Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, Members of the House and those listening to this, I think you ought to take a piece of paper right now and write this down. The premium is $25. The deductible is $100 a year. The coinsurance means you pay 20 percent, the government pays 80 percent for your drugs, and there is a cap on how much you can spend out of pocket, $2,000. That is written into our bill. In contrast, we have this magic pill that has been given to us where the other side says trust us. Remember, these are the people who told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were right there. They were going to be delivered in 45 minutes. And, in fact, the President of the United States stood right here and said, Mr. Speaker, that he believed that they had tried to buy uranium from Niger. It was known that that was a lie. It was known. So now they come out here with this drug bill and they say listen, we think it will be about $35 and maybe you will get this and maybe you will get that, but nothing is written down. I want the people to remember those four things. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I oppose the awarding of this gold medal now. We have awarded gold medals to many people in our history since 1776, but on only one occasion have we ever awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor to a sitting head of state: Nelson Mandela, when he was 80 years old and in his last months in office. I suppose it is possible that these are the last months in office for Prime Minister Blair, but that is not clear just at the moment. At this moment he is fighting for his political future against accusations that he misled the public about British intelligence findings on Iraq. Mr. Blair's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was brought up before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons yesterday. He was asked, among other things, why Mr. Blair's influential January dossier on Iraq's capabilities was so reliant on the uncredited 12-year-old writings of an American graduate student. Today Alastair Campbell, his doctor of spin, will be up there and he will be answering accusations that it was he who inserted in a dossier the astonishing information that Iraq not only possessed fully developed, operational chemical and biological weapons but was capable of delivering them within 45 minutes of a command order. Foreign Secretary Straw said yesterday there were substantial errors. He said that lessons have been learned, but he blamed the demands of the media. That very media, of course, made sure that the false papers issued by Prime Minister Blair's government deceived others around the world as well as the Britons. The influential information and errors may have even influenced Members of this body. If this award to Mr. Blair is appropriate, it is either too late or too soon. If the medal had been awarded when it was first introduced, before these deceptions were discovered, it would have had smooth sailing. If it were brought up later, perhaps Mr. Blair will have cleared his name. At this moment, however, we are prejudging and perhaps trying to influence the outcome of some very serious investigations going on in Britain. We are trying to prop up Mr. Blair. The White House has sent up another one of those rubber stamp bills. I do not dispute that he needs propping up. His job rating at home is minus 13 which means his disapproval exceeds his approval by 13 points. What I dispute is whether the Congressional Medal of Honor should become a prop in the strategy of the British Prime Minister to regain his people's trust. I ask the Members of this body to consider carefully whether they wish to risk cheapening the Congressional Medal of Honor by awarding it to an embattled politician. Let us not rush to judgment. Let us revisit this resolution another day. Even Winston Churchill was not awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor at any point in his tumultuous political career, though there were times when it would have come in quite handy. His medal was posthumous. With all due respect, Prime Minister Blair is not Winston Churchill.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the ``Rubber Stamp Congress'' is about to go back in session. The President sent the word down from the White House: he wants a bill. We have not seen the bill. It has been put together in two different committees. We do not know what the Committee on Rules is going to put out here, but I can tell my colleagues two things about it. It is very clear from what went on in the Committee on Energy and Commerce and what went on in the Committee on Ways and Means that the bill that will be before us in the next couple of days is not going to satisfy what senior citizens really want. The senior citizens want no privatization. They do not want Medicare to become totally a private insurance operation. They like the program run by the government. It has worked very well for many years; not perfect, but it has worked very well, and the idea that we are going to have a drug benefit and we are going to say, here is some money, we are putting it on the table here, and the drug companies are going to run in or the insurance companies are going to run in and figure out how to give a benefit is simply nonsense, and people know it. They do not trust insurance companies. They have had the last couple of years dealing with the insurance companies around HMOs and they said, Why do we need more of that? How will we feel more safe if we know the insurance companies can come in one day and out the next and back in another day and another and out, in and out? We will not have any benefit. They want a guaranteed Medicare benefit that they do not have to join a private program to get. They can get it through the government and it is just that simple. That is why they have rejected all these private HMOs, all of that stuff and have stayed in the basic Medicare program. It is partly because the way the insurance companies have treated them. Insurance companies went out and promised benefits all over the place. They promised drug benefits and everything else. People joined and 6 months later they pulled out and left them hanging. So they expect the very same thing to happen with this drug benefit. If this were something the insurance companies wanted to do, believe me they would have done it a long time ago but they do not want to do it. So it has got to be in the regular Medicare program. It cannot be privatized. And it has to have a guaranteed benefit. You can say to people, well, here is $100 a month. Go out and see what kind of plan you get offered because you are not guaranteed anything in that. In some parts of the country it might buy more than it buys in another part of the country. But everybody will have the same amount to go out and try and buy with, so how is that going to work? Why should it make a difference if you live in Tennessee or you live in Oklahoma or you live in Vermont or you live in Washington State or you live in Illinois? Why should you not be able to have this same plan no matter where you are in this country? Suppose you want to leave San Francisco and go and live with your children in Kansas City? Suddenly you have got to change plans. All of these are issues that come when you put it in the hands of a private insurance company. Now, the second thing people want is to control the costs of medication. I live up in the Northwest. I live up in Seattle. Every day people get in their cars, drive across the border into Canada, and buy drugs at markedly reduced prices. Now, that went on for a long time and now there are organizations that will allow you to fill your prescriptions from Canada without ever leaving your home in the United States. Thousands and thousands of people are filling their prescriptions in Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine and New York and Michigan and Minnesota. All the States along the northern tier are doing that and it is going down in other States in the country. Now, you ask yourself, why are drug costs lower in Canada? I mean, what is it about the Canadians that they are better negotiators or what have they done? They did one simple thing. They said you cannot charge a Canadian, they put this in law, you cannot charge a Canadian more than the average of the G-7 countries. Now, what are the G-7 countries? France, Britain, Germany, United States, Canada, Japan, and I think Italy is the other one. You take all those countries, add the price together on a drug and the average price is what Canadians pay. All it would take for us to save all that traffic to Canada is to pass a law here that grants us the average price of the G-7 countries. This bill will not have it. It is a bad bill. And you should look very carefully at what you pay and what you do not get.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentlewoman from Connecticut calls it a small adjustment. I would call it a gutting of the program. If you allow an insurance company to screen people out on the basis of preexisting conditions, which is what this amendment does, of course it will be simpler. They just look down your history. If you are over 50 years old, you will never get access to this. And the people who are losing their jobs here are not 20 years old. They are people who are in steel industries and other industries where the existence of a preexisting condition is very common. So to say that the insurance company does not have to have that consumer protection, there is no guaranteed issue and they can use preexisting conditions is simply to give the insurance industry the ability to cherry pick the young and leave the others by the side of the road. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the amendment that is at the desk on H.R. 1528 is a fairly comprehensive amendment to the bill which we discussed yesterday. The first thing is that my amendment would delete the controversial provisions contained in the underlying bill which would eliminate consumer protections that this Congress provided less than 1 year ago when it enacted the Trade Promotion Act. I think that there are many Members who voted for the fast track bill with the belief that this was in it and now less than a year later we are back taking it out. I think that is an important part of this amendment. The second thing is this amendment would provide the recently increased family credit for 12 million children and 6 million families. We passed it out of here and it has gone to an uncertain future in a conference committee. I read there is some debate among the Members of the conference committee about who is going to chair it. We could put this issue to rest with this amendment today. The third part of the amendment is to stop the delay of tax benefits for our military and relief to families of the astronauts killed in the Columbia disaster. I think that this is one of those issues where we all agree, it has been sitting there and somehow it does not get done, and I think it is time for us to move on. Fourth, the amendment will prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from implementing a pre-certification program for Earned Income Tax Credit recipients. I think this is a needed and important change in the IRS. It is the only place that we have such a thing where we make people send in their money reports before they even get the benefit, rather than letting them make application for it and then figuring out if there is some question. Fifth, my amendment would also contain provisions addressing the abusive corporate tax shelters which we have talked about in the past. Finally, this adds taxpayer protections designed to assist low and middle-class taxpayers in complying with the tax law. It is a fairly comprehensive amendment, but I think it is a good one, and it does a number of things which we ought to do when we are passing this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin). (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin). (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Listening to the other side, Mr. Speaker, I do not quite know where to start. It is not very often that the public gets a clear view of the naked desire of the Republican Party to not do something while appearing to do it. These taxpayer provisions to protect taxpayers could have passed 12 months ago; but at that time, a year ago, they stuck in a poison pill amendment, and it died in the Senate. Now, if they had only done it once, no one would have seen what was going on there. They passed the taxpayer bill, they put this amendment in, and they knew it would never come back; and that was the end of it. But they did not learn from that. They had the people fooled that they cared about taxpayers. But now they have come back a second time, and they do the same thing over again. They could have put a bill out here that everybody would have passed, that would have had 435 votes for it; but they had to put another poison pill in. They know this is not going to get through the Senate because, first of all, it was part of the fast track bill and votes were obtained from people on both sides of the aisle around the belief that they were going to look after workers' rights in trade negotiations. One of the things that happens is people lose their health care benefits when they lose their job because of trade. So we took care of that. And now my Republican colleagues come in here, and what is really amazing is they believe in devolution; that everything should be put down to the States; and what they are basically saying is that we are rewarding the States that have not done anything. Most States have acted under the bill and provided programs. They have followed all the rules. But we do have some laggards. Maybe my colleagues want to read that list again. Those laggards, those slothful ones, whatever they are, that do not care about their people, or whatever it is, they have not acted; and yet my colleagues are saying, okay, okay, we understand you really do care, so we are going to get rid of all the rules. What kind of incentive, what kind of message is that to send to the States? Hang back, do not do it, and we will change it to fit you; right? Now, that is no message to send. And the real message here is, and I do not know anybody who wants to see this, this bill occurred because the Republicans would not allow them to use COBRA or Medicaid. When these negotiations were going on, we wanted to put these people into Medicaid, give them coverage there, or allow them to extend their COBRA. But my Republican colleagues said oh, no, no, no, no, we have a new plan. We believe that tax credits are the answer. So we will give them 65 percent of the premium tax credit, and they will be able to go out and buy. And lo and behold it did not work. This is kind of the reverse of that movie called ``Field of Dreams'': If you build it, they will come. Well, the Republicans said if we build this tax credit around health insurance, they will come; and they have not come. So now they are saying, well, we are going to tweak it a little bit here and take away the consumer protections. And I think that is not fair. It makes it pretty hard to deal with the other side when one year they are saying they are going to do one thing, and in less than a year they are back here taking it out. What can we believe from them? Did my colleagues not think it was a good idea last time, so they just let it go through in order to get fast track, because they knew they could come back and repeal it? What was going on? I think my Republican colleagues ought to ask themselves what kind of a message it sends from their side to us when they want us to work on a bipartisan basis. We do not work very often on a bipartisan basis; but when we do, on the fast track bill, the Republicans undercut it the next time they stand up. In my view, that is not the way this body should operate. Now, what are some of the other things that are in here that we took out? We took out some things that the Republicans had in their taxpayer bill. We took out the ability to have tax-free interest on overpayments. If we look at the scoring of this bill, if we look at what the CBO said, they said they think a billion dollars is going to be paid in overpayments. Now, why would anybody overpay their taxes? Well, if this bill passes, they would get tax-free interest because the government has to pay interest on overpayments that are given back. It has always been taxable, but now it would not be. The CBO's estimate is that a billion dollars is going to be put into tax-free bonds, basically, in the IRS. Now, my view is that is not necessary. And the other thing is, my colleagues talk about wanting to revise the Tax Code, yet they come out here with a bill that is going to complicate it some more. They are going to give some people 2 more weeks. For what? For 2 years they are going to give people who file electronically two more weeks. I asked the staff, where did this come from? Who asked for this? Mr. Speaker, no accountants that I know want two different dates. It turns out this is a provision that the last Treasury Secretary kind of thought was a great idea. Guys, he is gone. Let this idea go away. It is a bad idea. We do not need any more confusion in tax filing than we already have today. Finally, this issue of children. I do not know why they continue to tar themselves with their own brush. They say they care about kids, and then they pass a bill through here that does not give the benefit to the poorest of the kids, not the poorest, the ones just above the poorest. Their folks make between $15,000 and $28,000, and they say to them, you do not get this money, this child tax credit. But they are willing to give it to people making $80,000, $90,000 all of the way up to $150,000. I do not know why Republicans would want to have that image. I stand over here and think, why would they be doing this? All I can think of is they thought it was an engine that would be able to drag some things through Congress which they could not get any other way. It makes no sense at all. If they really cared about these kids, they would pass this bill and with this amendment on it, and it would go into law immediately. I know the other side does not like the provision about companies that run away, but we are over there rebuilding Iraq, and some of the very companies that left the country and have established another office someplace else, the Cayman Islands or Bermuda or wherever, have the gall to come back here and bid on contracts to rebuild Iraq. They are willing to pay no taxes in this country, and then take American taxpayer money and make profit off it in Iraq. It is unbelievable that the other side of the aisle would set up a system like that unless they had friends in the oil industry or concrete-laying or dam-building or airport-rebuilding. All those issues are in this bill, and I say we should adopt this amendment if we want to protect the taxpayers. This amendment in the nature of a substitute would get through the Senate.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on both sides?

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis). (Ms. SOLIS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, last night the House began the process of privatizing Medicare. The Committee on Ways and Means put out a bill, and it has a provision in it that says, by the year 2010, we are going to take away the guaranteed benefit that people have under Medicare, and we are going to give them a defined contribution. Now, that is a voucher under any other name. They call it premium support. They will try and confuse people. It is wrapped inside the drug bill so people will say, well, we want the prescription drug benefit. If you take it the way the Republicans are giving it to you in the House of Representatives, you have to accept that they are privatizing Medicare. Now, that is a concept that people simply do not understand what that means. Give $5,000 to every one of the 40 million old people in this country and send them out looking for a loving insurance company to take care of them. It is a bad idea. People should wake up and see what is happening in the next week. This rubber stamp Congress is going to put that bill out of here so that they can go home over the 4th of July and say, we gave you prescription drugs. They are going to give you privatized Medicare with it.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from North Dakota, who comes from a big farming district, has a great amendment here. Mr. Speaker, I will include for the Record a letter from the National Farmers Union dated June 16, 2003. The letter says there is no evidence that the estate tax has forced the liquidation of any farms, and existing estate tax provisions already exempt 98 percent of all farmers and ranchers. This is a letter on behalf of 300,000 farmers and ranchers. By increasing the level of estate exemption to $4 million per individual, which is what the Pomeroy amendment does, 99.5 percent of American agricultural producers would be exempted from any estate tax liability. It goes on to say the 20-year Federal cost of Federal estate tax repeal is estimated to be nearly $1 trillion. For farmers and ranchers, such a loss in Federal revenues will reduce our ability to fund a wide range of commodity, conservation, rural development, research and trade programs important to family farms. Why are we doing this? Well, we are in the rubber-stamp Congress. We have an amendment out here that makes sense, but the Republicans will not consider it because ``I approve of everything George Bush does,'' and they are out here to rubber stamp another amendment. In spite of the fact that last night we created a bill in the Committee on Ways and Means to deal with pharmaceutical benefits, we said to people, we are going to cover you from zero up to $2,000 and then there is going to be this big gap up to $4,900 people do not get a thing. They have to keep paying their premium, but they are not going to get anything out of it. From $2,000 to $4,900 in your bill is not a tax benefit that covers the pharmaceutical needs of people. Now we could fix that simply with the money we have here today that we are passing out the back door, not to farmers; this is not a farmer issue. This is a bunch of very, very rich people hiding behind farmers. They are sort of sneaking behind the combine waiting until this bill gets through, and then they are going to stand up and take all their money. This is not for farmers. The farmers say that. So who is it for? It is the President of the United States who had a fund-raiser last night, and he said give me $2,000 a plate, sit down; and I am going to rubber-stamp another bill. Mr. Speaker, we have rubber-stamped one bill after another. A Member on the other side of the aisle said this is equally important with the other tax bill we did. Hey, there is $900 billion still laying in the Committee on Ways and Means. It is going to be brought out here, and we will rubber-stamp it. How big is the debt? Nobody cares. Our kids can pay for that, except for the kids of rich people; they do not pay taxes. National Farmers Union, June 16, 2003. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Member of Congress: I write on behalf of the 300,000 farmer and rancher members of the National Farmers Union to urge you to vote against H.R. 8, legislation that would repeal the federal estate tax when it comes to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Repeal proponents have characterized this issue as critical to the future sustainability of America's family farms and ranches because it is a primary cause of farm liquidations. This argument is without merit. There is no evidence that the estate tax has forced the liquidation of any farms, and existing estate tax provisions already exempt 98 percent of all farms and ranches. By increasing the level of the estate tax exemption to $4 million per individual, 99.5 percent of America's agricultural producers would be exempt from any estate tax liability. We believe estate tax laws should be reformed, not repealed. An immediate increase in the level of the exemption utilized to calculate estate tax liability, and simplification of the rules and procedures governing the filing and payment of estate taxes, represents a more rational and beneficial approach for farmers, ranchers and small business owners than full repeal. The tax reform approach will minimize the loss of revenue for both the federal and state governments that will result from full repeal at a time when budget deficits and declining public revenues are severely stressing our capacity to maintain and expand priority programs important to the American people. The twenty-year federal cost of full estate tax repeal is estimated to be nearly $1 trillion. For farmers and ranchers, such a loss in federal revenues will reduce our ability to fund a wide range of commodity, conservation, rural development, research and trade programs important to the farm economy. These programs are much more critical to retaining a family farm oriented production agriculture system than the limited savings resulting from estate tax repeal that will only accrue to the nation's wealthiest individuals. Estate tax reform will provide much needed certainty to those engaged in planning for the future while ensuring that individuals are not subjecting their heirs to a capital gains tax liability resulting from the potential loss of the stepped-up basis provisions contained in current law. If this occurs, the result will amount to a substantial tax increase for those of more modest means and smaller accumulations of wealth. We look forward to working with you to develop and adopt an estate tax reform proposal that is both fair and fiscally responsible. Thank you for your consideration of these issues and for your vote against repeal of the federal estate tax. Sincerely, David J. Frederickson, President.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I guess we are all in touch with our constituents. Mine was quoted today. Bill Gates, Sr. lives in my district, and he said the principal issue is the growing budget deficit. You cannot run a $400 billion deficit year after year and go around repealing taxes at the same time. Now, I learned in Sunday school, and it may surprise some of you, but I went to Sunday school, and I learned that you cannot take anything with you when you die. But it is not fair to heap $800 billion of additional debt on your kids as you go out of sight. This argument we are having here today is an old one in this society. We made the decision between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson that we were not going to have primogeniture in this country; that you could not pass everything on to your eldest son and that was it. We said everybody ought to start with an even shot, men and women. We have come a long way using that. But now we are saying that somebody who inherited from his father or his mother, millions and millions and millions of dollars, should get it just because he was born lucky. Now, I have read the Bible and I have looked around and I do not find that anywhere, that if you are born lucky, as they say, some guys were born on third base and they think they hit a triple, but this is not something where you have a God-given right to that. You have a God- given right in this country to have an equal shot. As for the farmers, I listened to my colleague from Washington go on and on and on about the farmers. I have a letter here from the National Farmers Union dated 16 June. ``I write on behalf of 300,000 farmers with the National Farmers Union. There is no evidence that the estate tax has forced the liquidation of any farms, and existing estate tax provisions already exempt 98 percent of all farms and ranches.'' By increasing the level of the estate tax, as we will get an opportunity with the Pomeroy substitute, to $4 million per individual, 99.5 percent of America's agricultural producers would be exempt from any State liability. Now, if the farmers are who we are arguing about here, 300,000 of them just spoke, and they say this is baloney. In fact, the letter goes on to say that, ``we need that money for crop supports and conservation and all the other things that government provides.'' So they understand that having a government that can provide services is important. Mr. Speaker, if we give away all of the money, we are going to come back here next year and say we cannot do conservation, we cannot do crop subsidies, we cannot do anything because we do not have the money. These farmers are not stupid. They understand. I think we ought to vote for the Pomeroy amendment.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the underlying bill here today is not in dispute. We had the same bill last year, and they could not get it through because they used it like they are using it this year. They used it sort of like a bun for a hotdog. Everybody wanted the bun, but they keeping sticking a poison pill into the hot dog. They did it last year with section 527, long forgotten. This year with great fanfare they passed the fast track bill. A lot of Members on this side of the aisle voted for the fast track bill. They said if we put in some protections for the workers, and Members said, oh, yes, that is right, we should give protections for the workers so that if because of trade they lose their job and they lose their health care benefits, we should provide some health care benefits for them. The bill was barely dry from the President signing it, and they started trying to take that out. The workers have got to think there is nobody in this place who is honest with them. The first time it happened, the gentleman on the other side went to the Committee on Armed Services and stuck it into one of their bills; and he got caught, and it got dropped out in the conference committee. So it has been brought back and put in here. Members know this bill will pass. The taxpayers deserve some relief and protection. So a bill like that is going to pass 435-0, so Members can stick in just about anything and figure it will slide by and nobody will notice it. What they have done to these workers, and I have 11,000 in my State, and there are a few thousand in every State, they are going to go out thinking I have a 65 percent tax credit on my health care benefits and all I have to do is find a place to do this. Our State does not have a program yet, but they are working on it in the State legislature because they never put in the bill that the States have to establish programs. What is underlying here is a basic philosophic disagreement. The gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. McCrery) and I have been around on this a lot of times. It is the question of do people have an individual responsibility to take care of themselves, or should we take care of them collectively by developing a State program in this particular instance. Many States have put together plans, in spite of the fact that Congress gave them no direction. We put it in the bill, and it silently went out into the ether. Some States woke up and found it. New York and New Jersey and a few other States were paying attention, but about 30 States have not found it yet. They have not put together a program, or their legislatures are not capable. I do not know why they have not done it. But here we come with an amendment which says you States which have not done it, you cannot have the consumer protections. If your State legislature says all individual programs have to have a guaranteed issue and they have to have no preexisting condition exclusions, then you can buy a policy. Mr. Speaker, a guy is 55 years old, he gets laid off in this trade adjustment and, he has got a little problem with his heart or kidneys or lungs. Now he has a preexisting condition, and he has a voucher in his hand and he goes to the insurance company, and they take his history. Oh, you have a kidney problem. Sorry, you have a preexisting condition. We cannot. Now many States have passed a law and said you cannot deny him. At that point he is out of luck. He has this promise of health care, and he cannot get at it. Somehow the Republicans think that we ought to take away those protections from workers. Now wait until they try to put a trade bill through here again and tell people that we are going to protect the workers. This is where we find out what they really mean about protecting the workers. They better know they are going to have to go out in the individual market and get their health care. If it is too expensive, tough. The other side says we gave them a 65 percent tax credit. But of course in order to get it, you have to be able to pay for the insurance. No provision is made for that. Mr. Speaker, this is a sham that was put in that fast track bill, and they have been trying to get rid of it ever since because they do not want the principle to be established that States can put together a program to take care of individuals in a group and buy group insurance. That is what is at issue here. This is not fair, and it is wrong and Members ought to vote the bill down.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the House has adjourned its regular business for today, and they have gone off to the White House for a picnic; so I do not suppose very many of them will be in their office listening to this, but I think they should at least consider the fact that today's newspapers and the BBC news, the ABC news, the Economist, all come together in saying the war is not over, boys. Three more dead in Baghdad in violence. There was a drive-by shooting at a petrol station. It sounds a little like some of our cities. And we are there bringing them democracy. I guess that is what democracy means to our President. I do not know. It is hard to know. But when I was reading these articles, I thought of one that I read recently. This is dated March 21, not so long ago. ``A United Nations survey of civilian damage caused by the allied bombardment of Iraq calls the results near apocalyptic. The survey, which was made public today, recommends an immediate end to the embargo on imports of food and other essential supplies to prevent imminent catastrophe.'' This article went on further to say that the U.S. position is that by ``making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, it,'' meaning sanctions, ``will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.'' This is what the situation was. This is from 1991. We intended to get rid of Saddam Hussein from 1991 on, at least. And for the President and his advisers to come around here saying it just happened since 9/11 and all that kind of stuff is absolutely nonsense. At the time that one of the Air Force planners said big picture, we want people to know, get rid of this guy and we will be more than happy to assist in the rebuilding. We are not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein and his regime. Fix that and we will fix their electricity. That is what the United States was saying in 1991. This is the country that wants to bring democracy to Iraq. And it goes on. I mean, it is really wonderful. One planner said, people say you did not recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage? Well, what were we trying to do? Help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of sanctions. We bombed the sewer pumping stations. We bombed the water pumping stations. We bombed the television. We bombed the telephone. We bombed the electrical. We bombed everything because we were going to inflict pain on the Iraqi people. Now if we roll fast forward to today, people in the White House, and I do not know how they could have been thinking about it, Mr. Speaker, that these people were going to be just waiting, so excited to have the Americans come in and bring them democracy. What kind of fools could plan and state publicly what they were doing and then expect people to be grateful that they were bombed, that their hospitals had no electricity for the refrigeration to save the children and the blood and all the things that go on in a hospital that require electricity? We did it deliberately. And the President says, well, we had to wage this war because they had these weapons of mass destruction that were an imminent threat to us. We had destroyed their electrical system. We destroyed all kinds of things. We had reduced the value of their money. I mean, I carry a 250 Dinar note in my wallet just to remind me of what this country can do. This is a 250 Dinar note. These are printed in Iraq. This was worth $875 in 1991; today, 12 cents. Do the Members think we did not crush their economy? Of course we did. And it was all because we wanted to bring them democracy, because we were going to free the world from weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Speaker, I think we ought to have an inquiry in this House, conducted in public, as to what the President knew, when he knew it. How could he come to the well of the House and give us information that was known to be forgery about nuclear material? It is time, Mr. President, when the picnic is over, you had better come up here and tell us the truth.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) to Condoleezza Rice, the Security Advisor to the President, because it contains some questions I think are important. The other night I was on Crossfire, and Robert Novak asked me whether I thought it would be a good thing or a bad thing if weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. The show moved on before I could answer, but it was an interesting question. I think what he was getting at is whether I would feel better if I knew the President were right all along and that there were huge stockpiles of anthrax and nerve gas and missiles armed with bioweapons ready to be launched 45 minutes and a latterday Manhattan Project hidden under a stadium somewhere. He was really asking if I would feel better knowing that I had not been misled or if I were rather nothing were found so I could gloat over having been right when I said in September that I thought indeed the President would mislead the American people on the way to Iraq. Of course, the answer is that I hope that no weapons are there to be found. I hope we are never in danger and that we were not in danger and that our troops were never in danger, and that Saddam Hussein, despite his aspirations, was not on his way of becoming the Saladin of the 21st century. Who would not prefer a world with fewer weapons in the hands of dictators? And if there were weapons, all Americans want them found and destroyed. The President himself seems to have retreated from the claim that the U.S. was in imminent danger from the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Now he is speaking of existence of a weapons program, not of armed missiles and gallons of nerve gas. Mr. Speaker, 11 young Americans have died in Iraq in the past 15 days. Fifty have died since the President declared the war over. A total of 180 Americans and 45 coalition troops have died. What does it mean that 180 young Americans have died in Iraq? Did they die to bring democracy to someone else's country or to stop Saddam Hussein's terrible human rights abuses? Mr. Speaker, I am glad that Hussein is gone, and I believe that nearly all Iraqis are glad that he's gone. But I do not think that the young Americans who died in Iraq signed up to fight against tyranny in general. They signed up to protect this country and our country, their own country. In light of this where do we go? If this were still the Clinton administration, there would be a highly publicized investigation coming out of every committee in this House, including Small Business and Agriculture. There would be calls for special prosecutors, for resignation, for impeachment. President Bush puts great store in personal responsibility, and I believe the time is long past for the President to take responsibility and level with the American people. Did the President believe that Iraq was so likely to pose a danger in the future that it was okay to play fast and loose with the Congress, the U.N. and the American people to get approval to go to war? Was the President misled by bad intelligence? Was he misled by advisors who had prejudged the facts, or was there solid, credible intelligence that just unaccountably turned up to be accurate? We need to know. If the President's information was bad, we need to know what steps are being taken to dismiss those who provided and vouched for it. If the President decided that future dangers were so great that misleading us about the present danger was warranted, we need him to take responsibility for that decision. We need the President to explain to us and to the world why 180 young Americans are dead and why U.S. credibility is eroding all over the world. I am waiting to hear from the President, the Congress is waiting, and 180 American families are waiting to hear. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC, June 10, 2003. Hon. Condoleeza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the White House, Washington, DC. Dear Dr. Rice: Since March 17, 2003, I have been trying without success to get a direct answer to one simple question: Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address? Although you addressed this issue on Sunday on both Meet the Press and This Week with George Stephanopoulos, your comments did nothing to clarify this issue. In fact, your responses contradicted other known facts and raised a host of new questions. During your interviews, you said the Bush Administration, welcomes inquiries into this matter. Yesterday, the Washington Post also reported that Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet has agreed to provide ``full documentation'' of the intelligence information ``in regards to Secretary Powell's comments, the president's comments and anybody else's comments.'' Consistent with these sentiments, I am writing to seek further information about this important matter. The forged documents in question describe efforts by Iraq to obtain uranium from an African country, Niger. During your interviews over the weekend, you asserted that no doubts or suspicions about these efforts or the underlying documents were communicated to senior officials in the Bush Administration before the President's State of the Union address. For example, when you were asked about this issue on Meet the Press, you made the following statement: ``We did not know at the time--no one knew at the time, in our circles--maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course, it was information that was mistaken.'' Similarly, when you appeared on This Week, you repeated this statement, claiming that you made multiple inquiries of the intelligence agencies regarding the allegation that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from an African country. You stated: ``George, somebody, somebody down may have known. But I will tell you that when this issue was raised with the intelligence community . . . the intelligence community did not know at that time, or at levels that got to us, that this, that there were serious questions about this report.'' Your claims, however, are directly contradicted by other evidence. Contrary to your assertion, senior Administration officials had serious doubts about the forged evidence well before the President's State of the Union address. For example, Greg Thielmann, Director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues in the State Department, told Newsweek last week that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had concluded the documents were ``garbage.'' As you surely know, INR is part of what you call ``the intelligence community.'' It is headed by an Assistant Secretary of State, Carl Ford; it reports directly to the Secretary of State; and it was a full participant in the debate over Iraq's nuclear capabilities. According to Newsweek. ``What I saw that, it really blew me away,'' Thielmann told Newsweek. Thielmann knew about the source of the allegation. The CIA had come up with some documents purporting to show Saddam had attempted to buy up to 500 tons of uranium oxide from the African country of Niger. INR had concluded that the purchases were implausible--and made that point clear to Powell's office. As Thielmann read that the president had relied on these documents to report to the nation, he thought, ``Not that stupid piece of garbage. My thought was, how did that get into the speech?'' Moreover, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has reported that the Vice President's office was aware of the fraudulent nature of the evidence as early as February 2002-- nearly a year before the President gave his State of the Union address. In his column, Mr. Kristof reported: ``I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged. The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. . . . The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted--except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway. ``It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year,'' one insider said.'' When you were asked about Mr. Kristof's account, you did not deny his reporting. Instead, you conceded that ``the Vice President's office may have asked for that report.'' It is also clear that CIA officials doubted the evidence. The Washington Post reported on March 22 that CIA officials ``communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence.'' The Los Angeles Times reported on March 15 that ``the CIA first heard allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger in late 2001,'' when ``the existence of the documents was reported to [the CIA] second- or third- hand.'' The Los Angeles Times quoted a CIA official as saying: ``We included that in some of our reporting, although it was all caveated because we had concerns about the accuracy of that information.'' With all respect, this is not a situation like the pre-9/11 evidence that al-Qaeda was planning to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. When you were asked about his on May 17, 2002, you said: ``As you might imagine . . . a lot of things are prepared within agencies. They're distributed internally, they're worked internally. It's unusual that anything like that would get to the president. He doesn't recall seeing anything. I don't recall seeing anything of this kind.'' That answer may be given more deference when the evidence in question is known only by a field agent in an FBI bureau in Phoenix, Arizona, whose suspicions are not adequately understood by officials in Washington. But it is simply not credible here. Contrary to your public statements, senior officials in the intelligence community in Washington knew the forged evidence was unreliable before the President used the evidence in the State of the Union address. In addition to denying that senior officials were aware that the President was citing forged evidence, you also claimed (1) ``there were also other sources that said that there were, the Iraqis were seeking yellowcake--uranium oxide--from Africa'' and (2) ``there were other attempts to get yellowcake from Africa.'' This answer does not explain the President's statement in the State of the Union address. In his State of the Union address, the President referred specifically to the evidence from the British. He stated: ``The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' Presumably, the President would use the best available evidence in his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. It would make no sense for him to cite forged evidence obtained from the British if, in fact, the United States had other reliable evidence that he could have cited. Moreover, contrary to your assertion, there does not appear to be any other specific and credible evidence that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from an African country. The Administration has not provided any such evidence to me or my staff despite our repeated requests. To the contrary, the State Department wrote me that the ``other source'' of this claim was another Western European ally. But as the State Department acknowledged in its letter, ``the second Western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited.'' The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also found no other evidence indicating that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Niger. The evidence in U.S. possession that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Niger was transmitted to the IAEA. After reviewing all the evidence provided by the United States, the IAEA reported: ``We have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.'' Ultimately, the IAEA concluded: ``These specific allegations are unfounded.'' As the discussion above indicates, your answers on the Sunday talk shows conflict with other reports and raise many new issues. To help address these issues, I request answers to the following questions: 1. On Meet the Press, you said that ``maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency'' that the evidence cited by the President about Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from Africa was suspect. Please identify the individual or individuals in the Administration who, prior to the President's State of the Union address, had expressed doubts about the validity of the evidence or the credibility of the claim. 2. Please identify any individuals in the Administration who, prior to the President's State of the Union address, were briefed or otherwise made aware that an individual or individuals in the Administration had expressed doubts about the validity of the evidence or the credibility of the claim. 3. On This Week, you said there was other evidence besides the forged evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Africa. Please provide this other evidence. 4. When you were asked about reports that Vice President Cheney sent a former ambassador to Niger to investigate the evidence, you stated ``the Vice President's office may have asked for that report.'' In light of this comment, please address: (a) Whether Vice President Cheney or his office requested an investigation into claims that Iraq may have attempted to obtain nuclear material from Africa, and when any such request was made; (b) Whether a current or former U.S. ambassador to Africa, or any other current or former government official or agent, traveled to Niger or otherwise investigated claims that Iraq may have attempted to obtain nuclear material from Niger; and (c) What conclusions or findings, if any, were reported to the Vice President, his office, or other U.S. officials as a result of the investigation, and when any such conclusions or findings were reported. On Sunday, you stated that ``there is now a lot of revisionism that says, there was disagreement on this data point, or disagreement on that data point.'' I disagree strongly with this characterization. I am not raising questions about the validity of an isolated ``data point,'' and the issue is not whether the war in Iraq was justified or not. What I want to know is the answer to a simple question: Why did the President use forged evidence in the State of the Union address? This is a question that bears directly on the credibility of the United States, and it should be answered in a prompt and forthright manner, with full disclosure of all the relevant facts. Thank you for your assistance in this matter. Sincerely, Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this body lost someone very important when we lost Al Davis. We lost a man who helped fix the course of the House Ways and Means Democrats. We lost a man of ideas and a man of data, a combination that is too uncommon. Al was a man of endless information, which the Committee Democrats used to tack and jibe through the political storms that erupt so often in the Ways and Means Committee. Al Davis passed away after 56 years of life. I didn't know him well outside of his briefings, his memos, and his witty analysis but I don't think that anyone had to be particularly close to Al to know how much he cared for those who have the least among us. I now know that he loved to go sailing. Members of Congress are often generalists. Our knowledge is usually a mile wide but only an inch deep. I frequently could not fathom the amount of memory and facts that Al retained. When it came to taxes and our economy, Al Davis increased the depth of my understanding about the issues and how changing public policies would affect working class Americans. Things move fast in the House and in the Committee on Ways and Means. Members often find themselves confronted with complex and multifarious issues, which can be quite challenging. Al was just the type of person that our committee needed. He liked to linger down in his ``engine room'' to make certain that the ship and its crew had all it required. Al was a harbor in a tempest. I could go to Al, and he could, within a few sentences, quickly and easily break down a complex issue for me. Some say that statistics lie and liars use statistics. Al would say that it doesn't have to be that way. Whether it came from the Bush Administration, or elsewhere, Al was not a fan of distorting data for political gain. Recently during President Bush's campaign to sell another tax cut, the President said that his plan would on average cut everyone's yearly taxes by $1,083. As soon as President Bush said that, Al quickly rattled off a memo to me correcting the misleading data that was being used by the President. In the memo, Al said that when Bush refers to the ``average'' tax cut in his proposal, it ``is like saying that every farmer in the nineteenth century got the average of a mule, if a few farmers were given a team of draft horses and most farmers got a small dog, instead.'' I will miss Al Davis. I will miss his talent, his wisdom, and his humor. But I think that most of all, I will miss the trust that Al invested in Ways and Means Democrats. Al trusted that we would use our best effort to honestly employ the information he gave us to improve the well-being of the average American. We'll sail on without Al. But I feel that, at least for a while, our ship is heading into the wind, and against the tide, because we are without our navigator.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. It is like the story about the eight blind men describing an elephant. One is describing the leg, one is describing the trunk, and one is describing the ears. We really do not know what we are going to do tomorrow. They are going to try to come out here and run flim flam on people. ``You are going to get a drug benefit.'' What it is worth, or is it worth anything, people will have no idea. It will just be a line in a campaign ad.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I think you and I came together.