress, with perhaps a different leadership at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, we can get very serious about simplifying and making this Tax Code much fairer. There are several things we could do. But it really is amazing that Americans even allow this system to survive. When we think about what Americans did back at the beginning of this country, we started throwing tea in Boston harbor because the king wanted to put a penny per pound tax on tea. I mean that outraged the American people. Today, we allow an IRS to continue to look into every nook and cranny of our personal lives, and if we make a mistake, even to the tune of $1, it puts a tremendous burden on the American people, and it is simply wrong.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, talking about coupons, sometimes we need to be reminded of this here in Washington, that every Sunday, families sit around their coffee tables and their kitchen tables and they clip over 80 million coupons out of the Sunday paper, worth an average of 53 cents, and that is how they balance their budgets every single week. They watch their pennies. Now, we still have an awful lot of waste in the Federal Government. I will not be one to say that we do not have waste. But we have much more accountability, and I think we have less waste today than we have had in the last 10 years.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Somewhere in there.