Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. And if the gentleman will yield briefly, I just have to say that I do believe this will be the first time that I have ever been joined on a Special Order by my colleague from Vermont. So welcome.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Fifty-two percent. One of my pharmacists called me this morning, and he is outraged because he opens his morning newspaper, and he is seeing this ad and says, how do I compete? And I said, I want you to do a press conference with me next week. On Monday morning we are going to do this, and we are going to talk about that and expose the dirty little secret. This is not about drug safety. This is not about abortion. This is about the American taxpayers being gouged by greedy drug companies which I think was the headline in Illinois.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, Lipitor, save 43 percent. The average U.S. cost is $288. Our price is $165. Neurotonin, you have got all these down, but average U.S. cost $130. Our price $78.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will yield, Mr. Speaker, I think this is a very, very critical point. We are fighting in a world economy for every job. Every American worker faces not only competition, but in Michigan we face competition from Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Ohio, each and every day. And each and every day they fight competition from Canada, from Europe, and the Far East. Now, not that long ago we had a plant close in my hometown and move to Canada. One of the reasons they moved was due to the ridiculous sugar subsidy we have here that inflated the price of sugar in the U.S. The other reason was that the cost of labor, which includes the cost of health care and other benefits, was higher in the United States. And so not only is it that health care costs more here, it is because the workers here were covering their own health care and paying a portion of the health care costs for the very people that ended up putting them out of a job. We are subsidizing other companies to compete against U.S. manufacturers and U.S. workers. We cannot lose that point through this debate. It is absolutely critical that the American people need to recognize that when we are paying triple or four times the prescription drug prices in the U.S. versus what they are paying in other countries, it is the U.S. worker who is subsidizing foreign workers who are trying to take their job each and every day. That is why this is absolutely so critical. The gentleman and I have been here for a period of time, and we are always talking about free trade. Let us have free trade. Because we say, hey, competition works. But when it comes to this area where it is so clear that competition would work, because we have this discrepancy between Detroit and Windsor, where all we have is a river with a bridge over it and a tunnel underneath it, and you have to go a couple of miles and you can save 70, 60, 50 percent, yet we will not let them do it, that tells use that there is something wrong.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. So much of the debate has been about ensuring that seniors have access to health care, and that is important, that they have access to affordable health care. But what has been lost in the debate, and my colleague from Illinois brought this up briefly before he left, was that small businesses and others are struggling with the cost of health care. When a small business is expected to pay these kinds of prices that are double or triple what would be paid in Canada, what happens is, and it is not too difficult to figure out, the health care cost for a small business in Canada that is paying $33 for a prescription and a company in Michigan that is paying $100 for that exact same prescription, and prescriptions are becoming a much greater percentage of the total cost of health care, well, naturally, the insurance costs are going to be higher for that company in the U.S. than what they are in Canada. In the manufacturing sector today, companies are competing on the basis of pennies. If I can make this widget for a few cents less in Canada or in Europe versus the U.S., guess what, I am moving. That is how competitive the market is. Markets work. Sources of supply shift. And so, in effect, not only are we subsidizing the health care costs in Canada and in Europe for the seniors, our businesses and our workers carry this additional burden of increased health care costs. Our companies and our workers in America are subsidizing the very workers that they have to compete with in Canada and in Europe based on health care. Our workers not only have to be productive enough to cover the cost of their own health care, but they also are picking up a part of the health care cost of the very people that are trying to put them out of work each and every day in Canada, in Europe, and, as my colleague likes to refer to them, the starving Swiss. Those are the folks our people are competing against each and every day, and they are now being asked to pick up part of the burden for their health care costs. It is absolutely outrageous. Manufacturing is under assault in the U.S. Talk to a small businessperson today and the first thing they will bring up is the competitive nature of the market that they are in. There is no safe market any more. It is not like we found our niche; we are going to have a good year. Competition is tough each and every day, and they have to go out and fight to get a customer and to keep a customer. The second thing they will say is that the fastest rising cost in our business is health care. And a big component of it is that they are paying more so that Canadian companies and Canadian workers can get their health care cheaper. There is no reason why mom and dad, who go to work during the day and want to raise their family, that while they are working they are subsidizing the health care costs of competitors across and outside of our borders. This is one of the things that we need to deal with as we try to resurrect and strengthen manufacturing in the U.S. This is one small step, but it has to take place. We have to equalize those health care costs.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank my chairman for yielding me the time and congratulate him and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) on the success in passing an education agenda beginning more than a year ago and passing the President's agenda for No Child Left Behind, at least beginning that process, and now filling in the many different pieces that are necessary to make sure that every one of our children has the opportunity to leave school well qualified and well prepared to go for higher education for a professional career. The part of the bill that I think is most interesting here was what my colleague from Georgia just talked about. This authorizing grants for the creation of centers of excellence at highly qualified, minority-serving institutions, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-serving institutions. Over the last number of years, this Congress has taken an increasing interest in making sure that Historically Black Colleges and Hispanic- serving institutions get the resources they need so that they can more effectively serve those populations that have a tremendous amount of potential and that they have done such a good job at. We are reaching out to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and to Hispanic- serving institutions specifically in this bill to provide the resources, additional resources and grants, for them to build more effective teaching programs because we recognize that if we are going to address the vision that we have in mind of making sure that we leave no child left behind, that we have to develop more effective training- teacher programs specifically to reach into inner city schools; and that is what we are looking at here. We have talked with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to try to partner with them to develop programs to reach into the inner city, to use their unique resources. This fulfills the promise. This, along with the next bill, really gets us moving in the right direction.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. They come back and they give us their best judgment. I am impressed with the work of the chairman and the ranking member, how they have set a course that says we are going to go through this in a bipartisan way. We are going to take a look at the information and how the people processed the information. We are going to take a look at how we analyzed it and how decisions were made off that information, but we are going to do that in a bipartisan way and we are going to make sure that we do not take this down a road of pure partisan politics because in the 2\1/2\ years I have been on this committee, in a bipartisan way we have kept as our primary focus what is good for this country, recognizing the sensitive nature of the information that we deal with, recognizing the importance of us to work through very, very difficult issues, but to reach a consensus that enables us to move forward. That is exactly what the leadership of this committee has done, it is exactly the way that the members of the committee have guided their behavior, and it is what sets the behavior of our committee and the members of that committee apart from the amendment that is brought forward at this time. It is a partisan amendment, it has a potential to be used in many, many different ways, but primarily in my analysis it hurts the prospect of truly improving the process so that when we move forward in the future, we will have the intelligence, the capability and the right people in place to ensure that we make the best possible decisions.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to my colleague's amendment, and I put it in the context of the work that this committee has done and that we have accomplished and the vision that we outlined in the Intelligence Authorization Act for 2004. I serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence. As such, one of our jobs is to oversee some of the Nation's most sophisticated intelligence technologies. I have the opportunity and responsibility for critically reviewing new concepts of operation. I must ensure that currently fielded systems continue to be capable of meeting the needs that we have outlined. In this area, we are pursuing aggressive oversight. We have worked with the ranking member. We have been to the ranking member's district to meet with some of the contractors there; and I think it is a good example of how, in a bipartisan way, we have asked some tough questions of the intelligence community and of those groups that provide us with the materials and the equipment that we need. We have asked the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to provide us with a long- range plan and how all of these pieces will fit together and what a strategic plan may look like for the next 6 to 10 years. In the comments attached to the bill, we have outlined our disappointment that that plan has not come forward to the committee, so that we are moving forward with a little bit less information, perhaps, at this time, than what we would like to have had. But I do not think that the amendment that the gentleman is bringing up is one that is going to work in the best interest of what we are trying to get accomplished. On a weekly basis, this committee meets with the communities analytic cadre. We have met with them on a regular basis to review the intelligence that they prepared for us and they prepared for the President, the Vice President and Members of Congress; and that information is now available to all 435 Members of Congress so that they can take a look at what we were looking at and how we were shaping our judgments and where we were getting our information from. I think it is important for the American people to know that. That information is not secret. We are being very open with our colleagues because we recognize the importance of maintaining the credibility of the process, the individuals, and the analysis that goes into the intelligence that we have gathered. We take this job very, very seriously. One of the things that I am concerned about with this gentleman's amendment is that if we pursue this path, and in this case it identifies the Vice President but also implicates the folks at the different intelligence agencies as perhaps not keeping the best interest of the country in the forefront, then what we will end up with, and I agree with my colleague from Illinois that it is a cheap shot amendment because there is not a basis in fact to make these accusations against the Vice President or against the folks at the intelligence agency, but the result and danger is that what we are going to end up with is we are going to end up with a cadre of analysts that are going to be intimidated to such a point that they are going to go through the process, they are going to gather the intelligence, and they are going to be sitting there and saying, you know, I really cannot take the next step of providing some expert judgment, which I have been trained for, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years. I am not going to be able to share that expert judgment with the folks who recognize the source and the art of this work. Remember, the job we give these folks, in plain English, is we ask them to go out and steal other people's secrets. We ask them to do that in an imprecise way and to put the pieces together. And when they have a few pieces of the puzzle, we ask them to try to paint for us what the picture and what the final puzzle may look like. If we put a cloud over their heads and say every time you have a few of the pieces out there and you have painted a picture for us, for us to better understand the environment after the fact, if what you laid out beforehand does not perfectly match what we find out afterwards, you have failed. In reality, these are talented people. They are doing a very, very good job.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just reiterate my support to the comments of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis). It is absolutely true that society will be measured by how we take care of those who are least able to take care of themselves. This bill is a step in the right direction. I hope that we can continued working on these issues and other issues to make sure that we do not leave a single child behind, either at this stage in life through the education process or later on as they enter into higher education. Those are all the kinds of issues that we will either consider at the subcommittee or the full committee level, and hopefully we can continue to maintain this bipartisan support on these very, very critical issues, recognizing that we each come from different communities with different perspectives, different backgrounds and different needs, and that by bringing those perspectives to the committee, by bringing those perspectives to the House, we will reach the appropriate kind of legislation that will have the most impact and most beneficial impact across America. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) for the kind words and the tone of discussion and the debate today. It is not a debate. We have worked very positively in a bipartisan way to bring this legislation not only through the House but through a conference committee, and one of the instrumental leaders in making sure that that is a tone that we have on the committee and the tone for this piece of legislation is the chairman of the full committee. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and express our appreciation and thanks for having the opportunity to move this bill.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter), vice chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 276, I call up the conference report on the Senate bill (S. 342) to amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to make improvements to and reauthorize programs under that Act, and for other purposes.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that we are here today to discuss the conference agreement to S. 342, the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003, which reauthorizes and improves the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, CAPTA; the adoption opportunities program; the Abandoned Infants Act; and the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act. We began this process of reauthorizing CAPTA and FVPSA in the last Congress. The conference report before us today shows our ongoing bipartisan effort and our commitment to ensuring that programs aimed at the prevention of child abuse and neglect and family violence continue. The conference report before us continues to emphasize the prevention of child abuse and neglect before it occurs. It promotes partnerships between child protective services and private and community-based organizations, including education and health systems, to ensure that services and linkages are more effectively provided. It retains important language from the House bill to appropriately address a growing concern over parents being falsely accused of child abuse and neglect and the aggressiveness of social workers in their child abuse investigations. It retains language to increase public education opportunities that strengthen the public's understanding of the child protection system while teaching the appropriate manner for reporting suspected incidents of child maltreatment. It also retains language to foster cooperation between parents and child protective service workers by requiring caseworkers to inform parents of the allegations made against them, and improves the training opportunities for child protective services personnel regarding the extent and limits of their legal authority in order to protect the legal rights of parents and legal guardians. These are important additions to our Nation's child abuse laws that should not be overlooked. This conference report retains the House language requiring States to implement policies and procedures to address the needs of infants born and identified as being affected by illegal substance abuse or withdrawal symptoms resulting from prenatal drug exposure, including the requirement that health care providers involved in the delivery or care of these infants notify child protective services of the occurrence of such condition and develop a plan of safe care for such infants. In addition, this conference report maintains language expanding adoption opportunities and services for infants and young children who are disabled or born with life-threatening conditions, requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct a study on the annual number of infants and young children abandoned each year, and extends the authorization for the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all the conferees, both the House and the Senate, for their hard work and efforts in finalizing this conference report. I especially want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) for his continued support throughout this process and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) for his diligence in ensuring that infants born addicted to drugs receive necessary services. I appreciate the assistance of the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller); and the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa), in ensuring that we have reached this point here today. I, of course, also want to thank the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, Senator Gregg; the ranking member, Senator Kennedy; and Senator Dodd for their efforts in finalizing this bill. Most importantly, I also want to thank the staff. This conference report would not be before us today if it were not for the diligence and dedication of the staff who have spent many hours working through the differences in the two bills to ensure that we reached this final agreement. Mr. Speaker, again, I am very pleased with this conference report. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this bicameral, bipartisan effort to improve the prevention and treatment of child abuse and family violence. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It was probably funded with some government research dollars.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think you have just given me more information on Coumadin than I would like to have. I really did not want to know all of that. Let us just talk about the price.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for joining me talking about prescription drugs and talking about Prison Industries.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. There is no reason drugs cannot cross borders safely. We have food that crosses borders safely, and there is no reason we cannot develop a system to maintain the integrity of prescription drugs as they go from Canada into the U.S. and those types of things. We can put the measure in place to ensure the safety and security of our prescription drug supply.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I want to spend a few minutes talking about an issue that I have got a passion for because it impacts workers around the country, and then I am going to be joined by my colleague from Minnesota to talk about another issue that we feel passionate about because it affects those folks who want to buy prescription drugs. The first thing I want to do is I want to introduce my colleagues to a Federal program. Actually, I want to introduce my colleagues to a company in the United States of America, a company that is growing rapidly; and its automotive component sector last year grew by about 216 percent, and its office furniture segment grew by over 30 percent last year and grew in textiles, grew in a wide variety of different product categories that it produces. An outstanding company, creating jobs. You kind of say who is this company, who is this great company? We are having some economic tough times around the country. Who is this company that is growing, growing in a number of different market segments and what is its secret to being competitive and growing in a tough economy? What is it doing that maybe other U.S. companies ought to be taking a look at? The company that we are talking about tonight is called Federal Prison Industries. You say, excuse me, Federal Prison Industries, they are growing jobs? And the answer is, absolutely yes. Federal Prison Industries is one of these government monopolies. They enjoy an advantage which is called ``mandatory sourcing''; and it means that if the Federal Government is looking at buying a product, whether it is shirts for the military, whether it is office furniture for the Federal Aviation Administration, or whether it is automotive components for its fleet of cars, the Federal Government is required to buy these products from Federal Prison Industries regardless of the price, regardless of the quality, regardless of the delivery schedule; and this has enabled Federal Prison Industries, or UNICORP as it is called, to become one of the fastest-growing companies in America today. So as in certain parts of the country in my district or right outside of my district, unemployment has now reached 8 percent, the highest in 11 years, home to the largest office furniture manufacturing company in America. You wonder how the Federal Government can grow office furniture by double digits in the last 12 months while the industry itself over the last 30 months has probably declined by 30 to 40 percent. Let's see, if the Federal Prison Industries is growing by double digits, the private sector is declining by double digits on an annual basis, what is happening? What is happening is that Federal Prison Industries is going in and taking some significant business and using their preferred or mandatory source capability, is putting people in the private sector, we call them taxpayers, we call them workers, putting them out of jobs. Just recently, Federal Prison Industries took this form of competition that they have to a new height. What happened was there was a project, and this was the Federal Aviation Administration requiring $6 million, roughly $6 million of new office furniture for their facilities. It is kind of like, yes, that is a good sized project that any one of a number of private sector companies would be thrilled to get. It is like, yes, we are going to go out and bid for that project. So Federal Aviation Administration put this project out to bid and a number of companies went through the design process, the specification process, the pricing process and they put in a bid. The Federal Aviation Administration opened the bids and company A won the bid. The company was excited, like yes, we need this business, we have laid off workers with up to 25 years of seniority, up to 28 years of seniority, $6 million may provide the opportunity, it is not going to solve their problem, but it may provide the opportunity to put some of these people back to work. Are these people back to work? No, because as Federal Prison Industries came into the process, this is very unique. This company had won the bid, ready to go to work and at the last minute Federal Prison Industries walks in and says no, no, no, excuse me, you do not understand the bidding process when you are doing business with the Federal Government. They said first round of bidding is you guys out in the private sector; the second round of bidding is we get to come in as Federal Prison Industries and take a look at the winning bid, and then we have a second round of bidding. Of course the second round of bidding is one company, Federal Prison Industries. And in this case Federal Prison Industries came in and literally copied the winning bid to the penny. So they said we matched the bid price of the private sector, we are taking this business. And so now some folks in west Michigan who were hoping to go back to work are not going to have the opportunity to go back to work, but we are going to be creating jobs for folks in Federal prisons. It is not only the office furniture industry. Federal Prison Industries are huge in textiles. They put a number of textile companies out of business. Just last fall, Hathaway Shirts in New England closed. One of the reasons was one of the dress shirt contracts put out by the Air Force went not to Hathaway Shirts, went to Federal Prison Industries. This time, though, it was not that a few workers would be laid off, the company shut its doors and Hathaway Shirts, at least being made in that plant, are no longer made in the United States. Hathaway Shirts tried to compete. Federal Prison Industries was the organization that put the last nail in the coffin that resulted in the factory closing and these people being put out of work. It is absolutely outrageous what is going on and what is going on with this Department of Justice, that this Department of Justice believes that the best way to rehabilitate Federal prisoners is by putting taxpayers out of work, and that the best way to compete and create high-quality and high-paying jobs in America today is to create new jobs for prisoners. And they are talking about building 11 new plants, new jobs for prisoners that are high-quality, high-paying jobs that pay in the neighborhood of 23 cents to $1.15 an hour. Of course they pay no benefits. They pay no taxes. Think about it. They pay absolutely no local taxes, so that is an advantage. They pay no State taxes, no sales taxes or Federal taxes. They do not pay any taxes. They put taxpayers out of work. It is a huge, huge problem. They are doing this in a whole series of different industries. Look at the kinds of things that they make. Clothing and textiles is a business group. Electronics is a business group. Graphics business group; fleet management; vehicular components business group; industrial products business group; office furniture business group; and recycling activities business group. They have declared war on American manufacturing, American manufacturing that is already under attack by low-cost producers in China and other parts of Asia, and it is very interesting. My colleagues come to the floor and they rail against Chinese prison labor, saying these people work in unsafe conditions. It is interesting. American prisoners, do they have the protection of OSHA? Absolutely not. So they are low paid, and work in unsafe conditions. They are government sponsored, just like our prisoners are government sponsored. So our manufacturers not only have to compete against low- cost manufacturing from overseas, they are also now in the process of having to fight their own government, their own Department of Justice. Like I said, this is an industry that this Department of Justice has said is going to be a growth industry for the Federal Government. They anticipate growing. And in office furniture alone, and this is an industry that has declined 30-40 percent, one would think that Federal Prison Industries would realize this is an industry that is facing some hard economic times, and that they might slack off in terms of the amount of business that they would take out of the Federal Government and let the private sector compete for more of this business. But when we look from 2002 to 2003, what has Federal Prison Industries' strategy been in office furniture? They are authorized to grow their business in office furniture by an additional 50 percent. Office furniture workers in America who are competing against Canada, China, Korea, Indonesia, now are also competing against their own Federal Government, and their own Federal Government is not even giving them the slightest of a break and saying we have got the opportunity, we are going to increase our volume by up to 50 percent. They are looking for the growth numbers. Federal Prison Industries, taxes; and this is from their annual report. As a wholly-owned corporation of the Federal Government, Federal Prison Industries is exempt from Federal and State income taxes, gross receipts taxes, and property taxes. That is not a bad way to run a business. We have a reform proposal in place. The interesting thing for the reform proposal, we are not asking for Federal Prison Industries to be eliminated, although some of my colleagues would say that they should not be competing for these jobs, and that is exactly what Congress said back in the 1930s when they created Federal Prison Industries. They said they should have minimal to no impact on free labor, they should not be competing with the private sector. But they do. All I am asking is let the workers in west Michigan, Minnesota, New England, and other States in the South, let them just compete for the opportunity to sell their products. Right now they cannot compete. What are the businesses that they are in? Clothing and textiles, $157 million; electronics, $116 million. They grew from $116 million to $132 million in electronics. Fleet management, automotive, which is an industry facing tough competition from overseas, and now they are facing it from their own government. Fleet management; in 2001 Federal Prison Industries grew their automotive component sales from $31 million in 2001 to $99 million in 2002. Thank you very much, Federal Prison Industries. I wonder how many private sector workers they put out of work when they grew their business by $68 million? Office furniture, they went from $174 million to $217 million. They are authorized for another expansion of up to 50 percent in 2004. Services, they grew from only $8 million, but they are on the right track as far as they are concerned. They are up to $12 million. Mr. Speaker, this is an area that needs congressional oversight. When American workers are under attack, I think it is time for this Congress to stand up and say we are going to stand up for American workers, we are going to stand up for American taxpayers. It is the right thing to do. And we are going to allow these folks to compete, to keep their jobs and compete against Chinese workers, to compete against Korean workers, and we are going to allow them to compete against American prison labor, labor that is paid 23 cents an hour to $1.15 an hour in tax-free facilities which have no OSHA safeguards. It is the right thing to do. We need a manufacturing base in the United States. And our reform bill does not say we are not going to have prisoners do nothing. We increase technical training. We increase the amount of work opportunities that we give to prisoners, but we say they should make things that will be used in the not-for-profit sectors. That is what Michigan does in its prisons. It does not compete against the private sector. We should take that kind of model and apply it to the Federal Government and Federal Prison Industries. It is time for this Congress to act. We are looking forward to the Committee on the Judiciary moving a reform bill that does exactly that, allows American workers to again compete for their jobs, compete for the jobs that enable them to provide health care and a living to their families. I walk around my district and I cringe every time when I run into a worker who says, I just got laid off; recognizing that as that person has gotten laid off, we have put people in our prisons to work for maybe the first time. But it is totally inappropriate for this government, for this Department of Justice to believe that its best strategy for dealing with inmates is to put them to work at the expense of American workers. Mr. Speaker, I welcome one of my colleagues who is here tonight and change the subject. This is an issue that my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), and I have a passion on because it addresses a real concern that we have, and again it is about competitiveness. I know my colleague is a firm believer in competitiveness, whether it is supplying products to the Federal Government or whether it is providing prescription drugs to our senior citizens or to other Americans. It is not just senior citizens. One of the things that we face in America today is the gentleman and I both live in border States. One of the things that is happening in border States on the north and the southern borders of the U.S. is that consumers are rather smart. What are they doing? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if my colleague will explain to me, many of these drugs are manufactured in the U.S. We are the largest market in the world for most of these prescription drugs. One would think in the largest market in the world, and when the drugs, many of them are made in the United States, we would not be paying a premium, we would be paying the lowest price. That is not the case?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We pay the highest prices. We do the development, the testing, we do all the market research and all of that here in the United States. We are the largest market. These drugs are made here, and we pay the highest prices.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. You would never want a good steak in Tokyo. It is too expensive.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.