Andy Harris

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey for taking a pause every year to let us review what happened 40 years ago and what's happened since. Because some 40 years ago, obviously the Supreme Court decided that it was no longer the State's prerogative to decide what laws could regulate abortion. We know some of the consequences of that: We know we have third trimester abortions; we have abortions for sex selection; we have abortions without the consent or even the notification of parents when minors are involved. That's the path we've gone down. But as the majority says, much has changed in 40 years and deserves reevaluation. I'm an obstetric anesthesiologist. I've spent 25 years in the labor and delivery suite always wondering about the hypocrisy of being in a labor and delivery suite doing everything we could to save a 24-week baby, while across the corridor, 24-week babies were dismembered under what Roe v. Wade allowed under the law of the land. The majority leader is right: science has changed tremendously. Why, 40 years ago, we didn't have the Human Genome Project. We didn't realize the richness and diversity of the human genome, which only strengthened the notion that each and every human being is absolutely unique from the moment of conception. And that's in every embryology textbook you can look into. Every human being is unique from the moment of conception. And now, as the majority leader said, we have 3-D and 4- D ultrasound. We can see these human beings that are not blobs of tissue; they are human beings. So maybe we need to revisit what Roe v. Wade said. Let me tell you a story that really makes you think about revisiting this because, as you know, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund organizations whose real sole purpose is to end life through abortion and very little to help the pregnancy centers that the majority leader spoke of. But in a pregnancy center north about 7 years ago--it's a pregnancy center in Baltimore--a woman speaking Spanish called one afternoon. She was on political asylum in the United States from El Salvador. She was single, had two children already, and was pregnant with a third. She called the pregnancy center, actually, to get a referral for an abortion. That day, by coincidence, maybe the grace of God, a counselor was there who spoke Spanish and spoke to that woman. That woman really wanted to keep her child; but as many women facing abortion, she was in a period of crisis. She needed help, not the help that a Planned Parenthood would offer, but the help that this pregnancy center offered, by helping her through her pregnancy, giving her the support she needed, the money she needed, and the things she needed to have that child. Now, I know that story because that Spanish-speaking counselor was my wife. Seven-year-old Jennifer comes over to our house now. I look into her eyes, and I wonder if anyone is ever going to tell her the real story of what almost happened and how is someone going to look in her eyes and tell Jennifer that she was better off because of Roe v. Wade.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania who spoke just a few minutes ago put his finger right on the problem. We have a $16.4 trillion debt--$50,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country; $50,000 for every baby born today. Before that baby draws his or her first breath, it's greeted with a $50,000 bill, their part of the U.S. debt. Mr. Speaker, that's reckless. But there's something even more reckless. The only way to solve these problems is with a budget--every house knows it, every business knows it, almost every government knows it, but not the U.S. Senate, which hasn't passed a budget for 4 years. Tomorrow, the House will take up H.R. 325. This bill will force the U.S. Senate to finally pass a budget in order to increase our debt ceiling. The time is now. The Senate has to act.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, on October 10, 2012, America's very good friends, The Republic of China commonly known as Taiwan), will celebrate their 101st anniversary. Both the United States and Taiwan share the fact that they are relatively new countries when compared to the rest of the world. Taiwan is 101 years old and the United States just celebrated its 236th birthday; both are much younger than those countries with roots dating back to some of the ancient civilizations. But in the past 100 years, America has changed so much and, arguably, Taiwan has changed even more. In the last 16 years alone, Taiwan has become a full blown democracy with a President and Legislature being directly elected by its citizens. In 1996, Taiwan had their first Presidential election and during that time they have had three peaceful transfers of power from one party to another. The people of Southeast Asia are fortunate to have a beacon of democracy like Taiwan to look up to, and we Americans are fortunate to call them friends and allies. Under President Ma's leadership, I am confident that Taiwan will continue to thrive and our relationship will prosper.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, what's there to hide? As I said, if a regulation is justified, why should the government hide data from the public in their justification of a regulation? Mr. Chairman, I've done scientific studies. I've been the peer reviewer on scientific studies. If I have a question about data, I ask for it and I get it and I review it myself. This is the same access the public should have. Nobody wants dirty air, nobody wants dirty water; but if we're going to pass job-killing regulations, we better be sure that that is sound science it's based on. That's what this amendment does, and I urge support. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, the sad fact is that the Environmental Protection Agency bases its regulations on data and modeling that is often withheld from the public. My amendment simply requires that the Environmental Protection Agency make available to the public the data that regulations are based on and to follow its own guidelines and submit regulatory impact analyses to peer review. It's my hope that transparency, sound science and peer review are principles that everyone can support. For example, it is frequently claimed that the Clean Water Act generates benefits that outweigh costs by a 30-1 ratio, but almost 90 percent of these claimed benefits are based on two studies whose underlying data has never been made public. I can verify this firsthand because for the last year I've asked the administration at committee hearings and on the record for this information and have been repeatedly rebuffed. This is not an acceptable way to run a regulatory agency that impacts our country's health, economy, unemployment--as we heard from the gentleman from Michigan--and ability to compete internationally. Both President Obama's senior science adviser and the head of EPA's independent science advisory board agreed with me at recent hearings that the scientific data used by the government to justify its regulatory actions should be made publicly available. EPA also states in its own Peer Review Handbook that ``one important way to ensure decisions are based on defensible science is to have an open and transparent peer review process.'' Unfortunately, when EPA conducts a cost-benefit analysis for these major Clean Air Act rules, they are not subjected to peer review. Mr. Chairman, we live in a world where people increasingly expect direct access to information. Government regulations should be able to withstand public scrutiny. If the benefits outweigh the costs, then prove it; and if you believe that a government regulation is justified, then you should have nothing to hide. I respectfully request support for my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HARRIS. On those lists of questions of those $716 billion that's basically going to be transferred from the Medicare program to pay for the President's new health care reform bill, that doesn't even include the over $300 billion to cuts in physician and provider payments over the next 10 years under the payment form; is that correct?

Mr. HARRIS. So it's in addition to that $700 billion. There's another $300 billion that's going to get cut from payments to providers. Here's the problem. You know, I think the gentleman from Michigan points it out. Medicare is going broke, and it's going broke not only because $700 billion was taken out of it to pay for the President's Affordable Care Act, but another $300 billion is going to be taken out in the physician payment formula. Now, the CMS actuaries, and that's the department that runs Medicare and Medicaid, actually projects that the Medicare program could be bankrupt as soon as 2016. Four years from now, the Medicare program could be bankrupt. Now, I'm glad that as part of November's elections we're going to discuss the future of health care for our seniors, because it is time to say that the emperor has no clothes. Our seniors know it. They know that when, God forbid, their physician retires, and they go and try to find another physician, and they're on Medicare, they already know how hard it is to find a physician who can accept them because the reimbursements are already so low. The payments to physicians are so low already, it's hard to find that primary care doctor. It's hard to find that specialist who needs to take care of you, whether it's for your blood pressure or your diabetes or whatever problem you have; and the problem is only going to get worse. Now, the President in his budget doesn't deal with it at all. He pretends that Medicare will go on forever and ever just the way it is now. That's just not true. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid say it could go broke in as little as 4 years. The Medicare actuaries give it the longest lifetime, 10 more years. Well, Mr. Speaker, if you're 55 now, that means by the time you're 65, it's broke. If you're 61, according to the Centers for Medicare, it's broke by the time you reach age 65. And if you're on it now and you're 70, it could be broke by the time you're 74. So we have to stop pretending that the Medicare program is going to work forever the way it is now. It won't, because the President took $700 billion from it to pay for the Affordable Care Act. There is a scheduled cut to physician payments and to provider payments of over $300 billion over the next 10 years, and our seniors are already having problems finding those physicians. But in the Medicare costs, if we don't do anything right now, we don't deal with the program and adjust it for people who are younger-- and I have a son who is 27 years old. He is an accountant. He knows numbers, and he knows them backwards and forwards and up and down, better at math than I ever was. He's convinced he will never see a Medicare program because he's seen the books. Medicare payments are projected to grow substantially from approximately 3.5 percent of our economy to 5.5 percent of our economy by 2035, and the President has no plan to pay for that growth. We know because of the maturing and retiring of the baby boom generation that this is coming. This is predictable. We can project this. We know that if we don't change the Medicare program to preserve it for future generations and to keep it for the current generation of Medicare recipients, it goes broke. As I mentioned, the physician payment formula in Medicare needs to be fixed or, starting January 1, payments to physicians and providers may go down 30 percent. Now, Mr. Speaker, if our seniors think it's hard to find someone to take care of them now on Medicare, what do they think it's going to be like when the government says to those physicians, we're going to pay you 30 percent less starting January 1, and this is all scheduled to happen. The President has no plan. The President suggested no ideas to Congress on how to deal with that. What we need is leadership on health care, and we're not getting it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Already access is an issue because back in 2008, 12 percent of physicians have said they have to stop seeing Medicare patients. We know now that a much larger number limit the number of Medicare patients they care for. As the gentleman from Michigan knows, we didn't go to medical school to not take care of patients. We didn't go to medical school to have our staff answer a senior calling to say, I'm sorry, but we can't afford to take care of you. But that's exactly the position that the President's plan for Medicare is putting physicians and patients in right now. That's the sad fact. This emperor has no clothes. The Medicare program is on a path to bankruptcy, and there is no plan from the White House to solve that problem. It merely kicks the can down the road. We have heard a lot in the last few days and few weeks about Simpson- Bowles coming to the rescue. That's going to solve our fiscal problems; if we just adopt the Simpson-Bowles Commission, all our fiscal problems go away. Mr. Speaker, as you probably know, Simpson-Bowles decided not to do anything about Social Security and Medicare. Now, Social Security, it turns out, is pretty solvent. It's going to be there for at least another 20 years, giving us a fair amount of time to solve the problem for future generations. But, again, the Centers for Medicare says we may only have 4 years to solve the Medicare problem before it goes bankrupt. If our seniors right now think they have problems now getting their health care and finding those primary care doctors and those specialists to take care of them, imagine when the program goes bankrupt. Now, we have a choice. We can deal with it, or we can kick the can down the road. I'm proud of the Vice Presidential candidate, one of our colleagues, Mr. Ryan, who has decided that the time to kick the can down the road is over. It's time to tell our seniors and Americans what they suspect. We've been making promises we have no way of keeping. We have been spending money we don't have. And it has to stop. And as the gentleman from Michigan knows, we have some principles in our plan to deal with the bankruptcy of Medicare because, Mr. Speaker, it's not a question of if, it's only a question of when. So there are a couple of principles. The first principle is: we don't change it for anyone over age 55. If you're in retirement or you're near retirement, you get to keep the very same program right now. But we deal with the fact that physician and provider pay would be cut January 1. We solve that problem. We say you can't do that. That will limit access. So we deal with that issue. We say you have to stop taking $700 billion from the program to transfer it to pay for the new President's health care reform; to cover Americans who don't have insurance now by taking it from Medicare patients who do have insurance. So the first principle, no one over age 55 is affected. The second principle is: for those under age 55, Mr. Speaker, if they're listening now, the program is going to be bankrupt when you reach age 65 if we don't do something. We're going to make some commonsense adjustments. We're going to say that you should have access to the same kind of care Congressmen and -women have--a broad range of health care plans you can choose from with the guarantee that for at least two of those plans you will have 100 percent coverage. We all turn on the TV. We hear the ads: Mr. Ryan's plan will cost $120,000 for every senior, or $200,000 in more costs. Here's the problem. People who made the ads didn't read the bill. The bill spells it out quite clearly. Our plan is that seniors--again, people age 55, when they reach age 65--will have a choice of plans just like we have here in Congress. The only difference is we have to pay a part of all our plans. They don't pay for the two lowest-priced plans. If they choose a plan with more options, they may pay something. But they will end up paying even less than they do now. That's our solution. Let market forces come in and control the cost of health care, control that growth in cost, and allow real coverage for our seniors, for our people age 55, when they reach age 65, and preserve it for future generations so that my son, the accountant, can look at that plan and say, You know what? This balances. You don't have to borrow money from the Chinese to pay for this plan. We don't have to raise taxes to pay for this plan. We actually let market forces work, providing the same coverage that people in Congress get. And it will work. So, Mr. Speaker, I'm very glad that we have the opportunity to talk about this tonight. I'm very glad that this November and in the months leading up to it we'll have an honest, frank discussion with the American people about the future of health care, the future of health care for our seniors, preserving it, and the future of health care for everyone else under the President's affordable care scheme. Because we know there are problems with it. Americans understand that when you put the government in charge of something so vital and personal as health care, real problems can occur. And as the gentleman from Michigan has pointed out, we know those problems. They're predictable problems. A majority of Americans have figured it out. Poll after poll after poll says we should deal with the President's Health Care Reform Act by repealing it and replacing it, keeping elements that are good. Every American either has a preexisting condition or will have one in their lifetime. Every American. So our plan will have to deal with it. And it does deal with it. And for those people who want to have their children on their policies up until age 25, our plan can deal with it-- and does deal with it. But we certainly don't need the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which the gentleman from Michigan is going to discuss, that is going to run health care for Medicare. We certainly don't need the Secretary of Health and Human Services prescribe what plans are going to cover what for every single American. Whether you want it or not, you're paying for it in your plan. Because we know that's only going to drive up the cost. I'm glad that we're going to have that discussion with the American people because, Mr. Speaker, every American's health care is so important to them and their family. They deserve this discussion. They deserve the chance to go to the ballot box this November and make a choice about what their health care is going to look like in the future. And we're going to have a clear choice. It's going to be a government-run health care plan run by a bureaucrat where costs and access are controlled and rationed, or it's going to be one where the patient and their physician make the choice about their health care, with the government bureaucrat staying out of it, where they belong. I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, it is a shame that the Democrat controlled Senate voted today to adjourn for over a month, and they haven't even voted on a budget for 1,191 days. Mr. Speaker, this is a $3.5 trillion enterprise, and the Democrat- controlled Senate, led by Majority Leader Reid, voted to adjourn for over a month so that when they come back it will be 1,240 days since they haven't voted on a budget. Mr. Speaker, the House did what it had to do. It voted on a budget. It voted to extend the current tax rates to all citizens, and we are here ready to work. We ask the Senate to reconsider the decision, Mr. Speaker. That's what we ought to do. We ask them to come back in and work with us to finally pass a budget.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time to me. I will tell you the argument that this is unconstitutional just isn't true. I urge the Members on the other side of the aisle who oppose the measure to read Judge Teilborg's opinion, just having been released, where he goes very carefully and says this doesn't prohibit abortions after 20 weeks, it limits them, clearly within the purview of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent case law, where the Gonzalez case says, for instance: Government uses its voice and regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman. Now, the Flat Earth Society on the other side would have you believe that no medical advances have been made in pain and the perception of pain since Roe v. Wade has been issued. But, in fact, they have. About 15 years ago, a huge discussion about whether preterm infants at 23 to 25, 26 weeks, being cared for by the thousands in our neonatal intensive care units, perceive pain to the point where pain medicine would be required to be administered to those patients. Pain medicine, that if it weren't required would be dangerous, but the decision--this has been decided. These infants are being treated for pain. The opposition would hold up a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association from 2005, written by pro-abortion proponents, which suggested that until 30 weeks, there was no perception of pain. Mr. Speaker, that's been settled in hospitals around the country where 23- to 25-week fetuses are being treated. This bill sets that 20-week limit for two reasons. One is, as the judge says in his findings, everyone concedes that pain receptors are present at 20 weeks throughout the fetus. Mr. Speaker, God didn't put those there if they weren't there for a reason, and it is to perceive pain. Secondly, the risk to the mother increases exponentially as you get out of the first week of gestation, the risk of abortion to the mother. That's clear. That's demonstrated. That's epidemiology. That's not ideology; that's science. That's science clearly understood. Mr. Speaker, this bill is founded on very basic scientific principles that the fetus has pain receptors throughout their body at 20 weeks and that the risk to the mother increases after 20 weeks.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. The gentleman is correct. Every single program that we have, whether it's the elderly with health care, the elderly with Social Security, whether it's food stamps, whether it's unemployment insurance, whether it's to do the things this government has to do, like pay the interest on an ever-growing debt, whether it's Pell Grants, whether it's K-12 education, which your last slide showed, every single program that we have is threatened by this one single program, a program that the President's Affordable Care Act ballooned out of control.

Mr. HARRIS. If the gentleman from Louisiana will just leave that one up so the American public that is watching just understands because a picture says a thousand words. That picture is the growth of Medicaid for the next generation. My son is 12 now. When he reaches age 65, he'll be at the right-hand side of that graph. And although none of us like to think of it, we all remember when we were 12, we never thought we would retire, but here we are nearing retirement age. So it's not that far off in the future. If I read that graph correctly, our current entire budget, in 2010 dollars, is $3.5 trillion--our entire Federal budget, paying for everything. That graph indicates that by the time my child reaches retirement age, every penny of that budget would be taken up by Medicaid, every penny--not a single penny for Medicare; not a single penny left over for Social Security; not a single penny left over for interest on a debt that is now $16 trillion and growing; not a single penny left for defense; not a single penny left for Pell Grants; not a single penny left for anything.

Mr. HARRIS. I thank the gentleman from Texas. Again, we have on the floor with us now two obstetricians and an obstetric anesthesiologist. If women are ready for childbirth, we're ready on the floor of the House tonight. The gentleman makes a great point that in the end, having an insurance card doesn't guarantee access and having an insurance card doesn't guarantee affordable care. As we know, what the Affordable Care Act did is to again pretend that, really, economics don't exist, to pretend that the laws of mathematics don't count; that we can expand this program, as the gentleman pointed out, a program that was meant to be a safety net for the poor elderly, for women, for children, and we expanded it well beyond that to the point where, as we brought up earlier in the hour, if gone unchecked, it will bankrupt everything else in government. The time has come, as the gentleman has pointed out, for us to reconsider whether that Affordable Care Act was the right approach. We know that just today the Congressional Budget Office has rescored the President's Affordable Care Act and has said that, as a result of the Supreme Court decision--because one of the goals was to insure as many Americans as possible--that an additional 3 to 4 million individuals will not be insured as a result of the Supreme Court, because the States will make a rational decision that they can't afford to let their budgets go bankrupt through this Federal Government- mandated expansion that does nothing to control costs. It does nothing, really, to increase access, other than putting a card in someone's hand. And as the graph shows, that card doesn't help all the people who are in these pink bars. They're the ones with the Medicaid card currently, and their chance of seeing a specialist is somewhere between 17 percent and 57 percent because the government payment is so low and because these programs are so expensive and never adequately budgeted for, just as in the case of the Affordable Care Act. Now, we're joined this evening by my colleague from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), who is also an obstetrician, who has spent years taking care of patients and understands what it will take to fix the health care system in the United States. I'm very interested to hear your perspective, Dr. Gingrey, on the topic we're discussing tonight, Medicaid and its expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. HARRIS. If the gentleman would just yield for a very brief question. Do you think that's the kind of health care that the women of America deserve?

Mr. HARRIS. I thank my colleagues for their participation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. I thank the gentleman. I would love to bring the gentleman from Texas into the discussion, because women actually are specifically affected by the shortfalls in Medicaid because the reimbursement rates for women's health care is frequently so low that it's actually hard to find an obstetrician to take care of those patients. I know in Maryland this is a problem we had. In the First Congressional District on the eastern shore of Maryland for a while, before we did Medicaid payment reform, women who were pregnant in that part of the State had to drive 3 hours to find an obstetrician to take care of them because the reimbursements were so low. And we know the Affordable Care Act does nothing for medical liability. We also know, for instance, that we have a cesarean section rate that is 35 percent now, the result of medical liability. We have obstetricians who have left the practice later in their careers of obstetrics and gravitate toward just doing gynecology where they join frequently large group practices. So we've left the practice of obstetrics to be an impersonal practice with people who generally don't have as much experience as those who have left the practice. And because of the lack of liability reform, we have a cesarean section rate that has roughly doubled over my career in dealing with obstetrics and obstetric anesthesiology. I would like to hear the gentleman's comments on medical assistance and what it's doing for this country and for the women's health care in this Nation.

Mr. HARRIS. So what you're saying is that you had patients under TennCare who had insurance cards. You just couldn't find anyone to take care of them.

Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much to the gentlelady from Wyoming for bringing up that point about what Medicaid does to State governments and about what the potential is to State governments and all the other programs that they have to fund. I will tell you that, with regard to what happens, what we know is that access under the Medicaid program is already suffering, the access of patients. Again, passing the Affordable Care Act puts an insurance card--a Medicaid card--in the hands of probably 10 to 12 million Americans, but that doesn't guarantee access to health care. As a physician, I've taken care of Medicaid patients for almost 30 years, but increasingly what I'm finding is my colleagues who are facing decreased payment reimbursements by the governments that are under financial hardship now. Even under current conditions, as this chart will show, there are very few States in the Union that actually have extra money around to fund that Medicaid increase. This chart shows various specialties and how Medicaid patients have access to them. Under the current reimbursement, which of course will get nothing but worse for specialists under the new Affordable Care Act, among all specialists, 89 percent of patients with private insurance have access to all specialists and only 34 percent of medical assistance patients, or Medicaid patients. That's true whether it's orthopedics, psychiatry, asthma, neurology, endocrinology, ear, nose and throat, or dermatology. In all cases, access to a physician is restricted because, when a government controls the health care budget, the way it contains costs is by decreasing reimbursements to providers. Those are the facts. That's what happens. That's what's going to happen under Medicaid. We know, with the Independent Payment Advisory Board, that that's what's going to happen under Medicare. I yield to the physician from Tennessee.

Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I will yield to the gentlelady from Wyoming.

Mr. HARRIS. So what we have here is we have a third party looking at what's going on and saying the emperor has no clothes; that, in fact, if we continue the current policy with Medicaid--which, as the gentleman well knows, roughly doubles the number of people eligible for the safety net program under the Affordable Care Act--we will not only bankrupt the Medicaid program, future generations will no longer have the ability to be confident that Social Security will be there when they retire, that Medicare will be there when they retire. The ratings agencies, whether it's Moody's, Standard and Poor's, all the various rating agencies will look at us and say: you don't have the ability to pay the interest back on your debt. We know when that bill was passed, we know what happened. We know the cornhusker kickback. We know what went on--the buying and selling of votes at the expense of future generations and the ability of the Federal Government to keep their promises to future generations--the promises of Medicare, Medicaid, again, Pell Grants, K-12 education. The gentleman showed a slide that showed a 3 percent increase in the cost--an average of 3 percent in the States' budgets--the cost of Medicaid over the past only 3 years before the President's health care bill kicks in. Well, as the President may know, 3 percent doesn't sound like much, but in Maryland that's a $1 billion increase. That's an increase we can't afford. That's an increase that means that property or income taxes would have to go up, further strangling our economy. As the gentleman fully recognizes, this is why the President's policy with regard to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act is poorly thought out, is going to bankrupt the Nation, and really ought to be repealed and rethought.

Mr. HARRIS. You may or may not be aware of the study done early last year that showed that, actually, whether patients have private insurance or no insurance or Medicare or Medicaid, when you compare the outcomes, Medicaid patients have the worst outcomes. In fact, they are 93 percent more likely to die of their illnesses than patients with private insurance. They were more likely to die than even patients who had no insurance. I don't know. Is the gentleman aware of that finding?

Mr. HARRIS. The gentleman is absolutely right. What we have done is we have once again made promises to people we know we can't keep. We know because that graph--and I'll yield to the gentleman to answer the question--that's from the Congressional Budget Office. That's a non- partisan group that objectively looks at the effect of Federal laws and policies and projects the anticipated costs. Is that correct?

Mr. HARRIS. I thank my colleague, the obstetrician from Georgia, who points out that on the graph, as the gentleman from Louisiana showed before, Medicaid expenditures now exceed K-12 education. And as the other chart we've seen shows, we're over at the left-hand side. It will only get worse over time. I yield to the obstetrician from Texas.