Patrick Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, let me just commend both the chairman and the ranking member for producing a bill which certainly goes a long ways to meeting the needs of our country in a number of areas. But let me particularly point out an area that concerns me a great deal, and that's the area where I think there's a large indictment on our country; that's the area of the fact that this country has more people incarcerated in its jail system per capita than any other industrialized Nation on the Earth. More people in jail in our country than any other free Nation on the Earth. My friends, that is an indictment on us as a Nation, that we can't do better. This bill invests more in preventing people getting in jail. We add over $80 million to the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Act, section 5, title 5, which is prevention dollars. We have decreased that money over $280 million over the last 5 years, under the previous Congress. This year, under this bill, we increase it by $50 million, add another $30 million to the JBAG program, which is the gang prevention section of the Juvenile Justice act. We add $10 million to the Mentally Ill Offender Program, which helps us to put more money into identifying mentally ill offenders at the time of their offense, helping them to divert them from having to go into jail, and properly treating them, rather than accepting them into prison. And we quadruple the amount of dollars that are going into drug courts, the best-known source of reducing recidivism that we have in this country. If you want to have a war on drugs, the best war on drugs is to treat people for their addictions rather than to put them in jail, and this bill goes a long ways in doing just that. I want to commend the chairman for his work on this matter.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that if we are serious about looking at this issue of compliance, $6 million, frankly, for a country as big as China that is exporting to Wal-Mart toothpaste, pet food, auto parts and the like, $6 million ain't going to cut it; $6 million out of a budget that we are looking at here is really infinitesimal to think about in terms of really being serious about inspection. If we are serious about looking at protecting consumer product safety, we ought to look at making sure that industry themselves are employing the proper safeguards in their own inspection safety, that they are obviously having to comply with our own U.S. inspection codes if they are selling within our own market. They are not having to comply with China's inspection. They have to comply with ours if they are selling in our marketplace. So this is a broader issue in addition to just trade, and I think there are a lot of other significant aspects to this issue that we need to consider. I think we need to bring the trade groups that are involved with these issues to the table, and I would suggest that maybe the chairman and others maybe down the road we can begin to convene some of these trade groups. I know from my State some of these interested groups are already working within their industries to deal with this because they know they have great liability. If they import products that they have manufactured in China here to this country that are faulty, they are on the hook and they are liable if those products are faulty, as they should be liable; that is, provided that they are not indemnified by the other side through product liability indemnification. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KENNEDY. As cochair of the Judiciary Appropriation Subcommittee, someone who has attended these hearings all the way through, I am disappointed by this because I think it calls into question every single member of this committee and the integrity of every single member of this committee in saying that you're calling into question the integrity of this committee and what we have done as a work product as a committee. This is not the product of one individual; this is a product of a committee. So I take great exception to this Member's amendment and the questions that he has raised here. I stand behind this work product, as do the colleagues that I serve with on this committee, both Republicans and Democrats. I serve proudly with this chairman. And we've worked as a bipartisan committee, worked together on a bipartisan basis in order to produce a work product that meets the needs of the public, to meet the needs of the law enforcement community in this country, and, I might add, way over and above the President of the United States' request for law enforcement, way over and above the request for law enforcement that this administration has put forward. So I might say that it is ironic that this amendment comes up, that under this chairman, this law enforcement has gone further and farther than it has, indeed, under many, many previous chairs of this committee. For that reason, Mr. Chairman, I support today's mark and I ask my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KENNEDY. I understand, Mr. Chairman, the President of the United States today issued a press release saying that he was not going to ask that these officers be allowed out on bail or bond even after it was requested that they do be permitted to be released on bail and bond. I find it regrettable that the President did not give some explanation for why he didn't give these officers an opportunity to be given release on bail or bond as other people who would be on trial or given that kind of opportunity would otherwise be given. At the very least, I think the President, given the nature of these officers being in law enforcement, has an obligation to ensure their security when they are in prison because they are, I understand, at greater threat to their own lives being law enforcement officers if they are incarcerated. And I would hope that the Department of Justice in its incarceration procedures does take into account the very increased threat level to these officers because of the nature of them being law enforcement officers. That being said, however, we do have to keep in mind that it is a Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney that prosecuted these Border Patrol officers and it was a jury of a U.S. citizens who rendered a verdict based upon the U.S. law and based upon the evidence of U.S. law, not the Members of Congress here standing based upon newspapers and based upon Fox news stories and everything else, but based upon the evidence in a case presented to a jury through an evidentiary hearing. And that is what we need to abide by is a legal process. We can't abide by a political process. If we were to abide by political process every time a legal case came along and were to suspend the process every time we thought one case was more popular than the other, it would just upend the idea of justice as we know it in this country, because I think all of us could come here to the floor and tell of a unique story where someone was wronged by the system of justice in this country. And I think that it is kind of ironic that my friends are so outraged by mandatory minimums with guns, because they are so outraged by mandatory minimums with everything, and yet they are the first ones to pass these mandatory minimums and then wonder, now finding their own friends in the behind and saying, no, we can't have it touch our friends, and then all of a sudden they don't want it that way. Well, you know what? There are lots of people in this country who have been caught behind these mandatory minimums who have just been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time that are now serving life sentences. Kids that have been caught in ghettos just because they have been friends of friends who have been part of gangs. Now that they have been associated with gangs, they have gotten the gang-related crime tagged onto them, which has added another 10 years to their sentence, and that has been a mandatory minimum just because of some law that we have passed saying that you get another 10 years because you are related to a gang member. Now it is very interesting that all of a sudden people are so outraged by these minimums that have been tacked on to these officers carrying firearms in the commission of a crime. So I just think that we should all pause for a moment when we think about being tough on crime. Here is a perfect example of where it comes back to bite us in the you-know-where when we think that we are trying to be tough on crime and then find out that sometimes when we are passing these mandatory minimums it doesn't always work out the way we expected it to be.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Etheridge-Reichert amendment. The Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, was up here on the Hill this week. The Attorney General was trying to appeal to the United States Congress of the United States, trying to appeal to the American people to restore the American people's confidence in the Justice Department. I think one of the first steps he can take to restore confidence in the American people and the Department of Justice is to ensure that the people who are on the front lines of the war against terror here in our own country, the men and women in blue, the people who are protecting our men and women across this country from crime, in our neighborhoods and our cities and our towns, that those people who make the ultimate sacrifice and lay down their lives for the protection of our citizens in our own communities, that those people, when they make that ultimate sacrifice, that this country is not going to let them down. It's not going to let their families down. The notion that we're going to make them wait for an insurance policy, make their families wait, make their widows wait, make their orphans wait, is an insult. The fact that the Department of Justice is not willing to simply step up and pay $250,000 tax-free dollars to the widow and children of fallen officers who have fallen in the line of duty protecting people in this country from the criminal element of this society is unforgivable. The fact that this Attorney General is up here on the Hill and has no understanding of this, has no sensitivity to this, is one more example of how out of touch this Attorney General is. This amendment, this Etheridge amendment, is another example of how this Congress has to remind the executive branch who needs to be in charge when it comes to running the pursestrings around here, where the priorities of the American people are. The priorities of the American people are let's spend money where our law enforcement is. That is where their families are. This, my friends, is where our hometown heroes are. In my State we have people like Deputy Assistant Day, who died trying to fight a fire, and his family's widow is still waiting for that benefit. In the 1970s, President Nixon put the public safety officers' benefit in at $100,000. We never even increased it. We tried to increase it; wasn't even increased for rate of inflation, cost-of-living adjustment. I worked to try to increase it, as did Mr. Etheridge. It took 9/11, unfortunately, it took a crisis like 9/11, before we were able to attach this bill to the PATRIOT Act and get it included as part of the PATRIOT Act and get it pushed through this Congress so that we could increase it up to over $250,000. Now that it's up there, and it's tied to the rate of inflation, it's there. But it's not going to do a lot of good unless it's going out the door, and it's going into the pockets and into the households and the families that need it. That's why we need to pass this amendment to give the administration and the Department of Justice the resources it needs in order to give them no more excuses in order to process these claims and get those families the resources they need in order to take care of the widows and the orphans of our fallen heroes. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, the fact of the matter is, we are living in a global economy. We are living in a great country. Whether the person is from Arizona or Rhode Island, the gentleman ought to know that we are all in it together. As a Federal Government, we have a responsibility to this country. Whether the person comes from one State or another is irrelevant. It's an investment in all of us to invest in this education. I urge defeat of this amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I will submit my remarks for the Record in opposition to this amendment. It is outrageous that we would eliminate the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, Mr. Barton's amendment would increase NIH funding by $650 million by prohibiting NIH from contributing funding through the authorized program evaluation tap to support other Public Health Service agencies. The Committee has already provided generous increases for NIH--$620 million in the joint funding resolution and $750 million in this bill. That has provided an increase of over 1500 new research grants. The bill's $750 million increase is over $1 billion higher than the President's FY08 request. This amendment is dangerous because it would eliminate the only agency that is doing research to evaluate and identify what healthcare treatments work, what is safe for patients, and how to control the costs for the medical interventions produced by NIH research--the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, AHRQ. Twenty percent of our economy is tied to health care. 42 million seniors are dependent on Medicare for health care, and 50 million Americans are on Medicaid. We desperately need the research that AHRQ provides to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of the health care services provided through this enormous share of our economy. Comparative effectiveness research allows us to expand coverage by only paying for what works and using the savings to expand health coverage. The country is concerned about being consumed by out of control health care costs. This amendment would devastate funding for AHRQ, the one agency doing the research necessary to determine the best ways to deliver medical care in order to avoid bankrupting Medicare and our private health care system. The amendment will devastate the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, by cutting 20 percent of the funding provided for NIOSH--the only agency in government that supports occupational safety and health research and brings that research from the laboratory into the workplace. In 2005 there were 5,734 workplace injury deaths, 50,000 deaths from occupational diseases and more than 4.2 million workplace injuries in the U.S. In 2006 we saw more than a doubling of coal mine fatalities in the nation's mines. Now is not the time to cut our investments in important health and safety research programs that are critical to our efforts to protect workers from job deaths, injuries and disease. The amendment would devastate the CDC's ability to track the health status of Americans. Knowledge of, and the ability to understand issues such as infant mortality, obesity risk factors, and childhood diseases will be seriously curtailed if this amendment passes. While this amendment on its face would appear to provide short-term benefits to university researchers, it would have dramatic and serious long-term consequences for the patients with conditions that NIH research addresses.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, education as a whole is something I don't think we can ever go wrong in investing in, especially at a time when education is more important than ever before in keeping our country competitive in a global economy. What's going to make our workers more competitive is their ability to compete on an international level. Now, part of that edge is going to be able to be determined whether they are going to be bilingual, whether they are going to be fluent in not just one language, but maybe two languages. It's interesting in our country, especially over the debate the last several weeks, denigrating immigration as if it's something of a drain on our society, that we have lost sight. The greatest strength of our Nation are our immigrants, especially now. The United States is unique around the world in that we are a country of nations, nations that make up every part of the world. We are uniquely positioned as a Nation to take full advantage of the multiethnic backgrounds of all the people that make up this great country of ours. We have a ready-made market in every part of the world because of all of ethnicities that we have in our country. Now, in my neighborhood, in Rhode Island, we have a large Portuguese community. The fact of the matter is, we have, in Rhode Island, a large Portuguese community that could be very beneficial to this country's ability to compete internationally. By 2010, Brazil will be the third largest consumer of American-made products. Now, don't you think it would be a smart move for our country to invest more in Portuguese literacy and fluency? I think so. That's why I am for investing in the language development for the third leading consumer market of American goods that's going to lead to more American jobs right in our hometowns all across America. This is about building up American jobs here at home. Frankly, I don't understand what the objection is. This is all about investing in our people. We are not running any deficits when we are investing in people. We are making investments, investments that are going to pay huge dividends in the future. Where is your balance sheet? You know, the cost of everything but the value of nothing. When you look at your balance sheet, you would assume that you can do everything on the sheet. You can just automatically have someone grow up, not get an education, expect to get more out of them than you put into them. I don't know any business deal where a business person expects to get something more out of a deal than they put into it, except maybe Enron. Is that your kind of politics over there? You expect to get rich quick without even investing? I don't know, as Democrats we believe that you have to invest in people before you can get a return on your investment. That's what we are doing in this investment in education. We are investing in our workers. We are investing in our people, because we know in order for us to get a return on our investment that is what's going to be the key. I can give you specific examples in my State where we have bilingual workers who now are able to take what they have learned, thanks to these Portuguese studies, and also take that and be able to teach other people Portuguese and be able to add fluency to their vocabulary and also be able to expand their economic opportunities as well. I think that's a good thing for this country. It expands the American Dream in this country, and that's why I oppose the gentleman's amendment. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Announcement By the Chairman

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I tell the gentleman, in my State, I will give you a perfect example of where this would make a difference. In a rural part of my State we had a contamination of our well water, and it was a contamination because of the MTBE, the chemical that goes into gasoline. I might add under the Republican majority, you all indemnified the oil and gas industry from lawsuits so that my community can't get the justice it deserves so it can clean up its wastewater and make due reparation to my constituents. What they had to do is they had to go down to the local high school to take showers. They had to attach a pump through the fire department to the next-door community. Now under this section of the bill, this is a public health hazard. You know why, because even at home when they turn on the water, they were getting lesions on their skin because the shower water was giving them lesions. Even when they turned on the steam, the children were breathing in the steam and were getting asthma attacks. Now if you are wondering what the nexus is, this is what the nexus is between your amendment and health and why infrastructure makes an enormous difference in providing clean, safe drinking water to rural communities. Now I don't come from a very rural State so you might think that it is kind of interesting that I would come up and speak on behalf of this. I would think that your State would probably benefit a lot more from this. Your constituents must be wondering about you offering an amendment against a section that would benefit your State more than it does mine. Frankly, this is an important program. If anything in this country, we haven't invested enough in infrastructure. Mr. Jackson, I'm sure, has talked to his mayors and local community leaders, and they have told him that their infrastructure is falling apart. I would just commend all of us to say that if we have to do anything, we have to do more in the way of infrastructure, not less.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I think this is a perfect, perfect example of a gentleman offering an amendment where he knows the cost of something but the value of nothing. If he were to visit any congregate meal site in his district or were to visit any of the Meals-on-Wheels programs in this country and was able to see what a difference those programs make in people's lives, he would understand that it was these kinds of programs that saved the taxpayer money. I guess, by this amendment, he is saying what a waste it is for us to pay for someone's illness. Let's put off paying for their illness until they get really sick. Then they have got to get hospitalized. Then let's pay for it through Medicare. Frankly, the former Speaker Newt Gingrich, every modern health care magazine, Republican Presidential contender Tommy Thompson, former HHS director, every leader and study in health care knows we ought to be going in the opposite direction. It's all about health. In case anybody has not been looking, our health care system is an acute care system. It's a sick care system. We need to be going preventive care. We need to be going health care. We need to be going chronic care management. What in the world are we thinking by considering that we are going to actually go back to the dark days where we are going to actually spend more money on the back door to wait until people get sick as opposed to trying to prevent people from coming in and getting sick in the first place. I find this amendment absolutely mind boggling that it would even be offered as an excuse for saving money. Quite frankly, it will end up costing the taxpayer money. Tragically, more than costing us money, it will cost us lives. It will cost us lives, and it will cost us misery amongst those senior citizens who are going to have to suffer the consequences of the cutbacks that this amendment will propose. I think that's a very unfortunate thing. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, reclaiming my time. I am pleased that in other bills that we are going to be taking up this year, we are going to be offering, the Democrats, medical home legislation that will allow us to invest in preventive medicine. Because we, as Democrats, believe we need to not rearrange the deck chairs on this Titanic of our health care system. We need to reinvent our health care system and invest in health care, which is broken in this country, and start investing in prevention and not go down this road that has gotten us in so much trouble to begin with, and that is try to take care of the problem after it's already broken. Let's take care of people first and keep them out of the hospital. Unfortunately, this amendment goes a great deal of distance in the wrong direction, not the right direction. Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I just want to commend the chairman for the work that this committee has done to achieve the very purpose that this amendment that the gentleman from New Jersey has proposed. Frankly, we have this year on July 26 the anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and we have taken many steps backward as a Nation in guaranteeing the civil rights of all Americans with disabilities. Clearly that means we need to guarantee nothing special for people with disabilities, just the same rights. Guaranteeing equal access regardless of ability is what we need to do in this country. This amendment seeks to do that; but I might add, so does the underlying bill. I hope that Members listening to this debate do not come away with the understanding that it is because of amendments like this that we are accomplishing it. The underlying bill, if people were to see it and really look at it, does so much to offer independence and hope to people who previous to this bill were denied many opportunities because of previous budgetary priorities that shut people out in this country. So I want to commend the chairman and the ranking member for producing a good bill that goes along the same lines as this amendment by opening up the doors of opportunity to all Americans.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I just want to commend the lady from Texas for her amendment, and say that I know how many years she spent before coming to Congress dedicated to this issue. We had a hearing in her district around this issue of mental health and addiction and alcoholism, and we heard from the law enforcement community themselves in her district testify to the fact that over 70 percent of the children in the juvenile justice system were there because of drugs and alcohol. And, frankly, this is a scourge on our schools, and we can't just wish it away by saying, just say no. Just say no won't work. We need to employ resources, and that's what this bill, this amendment, seeks to do. And, frankly, when you have 20 million people in this country addicted, and you have nearly 10 percent of those people, children, you have a serious problem in this country. We better get about trying to address it, and this amendment seeks to try to do that. And I commend the gentlelady for her amendment and support it. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.