Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

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

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

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. What is fascinating about this whole thing, as I started out by saying, it is more of the budget follies. Now my colleagues come out here and they say, oh, but they are now telling us at CBO that it is really going to be good in the future. That is what my colleagues said last year. Last year they said, $5.6 trillion in the bank. We can count on it. And they spent it all. And they are now in the hole. I do not know, it is as though they have an addiction. They cannot stop spending. Yet if they are going to spend, why do they not spend to fix up the schools of this country? If they care about public education, why not use that money for fixing up public schools? No. We are going to give it to people so that they can leave the public school system. We are going to use the public money so that people can leave it and go find a better school and somehow their kids are going to do better. Now, the real myth here is that this helps ordinary people. Ordinary people living paycheck to paycheck do not have money to put aside in an educational fund. So we are right away talking about people at the top. If we look at who is losing their jobs today, it is pretty scary, whether it is in WorldCom or Enron or any one of the dot-coms or at the Boeing Company or any of these other places. These people do not have the kind of money to put into an educational account. This is a tax break for people at the top who have 5 or 6 grand laying around and say, well, I can put 2 grand into this educational thing and Charlie can use it when he goes to college or when he goes to the private school next year. My Republican colleagues also defined this so loosely that yes, some of the money does go to people on the bottom. You can buy driver's education with it, you can buy Internet access for your kid, you can buy anything you want; as long as you call it an educational expense, it can come out of this money. The reason there are surprises in here, like my friend from Texas says, we never had any hearings. That is why we do not know what is in the bill.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. McDERMOTT. My impression is that we have done this at least twice before. And the Senate always rejects it, because the emphasis should be on public schools.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

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. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to sit on the Committee on Ways and Means with the smartest chairman we have in the entire history of the Committee on Ways and Means. He sat out here and lectured us about the fact that we had not picked up off the Web this 340-page bill that was sent to us at 6:53, right in the middle of the discussion of the homeland security bill. What we were supposed to do was get an e-mail from Diane Kirkland. You all know who she is; she is very familiar to all of you. This e- mail says, go and get a link and get this bill. And the chairman stands over there with that haughty look and says, you were not smart enough to know where to look for the thing that I hid. Vote ``no.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this has been an amazing night. First, the President gets the Homeland Security bill he wants, and now he has the fast track bill he wants. As I was listening and watching the first, and now reading the second a little bit, I thought of a quote. ``Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.'' Now, does that sound familiar to what is going on here tonight? This is an historic bill. When Members return in September, they will give back their voting cards and get a rubber stamp, and they can stamp approve, approve, approve, anything the President wants. The President is going to bring a trade bill here, and Members are going to get a chance to stamp approve; or not approve. Why do I worry about that? Let me tell Members. Let us look at his record. It is not as though he is an amateur who just wandered on the scene. This man signed a law for $180 billion worth of farm subsidies, which fly in the face of our international commitment to reduce trade- distorting subsidies. Those subsidies drive down the price of agricultural goods, and seriously impair the efforts of developing countries to cultivate their own means of food production. The President has imposed WTO noncompliant steel tariffs, which have exacerbated our problems with Europe. Despite NAFTA and WTO, the President has slapped the Canadian softwood lumber with 30 percent tariffs. The President has withdrawn the United States from the ABM treaty. This is the man that Members are giving the right to go out and negotiate for them, and all they have is their stamp ``approved,'' or not. That is what Members are going to get. That is the participation of Members. Members are yielding up their rights fully to this man. If Members feel comfortable with that, they can jump up and vote ``aye.'' This President walked away from the Kyoto treaty. I have several pages of what he has done in the international arena. This is the man who sat on the stage with the President of Brazil and after he made some comments, the Brazilian President said, ``We consider him an amateur.'' Mr. Speaker, we are giving an amateur the right of the American people to decide what happens to child labor, what happens to our economy. Vote ``no.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as a physician I must stand against H.R. 4965. This bill bans a legitimate medical procedure and jeopardizes the lives of thousands of childbearing women. Supporters of H.R. 4965 claim to ban only a certain kind of abortion procedure that they happen to find offensive. However, the language of the bill is purposefully vague and would ban multiple types of abortion procedures. Further, this bill fails to provide a viability line for the fetus, so certain abortions that occur during the first two trimesters would be prohibited. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled on Carhart v. Stenberg. It decided that any ban on so-called ``partial birth abortions'' must contain an exception for the mother's health. But this bill does not provide any exception to protect the health of the mother. This is the fifth time in seven years that the Congress has considered this legislation. H.R. 4965 is merely used as a political instrument to inflame the abortion debate through heated and graphic rhetoric. Republican leadership has brought this bill before the House in an effort to grossly mischaracterize abortions in this country. Mr. Speaker, I can tell that it must be the silly season again, because this bill is about nothing other than election-year politics. Several reputable medical organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Women's Association oppose this ban. Even the American Medical Association has withdrawn their support. We should not be interfering with the very personal, ethical, and medical decisions made between a patient and a doctor. The Supreme Court specifically recognizes a woman's right to choose a safe abortion under the principles of Roe v. Wade and I will not support any bill designed to erode that fundamental right.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on today's suspension bills. Had I been capable of voting, I would have voted in support of H.R. 3482, Cyber Security Enhancement Act; H.R. 4755, Clarence Miller Post Office Building Designation; and H.R. 3479, National Aviation Capacity Expansion Act.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as the current Co-Chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian American, I note with great sadness the recent death of Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of The Reliance Group, India's largest and most profitable company. Dhirubhai Ambani began his illustrious business career as a small trader of fabrics in rural Gujurat. Over the next half decade, he transformed his small business into a diverse economic powerhouse which included vibrant businesses in petrochemicals, petroleum, polyesters, telecommunications, securities and cutting edge technologies. Unlike many older Indian businesses, however, Reliance chose a new path on its ascendancy to becoming a Fortune World 500 Company, and Dhirubhai Ambani was the architect of Reliance's success. Dhirubhai Ambani chose not to keep his businesses as a family concern. Instead, he floated equity shares and thereby allowed millions of middle-class Indians to join with him in enjoying Reliance's decades of economic success. Indeed, there are now more than three million investors in India's largest and most widely held company, which is also the largest exporter from India, as well as the largest private sector source of revenue to the Indian government. Mr. Speaker, Dhirubhai Ambani was a legend in India. He was also a role model for entrepreneurs around the world, as well as having served as a shining example of India's economic potential. I am confident that all of the Members of the India Caucus join with me in expressing our sympathy to the entire Ambani family. In particular, we send our heartfelt condolences to his widow, Kokilaben Ambani, and her two sons, Mukesh and Anil, who have assumed the helm of India's largest economic vessel. Dhirubhai Ambani's legacy is large, but his sons will continue to build on their father's many achievements.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to be in Washington, DC today. As a result, I was unable to vote on the National Construction Safety Team Act (H.R. 4687). Had I been capable of voting, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) for bringing this issue and for taking the time to take the trip to Barcelona and go to the conference. One of the striking things this morning was looking at the newspaper clips and finding that the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States of America was booed off the stage. When you look at that, you ask yourself, why is it that we, the strongest, the most wealthy, the most advanced, the most scientifically creative country in the world is booed off the stage of an international conference on a world plague? I think that it is important for us to think about what role we in this country have played. We have not taken our rightful leadership. There has not been an international conference in the United States since this Congress passed the Helms-Burton amendment some years ago, which excluded from this country anybody who has AIDS. If you have AIDS, you are not supposed to be able to get into this country. Now, the statement we made to the world with that particular amendment from this Congress was that somehow coming in here you are bringing something that is not already here. AIDS is in this country. As we have already heard from previous speakers, like my friend from North Carolina, it is the leading cause of death among young black men in this country, and it is a leading illness among Hispanic women in this country. We in this country have a problem that we have not dealt with. This Congress has not put money into the kind of prevention and education programs that we ought to be doing for young people in this country. But that statement of the Helms-Burton amendment said to the world, you have got the problem, do not bring it over here. Clearly, this was not looking at our own position. Now, the reason that conference in Barcelona was so important is that it is starting to talk about more and more advances of treatment and more and more complicated illnesses being found. There is all kinds of research there, but one must not lose sight of the fact that education and prevention still are the best hope for the world. We can have retroviral therapy, and we want that, and we should push the drug companies, and we should do everything possible, but administering those drugs and monitoring them, and it is as somebody described it, savage therapy. It is tough treatment. It is not an easy regimen. It has only so much effectiveness. The real thing we have to get is people educated and aware of their own status. That is not expensive. If we would spend the money for the diagnostic tools that we have available and developed in this United States by USAID, we could make it possible for everyone to know their status. So at least they would know whether or not they were passing it on to their partner. But we do not put our money where our mouth is. We say we want to do things for the world. We go and we make speeches, we put up a little bit of money, and then we double-count it so it looks like more. But the fact is, the United States is not putting up their fair share. Kofi Annan asked for an enormous contribution, said how much would be necessary, and the United States put up a pitiful amount. Our contribution is something like 0.1 percent of our gross domestic product. The Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch put up 0.2, 0.3 percent. Why can these little countries do that and we, the country with all the resources in the world, not put the money into the Global AIDS Fund that Kofi Annan has set up, or through our USAID? Or there are many ways in which we could put that money out there, but it requires a commitment. Now, thanks to the work of people like the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald) and other Members of the Congress, the devastation that is occurring in Africa is now much better understood than it was 10 years ago. I remember in 1991 having lunch with the President of Zambia, Mr. Kaunda, who said, what will I do with 500,000 orphans? Today, we are dealing with those orphans worldwide. And if we do not do something about it, it will not be 500,000, it will be millions and millions and millions of orphans. We must do more.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the House is now throwing themselves as fast as they can at developing a homeland security plan. Somehow, however, we have forgotten half the problem. The problem of the external dangers we all know about, but Pogo, the cartoon character, once said, ``We have discovered the enemy, and he is us.'' We forget what the internal threats in this country really are. What we have watched on Wall Street is threatening the homeland security of all of us, our pensions, our health care, the economy, and whether we can retire. All those issues are in danger because of, as some of my colleagues say, a few bad apples. In Washington State, where the apple is really the symbol of the State, we know if you have a bad apple in the barrel, it can ruin the whole barrel. The American people recognize that the barrel has bad apples in it, like the leadership of Halliburton and the leadership of Enron and the leadership of Harken and the leadership of all these companies. Maybe we should throw some of those apples out of the barrel.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman very much for yielding to me. I am pleased that she has called this special order today. Of the lady from Wisconsin, from the day she ran, do not, they told her, do not run on universal health care. She ran on it, anyway, and she is here. That tells us something about what is out there in this country. The American people know that there is really no excuse for what is going on in this country, and my colleague from California (Ms. Lee) just gave us the statistics about the unfairness and the inadequacy of our health care system in this country. I think the fact that we are the richest country in the world and that 72 percent of the uninsured are from a family where somebody works full time, and, in fact, 13 million or 16 percent are in a family where two people work full-time and still do not have health insurance is simply a disgrace to this country. I know there are people out there who say, well, it is going to cost so much money and we cannot handle it. Let me tell my colleagues what the real facts are, because a lot of what we will hear and see in advertisements is simply misleading. Today, the United States spends $1.2 trillion on health care. That averages out to $4,350 a person. The average in the next 29 industrialized countries in the world, Sweden, Norway, France, Japan, Australia and so forth and so on, the average is $1,760. We spend $4,350. They spend an average of $1,760. Switzerland, which is the next one below us in amount of expenditure, only spends $2,853, about 60 percent of what we spend, and none of those people have the problem we have in the United States that a person can be bankrupted by an illness or an injury at any time because we do not have health assurance of insurance. We take care of people, oh, yes, we do. We take care of them in the emergency room, in the absolutely most inefficient way, when they have had a major catastrophe, no prevention, in an attempt to deal with it when it is a small problem. But when it is a catastrophe, they come into the emergency room. We see the strokes, the heart attacks. We see all of the things that could have been dealt with by medication for blood pressure or heart medication, a variety of other things. Low birthweight children in this country. We spend a quarter of a million dollars on a child that is born at two or three pounds. If we had taken care of that young woman during the time the child was being developed, we would have had a normal child without the expenditure of a quarter of a million dollars. We could have done it for nickels and dimes. So it is simply not that we do not have enough money in our health care system, it is that we spend it inefficiently and very wastefully. A recent article in Health Affairs highlighted that most of the money for health care comes from, where do my colleagues suppose? Government spending. Either through direct expenditures of Medicare and Medicaid, but also through public employees' health benefits and tax breaks offered to businesses that give insurance. That means that $720 billion out of the $1.2 trillion that we spend every year, remember that, $1.2 trillion, and $720 billion of it is tax-financed. That is about 60 percent. More than half is presently paid for by the government. $213 billion comes from Medicare. That is about 18 percent of the spending. $186 billion is for Medicaid, which is 15 percent of the spending. $65 billion is spent on public employee benefits between Federal and State and local people, and then there is $110 billion worth of tax subsidies to businesses to provide health insurance for those companies that do it for their employees. If they do not, of course they do not get the benefit. When we take that, that is over $2,600 that we spend on average in this country from the government. The average, remember, in industrialized countries is only $1,760. So we already spend more money in our country from the government than they spend in any country in the world. So then the question we ask ourselves is, why, if we spend that much money and we still have forty some million people without insurance, how can this be? What is going on? We have the best technology in the world, the best physician training. Doctors come from all over the world to train here. We have the most advanced services in the world. Those are good things. So we have good things for our money, and then what do we pay for it? Well, we pay for the profit of a myriad of health care companies and two groups, I think, deserve special attention. One is insurance companies. Every time there is an attempt to deal with a health insurance program for the country, we suddenly see the insurance companies throwing millions of dollars out there as they did when Mrs. Clinton in 1993 and 1994 tried, they spent $110 million advertising at the American people that you do not want the government to get into your health care. We are in health care. We are paying 60 percent of the bill right now. The insurance companies get 15 percent or more for their overhead costs. Medicare, for example, the government program, gets 1 percent, 1 percent; insurance companies, 15 percent. So right there we have got heaps of dough. We have got way more than $100 billion right there that we waste on insurance company overheads, and then they have to take away a profit, of course. So we have got all kinds of ways. The argument that they help control costs may have worked in the mid- 1990s, but they do not hold up today. Premiums have increased 50 percent in the last 5 years and are projected to go up as much as 15 to 20 percent per year in the foreseeable future. So the insurance companies, everybody says, well, oh, they are so efficient and they are so creative and the private sector can do all this. They are not doing a thing. It is totally out of control. The second place that we spend more money than we need to is with drug companies. They are the single most profitable industry in this country. We have seen recently two companies that have had to go back and kind of recalculate because they were playing with the numbers a little bit, but the profit margin as an industry has been 16 percent. If we put money into the drug industry, we can get 16 percent a year. That has been the average over the last few years. On revenues of about $200 billion a year, they make money. Do not ever listen to their crying. They are right out there. They had a fundraiser for the Republicans the other day. The president of a British company, his pharmaceutical company came in, laid down a quarter of a million dollars, and they said, well, if you are going to lay down that much, why do you not be chairman. They raised $30 million. If my colleagues do not think that affects what goes on the floor of this House, they do not understand how this place works. The argument that they need these profits to continue research into new drugs is very questionable, not when so much money for the development of the drugs has been done by the Federal Government itself through the National Institutes of Health and the government pays for the trials and everything else. They spend three times as much on marketing as they do on research and development. Every time a person opens the newspaper and there is a full-page ad that says if you feel this in your stomach, you should go to your doctor and get X, Y, Z drug, that is where that advertising is going. They are direct-advertising to the American people. The people then go to the doctor and say, well, I should have that drug I saw in the newspaper, it is right there, here is the ad, doctor. That costs us money. Whether that is necessary or not, they are doing advertising just like selling cars and Coca-Cola and new clothes and whatever. They are just like every other company and they are using three times as much. Do not forget that, three times as much for advertising as they spend on research. They always say, well, if we clamp down on our profits, we will not have any money to develop any more new magic drugs. Nonsense. They are taking us for a ride. I think it is time, and I think the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Baldwin) is absolutely correct in bringing up the issue again of a universal health care plan for this country. We should have health insurance that can never be taken away. We can do it a lot of different ways. I have one plan that I have been pushing for 10 years, but there are other ways to do it. Why do we not say in Medicare, if you are 50 years old, between 50 and 65, you can buy into Medicare. If you get laid off by your company or you get an early out for retirement or whatever, you can buy into Medicare. It is a good deal and you have guaranteed coverage. My brother is, I forget, 56 or 57. He is at Boeing. Boeing's laid off 30,000 people. My brother's 57 years old and he is going to go out and he is going to find insurance as an individual? How? Do my colleagues know how much it costs? Most people cannot afford it even when they are working to buy an individual policy. That is why we buy group policies, but to do it on an individual policy, on our own, when a person is unemployed, is simply not possible. So why not let my brother buy into Social Security early or buy into Medicare early? Or we could say, let us start with all the children and we could work our way up. There are many ways to do it. It is simply what is lacking in this House is the will to do it. We know it can be done. It is done all over the world, and yet when it comes to this issue, we will not look over and see how the Germans do it or how the Canadians do it or how the British do it or how the Australians do it or the Japanese. We say no, our way is the best way, and we have got 44 million people without health insurance and we have got people bankrupted all the time. It is a disgrace, and we must begin to work on this, and I commend the gentlewoman for bringing this issue to the floor.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record an article from yesterday's New York Times by Paul Krugman called ``Succeeding in Business.'' The reason I do this, we have a lot of Members coming here and talking about what is happening with business and the President, and this article told us what was going to happen today. As we watch the news about what President Bush said, remember this: ``George Bush is scheduled to give a speech intended to put him in front of the growing national outrage over corporate malfeasance. He will sternly lecture Wall Street executives about ethics and will doubtless portray himself as a believer in old-fashioned business probity. ``Yet this pose is surreal, given the way top officials like Secretary of the Army Thomas White, Dick Cheney and Mr. Bush himself acquired their wealth. As Joshua Green says in The Washington Monthly, in a must-read article written just before the administration suddenly became such an exponent of corporate ethics: `The new tone that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness. In this administration, enriching oneself while one's business goes bust is not necessarily frowned upon.' ``Unfortunately, the administration has so far gotten the press to focus on the least important question about Mr. Bush's business dealings: His failure to obey the law by promptly reporting his insider trading. It is true that Mr. Bush's story about that failure has suddenly changed four times, but the administration hopes that a narrow focus on the reporting lapses will divert attention from the larger point: Mr. Bush profited personally from aggressive accounting identical to the recent scams that have shocked the Nation. ``In 1986, one would have had to consider Mr. Bush a failed businessman. He had run through millions of dollars of other people's money, with nothing to show for it but a company losing money and heavily burdened with debt. But he was rescued from his failure when Harken Energy bought his company at an astonishingly high price. There is no question that Harken was basically paying for Mr. Bush's connections. ``Despite these connections, Harken did badly. But for a time it concealed its failure, sustaining its stock price, as it turned out, just long enough for Mr. Bush to sell most of his stake at a large profit, with an accounting trick identical to one of the main ploys used by Enron a decade later.'' Mr. Speaker, surprisingly, Arthur Andersen was the accountant. The ploy works this way. Corporate insiders create front corporations that seem independent but are really under their control. This front buys some of the firm's assets at unrealistically high prices, creating a phantom profit that inflates the stock price, allowing the executives to cash in their stock. That is exactly what happened at Harken. A group of insiders, using money borrowed from Harken itself, paid an exorbitant price for a Harken subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum. That created a $10 million phantom profit which hid three-quarters of the company's losses in 1989. White House aides have played down the significance of this move saying $10 million is not very much compared with recent scandals. Indeed, it is a small fraction of the apparent profits Halliburton created through a sudden change in accounting procedures during Dick Cheney's tenure as chief executive. But for Harken's stock price and hence Mr. Bush's personal wealth, this accounting trickery made all the difference. Mr. Bush was on the company's audit committee, as well as on the special restructuring committee. And back in 1994, another member of both committees, E. Stuart Watson, assured reporters that he and Mr. Bush were constantly made aware of the company's finances. If Mr. Bush did not know about the Aloha maneuver, he was a very negligent director. In any case, Mr. Bush certainly found out what his company had been up to when the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered it to restate its earnings, so he cannot really be shocked over recent corporate scams. His own company pulled exactly the same tricks, to his considerable benefit. Of course what really made Mr. Bush a rich man was the investment of those proceeds from Harken in the Texas Rangers, a step that is another equally strange story. The point is the contrast between image and reality. Mr. Bush portrays himself as a regular guy, someone ordinary Americans can identify with, but his personal fortune was built on privilege and insider dealings, and after his Harken sale, on large-scale corporate welfare. Some people have it easy. Mr. Speaker, this is the man who went down there and said we are going to clean this thing up. We are going to have a task force on corporate fraud. The fox went down to the chicken house and said to the other foxes, hey, I know how to run this hen house, and I am going to show you. This guy, can we expect him really, really, after that story, and this is not me talking, this is a columnist for the New York Times. Mr. Speaker, most people who watch television tonight will see about 19 seconds of the President saying, I am going to be tough on corporate fraud. They will think it is for real because they will not know the story behind the man, what he really did. That is why I took the time to come down and read this. I feel like an old-fashioned news reader on television. Now everything has to be snap, snap and Americans never learn what is really going on. This President is running a game on us, and the pensions and investments of people are at risk as long as he refuses to put people on the SEC to stop it. The article previously referred to is as follows: [From the New York Times, July 7, 2002] Succeeding in Business (By Paul Krugman) George W. Bush is scheduled to give a speech intended to put him in front of the growing national outrage over corporate malfeasance. He will sternly lecture Wall Street executives about ethics and will doubtless portray himself as a believer in old-fashioned business probity. Yet this pose is surreal, given the way top officials like Secretary of the Army Thomas White, Dick Cheney and Mr. Bush himself acquired their wealth. As Joshua Green says in The Washington Monthly, in a must-read article written just before the administration suddenly became such an exponent of corporate ethics: ``The `new tone' that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness. . . . In this administration, enriching oneself while one's business goes bust isn't necessarily frowned upon.'' Unfortunately, the administration has so far gotten the press to focus on the least important question about Mr. Bush's business dealings: his failure to obey the law by promptly reporting his insider stock sales. It's true that Mr. Bush's story about that failure has suddenly changed, from ``the dog ate my homework'' to ``my lawyer ate my homework--four times.'' But the administration hopes that a narrow focus on the reporting lapses will divert attention from the larger point: Mr. Bush profited personally from aggressive accounting identical to the recent scams that have shocked the nation. In 1986, one would have had to consider Mr. Bush a failed businessman. He had run through millions of dollars of other people's money, with nothing to show for it but a company losing money and heavily burdened with debt. But he was rescued from failure when Harken Energy bought his company at an astonishingly high price. There is no question that Harken was basically paying for Mr. Bush's connections. Despite these connections, Harken did badly. But for a time it concealed its failure--sustaining its stock price, as it turned out, just long enough for Mr. Bush to sell most of his stake at a large profit--with an accounting trick identical to one of the main ploys used by Enron a decade later. (Yes, Arthur Andersen was the accountant.) As I explained in my previous column, the ploy works as follows: corporate insiders create a front organization that seems independent but is really under their control. This front buys some of the firm's assets at unrealistically high prices, creating a phantom profit that inflates the stock price, allowing the executives to cash in their stock. That's exactly what happened at Harken. A group of insiders, using money borrowed from Harken itself, paid an exorbitant price for a Harken subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum. That created a $10 million phantom profit, which hid three-quarters of the company's losses in 1989. White House aides have played down the significance of this maneuver, saying $10 million isn't much, compared with recent scandals. Indeed, it's a small fraction of the apparent profits Halliburton created through a sudden change in accounting procedures during Dick Cheney's tenure as chief executive. But for Harken's stock price-- and hence for Mr. Bush's personal wealth--this accounting trickery made all the difference. Oh, the Harken's fake profits were several dozen times as large as the Whitewater land deal--though only about one- seventh the cost of the Whitewater investigation. Mr. Bush was on the company's audit committee, as well as on a special restructuring committee; back in 1994, another member of both committees, E. Stuart Watson, assured reporters that he and Mr. Bush were constantly made aware of the company's finances. If Mr. Bush didn't know about the Aloha maneuver, he was a very negligent director. In any case, Mr. Bush certainly found out what his company had been up to when the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered it to restate its earnings. So he can't really be shocked over recent corporate scams. His own company pulled exactly the same tricks, to the considerable benefit. Of course, what really made Mr. Bush a rich man was the investment of his proceeds from Harken in the Texas Rangers-- a step that is another, equally strange story. The point is the contrast between image and reality. Mr. Bush portrays himself as a regular guy, someone ordinary Americans can identify with. But his personal fortune was built on privilege and insider dealings--and after his Harken sale, on large-scale corporate welfare. Some people have it easy.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I am here to speak on behalf of guys with white hair, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), and me. The gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) used to play the game with us all the time; and we knew she knew who we were, but she would play like she did not. But her sense of humor and her ability to reach down into people's souls really makes the difference. Many Members come here and we all think or we all try not to lose touch with where we came from; but there is no question, when the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) speaks on this floor, there is no question that she has not forgotten where she came from or the people around her, who they were, and what they struggle with. Her voice has been a consistent and solid voice for the people in this society we try to give a hand up to, but the gentlewoman from Florida would never let us get away with just trying. She insisted that we do it. We are going to miss her, and they are going to miss her. All of us are going to miss her coming up the aisle saying, ``the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Moran.'' We are going to miss her a lot.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the Republican candidate for President several years ago proudly voted against Medicare. The former Speaker, Mr. Gingrich, said that he hoped that Medicare would wither on the vine. Many of us wondered what he really meant. Today, in the Committee on Rules, we found out the truth. A gentleman from Georgia on the Committee on Rules said that there are two proposals before us today, the Republican proposal and a Soviet-style program. When pressed, he said we all know Medicare is a Soviet-style program. There is where we are. The Republican plan is a plan to privatize Medicare, first by doing the drug benefit and then extending it into the rest. It is a Trojan horse designed to get rid of Medicare, and everybody who votes for that bill today will be setting that in motion. My mother, my colleagues' mothers, their grandfathers, their fathers, they do not want Medicare to wither on the vine; but this House is prepared to prevent us from giving even an alternative to the American people. That is what Soviets do.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I always am impressed by the chairman of the committee's use of words. He said that we are out here because of the exigencies of circumstances. What he means is, we made a mess and we got to fix it. It is a mess that did not have to happen. Mr. Speaker, I refer to an op-ed of Sunday, February 11, 2001, by Robert Rubin that is called A Prosperity Easy to Destroy. It says in short: The proposed tax cut of roughly $2 trillion--$1.6 trillion of tax cuts plus $400 billion of interest on debt that would otherwise have been retired--would substantially diminish the fiscal position of the Federal Government, and would create a serious threat of deficits on the nonentitlement side of the Federal budget. This was all predicted in February of last year. We came out here, and we have been told, ``You can spend all you want, you can give it all away, you can do all these things.'' He actually even predicted that there would not be any money for a prescription drug benefit. Ha. Mr. Rubin knew very well. He is the guy that brought us out of the mess that you created between 1980 and 1992. Two Republicans, Mr. Reagan, Mr. Bush, they dug the hole, we dug us out of it, and now you are back into it and you call it the exigencies of circumstances. Why do you not admit you have made a mess? You cannot get the votes for your prescription drug benefit because it is inadequate and everybody knows it. You are privatizing Medicare and you are trying to hide this debt raising right underneath the prescription drug benefit. If you are lucky and you can squeeze the votes out of your people, the press tomorrow will talk about Republicans pass inadequate drug benefit. They will never mention this business about the mess you created fiscally in this country. You ought to be ashamed of yourself bringing it out here like this. The article referred to is as follows: [From the New York Times, Feb. 11, 2001] A Prosperity Easy To Destroy (By Robert E. Rubin) I had not intended to get involved in the public debate on fiscal policy at this point, but I feel so strongly that a tax cut of the magnitude proposed is a serious error in economic policy that I felt a need to speak. The proposed tax cut of roughly $2 trillion--$1.6 trillion of tax cuts plus $400 billion of interest on debt that would otherwise have been retired--would substantially diminish the fiscal position of the federal government, and would create a serious threat of deficits on the non-entitlement side of the federal budget. That, in turn, could increase interest rates and recreate the loss of consumer and business confidence associated with the deficits of the late 80's and early 90's. Over the last 20 years, our nation has seen the benefits of fiscal discipline, and also the adverse consequences of a lack of fiscal discipline. Big tax cuts are a fast way back to deficits and economic stress. From these experiences, there are lessons that should guide policymakers. First, we gain greatly when our nation is clearly committed to budgetary discipline and lose greatly when it is not. Second, it is wise to be prudent--we should avoid committing ourselves to dramatic courses of action that are hard to reverse in the face of the inherent uncertainties of any projections. Third, we have a duty not to pass on burdens to the next generation when we can act today. The size of the proposed tax cut fails all these tests. Instead, the fiscal discipline that was so central to the remarkable economic conditions of the past eight years is the best path for both our short-term and long-term economic well-being. A brief look back can provide very useful guidance for going forward. In 1992, the unemployment rate was over 7 percent, the fiscal deficit was $290 billion and projected by the Congressional Budget Office to grow to over $500 billion in 2001 from there, the federal debt had quadrupled over the preceding 12 years and was projected to double again by 2001, and the prevailing view was that economic conditions would remain mediocre well into the future. The economic transformation that followed included massive job creation, rising incomes, low inflation, unemployment now at 4.2 percent, and today's large current and projected surpluses. Many factors contributed to this transformation, including globalization, new technologies, vast corporate restructuring and our flexible labor and capital markets. But I think there is no doubt that key and indispensable to this was the restoration of fiscal discipline, beginning with the deficit reduction program of 1993. Just how dramatic a change in economic policy this was is evidenced by the vituperativeness of opposition, with strident prediction of vast increases in unemployment and recession. Instead, fiscal discipline contributed greatly to lower interest rates and, very, very importantly, restoration of confidence by consumers and business after deficits had come to symbolize a much broader set of concerns about our ability to manage our affairs. The result was increased demand; increased investment, especially in the new technologies; increased productivity; and sustained growth in gross domestic product, jobs and incomes. We are now in the process of unwinding the excesses that, in my view, inevitably develop after an extended period of good times. To minimize the difficulty and duration of that unwinding and to best realize our very favorable longer-term prospects, we should continue with our hard-won fiscal discipline and not adopt a greatly outsized tax cut that seriously threatens the federal government's fiscal soundness. There is broad agreement amongst virtually all mainstream economists that a tax cut this year is unlikely to provide meaningful economic stimulus to deal with whatever adverse circumstances may occur this year. Moreover, if a tax cut is desired for short-term stimulative purposes, the vast preponderance of the one proposed--which affects later years--is largely irrelevant. Instead, a front-end-loaded, moderate tax cut, or even a special rebate aimed at working people with the highest propensity to spend, would maximize current economic impact. The point would be to achieve increased short-term demand without causing a level of fiscal deterioration that would, on balance, damage confidence. The serious threat of the proposed tax cut to fiscal soundness becomes apparent when you look at the numbers a little more closely. The surplus of $5.6 trillion as projected by the C.B.O. is roughly $2.1 trillion after deducting Social Security and Medicare surpluses--as many members of Congress in both parties have advocated--and making realistic adjustments to better represent future spending on current discretionary programs and tax revenues. Since the proposed tax cut would cost $2 trillion, or $2.2 trillion if an alternative minimum tax adjustment is included, it would entirely use up the remaining surplus, with no additional debt reduction. And that leaves nothing for special programs that already have broad support, like a prescription drug benefit or a greater increase in defense spending for a missile defense system, or other purposes or additional tax cuts, all of which are almost sure to happen this year or over the next few years. These spending increases and the additional tax cuts could well cost between $500 billion and $1 trillion, leading to a deficit under this analysis of the C.B.O. projections. Moreover, five-year budget forecasts, to say nothing of 10- year forecasts, are highly unreliable--just look at the forecasts that were made five or 10 years ago. Thus, even if you favored a very large tax cut as the preferred use for available surplus--which I emphatically do not--even a moderate degree of prudence would suggest waiting a few years to see whether or not the projected surpluses are actually occurring, meanwhile paying down debt. That would also be in plenty of time to deal with any concerns about the uses that might be made of the surplus after the debt is retired. The suggestion that tax cuts could be rescinded if projected surpluses don't materialize seems unlikely politically. The political impetus in Washington is toward tax cuts and spending. Real progress has been made over the past decade toward a political mindset of discipline, but that is always highly vulnerable, and a very large tax cut is a significant step back to the political mindset that produced the deficits and quadrupling of the debt form 1980 to 1992. The imperative for maintaining our fiscal discipline and not taking a risk of losing the current opportunity to retire the publicly held debt of the federal government is increased by the importance of putting the federal government in the best possible position to meet the Social Security and Medicare requirements of future generations, when the federal budget is projected to be in deficit again. All of this is independent of the question of how best to use the surplus available on a fiscally sound basis. My own preference would be to divide this between debt reduction, a more moderate tax cut predominantly favoring middle-income and lower-income people, and special initiatives in important areas like education and health care. Others have different views. But we should all agree that it would be profoundly unwise to seriously risk the hard-won fiscal discipline that has brought so many benefits to our nation. We have had a remarkable eight years after a far more difficult period, including a recession in 1990. We should learn from experience and stay with a landmark change in strategy that worked, not take the path that experience suggests posses a real threat to our economic well-being.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this is a bad bill because there is no assured benefits and there is no set premiums because the Republicans are privatizing Medicare. They are giving this whole benefit to the private insurance companies. Now you have to remember that the chairman of the committee chaired the Medicare Commission and spent an entire year trying to get a voucher system for senior citizens in Medicare. This is his second try. Buried in this bill is the creation of a new private benefit management company or management authority that will handle the HMOs and will handle the private drug plans. Now you think I am making this up, but if you take the bill, and I will bet you there is not a person on this floor that has read page 157, line 16, which prevents the Secretary of HHS from ``interfering in any way with the negotiations between the private drug plans and the Medicare+Choice organizations and drug manufacturers.'' Now what this is saying is that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, whoever that may be, has no ability to stand up for the people of this country, the senior citizens, the 40 million people that count on this program, and negotiate for them. She has to stand back and let the private drug programs and the pharmaceutical companies negotiate. Now, we all saw what happened with Medicare+Choice. Hundreds of thousands of people were lured into HMOs and then were dumped out in the street; 500,000 in my State; and I do not know how many across this country. And you say, well, we did not learn anything from that. We know the private industry will take care of them. So let us give them the drug benefit. You are going to get the same thing, and it is rotten. Everyone should vote ``no'' and vote ``yes'' on the Democratic alternative.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding to me and again applaud his efforts on behalf of senior citizens all across this country. Clearly, if I might piggyback on some of the things that he said earlier, it has been our hope all along that, and I am so pleased he mentioned the number of valiant Republicans who are holding out, who are holding out on behalf of senior citizens all across this country, who implicitly understand that this specific remedy for prescription drugs belongs rightfully under Medicare, where it should have been placed in 1965 at the bill's inception, and it is because of their great courage that they are willing to go against their leadership, which is a difficult thing to do, and to go against the vested interest of the pharmaceutical industry, as my colleague has pointed out, and stand with those seniors in their district who have become refugees from their own health care system, people who have to get in automobiles or trains or buses and travel to Canada in order to obtain the prescription drugs at an affordable price that their doctors have told them they must have in order for their survival. These are the same people that, without congressional action, will have to be making the nightly decision between feeding themselves or taking the prescription drugs that their doctors have said they must need in order to sustain themselves or, in our neck of the woods, either heating their homes in the winter or cooling them in the summer. This is unconscionable. We are a better Nation than that. I commend my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I hope they can resist the unbelievable pressure I am sure that will be brought to bear on them over the next several days to conform with the majority party's desire to bring this program forward. As the gentleman from New Jersey has said, I hope that we bring some benefit forward. My concern, it is one that I have expressed back in my district, is that we have an opportunity to see the plans side by side so that the American public gets to see the opportunity that Congress has presented them as a benefit to deal with the ever-escalating costs of prescription drugs. We have said before on this floor, and it has been well chronicled, that especially when we talk about our seniors, that they are the greatest generation ever and rightfully so. They have been heralded by Tom Brokaw. They have been talked about on countless TV shows, heralded in the movies, in books, in literature. But what they really want is an end to the platitudes and the realization of policy, policy by way of prescription drug relief that is affordable, that is accessible, that is available. The Democratic plan offers that kind of a program to seniors. Perhaps the other side believes that their program is more viable; and, hey, this is a great country and we ought to have room for people to disagree and present their programs, but American citizens ought to know the choices that they have and the difference between the programs. My local paper, the Hartford Current, the other day issued an editorial saying that they thought there was very little difference between the programs. I could not disagree more with that assertion and that this was not a bad first step, something we have heard on this floor from our colleagues. If the Republican plan were to be initiated, it would be a step in the wrong direction. I believe we have to be pretty practical about this stuff, and the paper brought out that they were concerned about costs and a number of issues that they raised with respect to a comparison between the Democratic plan and the Republican plan. Let us be clear about it. We are unabashedly proud of the fact that we believe this should be included under the Medicare program, and we believe it should be included under Medicare because, at its inception in 1965, prescription drugs were not thought to be the problem that they have become today. But clearly this is a benefit that our elderly not only need but richly deserve, and so it makes ever so much sense for it to be included here. I hail from the First Congressional District in Hartford, the insurance capital of the world, perhaps, arguably, the HMO capital of the world as well. And I have talked to the CEOs, and I have talked to the people in this business. The proposal that Republicans have put forward, and I have to believe they have done it in good faith, they have many bright and talented people on that side of the aisle, but this is an underwriter's, an actuary's, a risk manager's nightmare. Aside from setting up obvious adverse selection, the pricing involved in trying to come up with the program like this is out of reach for so many of our elderly and so, therefore, from our perspective, a sham. I commend those on that side of the aisle who have the courage of their conviction to stand up and say this is wrong. It is my sincere hope as a Member that we are going to get to vote on the Republican plan and the Democratic plan. This is what the American public deserves. This is what a democracy is all about. Let the two proposals stand on their respective merits and end all the so-called partisan quibbling by simply and matter of factly putting forward two plans side by each for all of our constituents to examine. Let us not be harried by rules. Let us not have this whole issue cast aside and only one vote that is going to come forward. Let us look at the proposal side by each and then stand up and be counted. Our colleagues on the other side who have resisted going along with a plan that privatizes prescription drugs should be commended, should be supported. But even if Democrats and valiant Republicans on that side who believe with us fail, we should at least have the opportunity in this body to vote on the plans that we believe in, that we have gone back to our districts and talked about with our constituents who are crying out to us for help. The Hartford Current concluded that this issue should be taken up. This is a match that cannot be postponed, because of the ongoing daily needs that so many senior citizens have in this country. So I commend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) again for his outstanding efforts in this area and again thank our colleagues on the other side for at least now having the temerity to bring the issue forward. I disagree with their privatization attempt. I think it is wrong. I think it is an unworkable situation that people in the insurance and HMO industry understand as well; but I do think it is important that we vote this issue up or down and have an opportunity to examine side by side what the programs will offer. And one last thing, because the paper concluded that the costs might be too high. We have gone through a horrific time in this Nation since September the 11th. I commend the President of the United States for bringing this Nation together, for having us focus as communities, as a Nation, calling upon Americans to sacrifice as we move forward. But this Greatest Generation lived through the first day of infamy back on December 7, 1941; and now having lived through a second day of infamy on September the 11th, they should not be made to be the only people making sacrifices here. So when we say there is not the money there to assist these people, that is an outrage. Of course there is the money, and if that means freezing the tax cuts that we have put forward 10 years out, then that is what we should do on behalf of these citizens who have given so much to their Nation. Minimally, we owe them the opportunity to live out their final days in the dignity that we would want for each and every one of our parents. I commend the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me. I think that this is an issue where the question that if I were sitting out there, I listen to all of these people tear this Republican plan apart and ask themselves, why in the world are the Republicans putting forward something that has so many defects in it? I think the truth really is that Newt Gingrich was quite honest when he said once, we expect Medicare to wither on the vine. They never liked the senior health care plan we have in this country paid for through the government. They have always thought it ought to be done by the private sector. They have thought that for 38 years. Now, the reason they have this prescription drug benefit out here is like the old story about the Trojan horse. They came up to the gates of Troy with this horse and everybody inside said, oh, what a beautiful horse. People said, well, the Greeks have brought it over here. It is a gift. So the people from Troy said, well, okay, open the gates and we will bring it in. They brought the horse in and lo and behold, it was hollow and filled with Greek soldiers who took over and captured and destroyed Troy. Now, that is what this whole issue of pharmaceuticals is about. The Republicans want to destroy Medicare as we have always known it and make it under the private insurance industry. What they have done in this bill is to set up two bureaucracies. Right now we have one bureaucracy; it used to be called HCFA, the Health Care Financing Administration. They changed that, they call it CMS now, whatever that is; and they have that over there for the fee-for-services. Then they created something called the Management Benefit Administration over here, and they put all of the HMOs under that; and they put the drug benefit under that. They separate the two and they give these two agencies the responsibility of managing competing ways of delivering health care, but it is not fair. They did not level the playing field. They said to these people over on the private side that they can hire anybody they want at any amount they want to pay them, but over here in the public side they have to use the civil service rules, so this will allow these people to take the best people away, and the whole idea is to set up this competing private sector delivery of health care. I sat on the Medicare Commission for a year, and the whole time they were trying to set up a private health care system. In those days, they called it a voucher. What they were going to do was give everybody $5,400 and send them out to find a health care plan, and then we would not need this public program. We would just dole out the checks at the beginning of every year to the old people, and they would go out into the private sector and look for an insurance company that would give them their health insurance for $5,400. We said that will not work because there are people who are sick and people who are healthy. Some people will get a good program, some will get a terrible program, and what we want is a program for all senior citizens that give all an opportunity to have good benefits. And they said, no, let us just give them the money, and we will give them choice. This is that magic word they throw around, ``choice.'' My mother is 92, and I do not know but there are probably a few members of Congress who have got an older parent. When one is 92 years old, they are not much interested in choice. They just want something they can count on that they know will be there. But Republicans are determined. From Gingrich, for the last 10 years, well, longer than that, 35 years, they have been trying to push us into the private sector because they know how to manage things so well and they are so kind and loving and they take care of us so well. Over the last 3 or 4 years, we have tried to get people to go into managed care. People went into managed care. What happens to them? They close down the program. We have had millions of people lose their benefits in this country. So now it is not bad enough with HMOs. Let us do this to drugs. Let us put the folks into the private sector and let them start out and get a benefit and have it closed down, and then they will have to look around for somebody else. They will not have a benefit because it will not be a guaranteed Medicare benefit. It is a voucher. They are going to give a voucher to people and tell them to find a drug company that will take care of them. And the American people are not stupid. They can see a Trojan horse for what it is. These people have been after destroying Medicare for 35 years, and they are doing it today. My view is that, if we allow that to happen, we will have given away one of the most important programs in this country for economic security. Most senior citizens feel comfortable knowing that they do not have to go to their kids for health care benefits, they do not have to go to their kids and beg to them and say please buy my medication. My mother lives on a small Social Security pension. That is all she has. She has got three boys and one girl. We will help her. But the Republicans will not even count as paying for the drugs in their program what the kids put into it. My mother has to pay it all out of her checkbook. So we have got to go through some shenanigans. We will slip the money to my mother and say, Mother, put this in your bank account and then you go pay for your medications instead of just our paying for it straight. We have to play games to protect our own parents. That is wrong.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the letter from the University of Alabama signed by Dr. Stein, dated 20 June, 2002. The letter referred to is as follows: The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, June 20, 2002. Hon. Robert T. Matsui, House of Representatives, Rayburn Building, Washington, DC Dear Congressman Matsui: I understand that the House of Representatives is considering legislation making permanent certain temporary changes to the pension system that were enacted last year as part of the Portman-Cardin legislation. (The Portman-Cardin provisions themselves have a 10-year sunset provision.) Making the Portman-Cardin provisions permanent at this time is ill-advised and premature, for we do not yet have enough information on its effects to know whether it will advance, or as I believe, harm the retirement security of most Americans. We should at least wait until the evidence on whether Portman-Cardin is helping or hurting is in. The original Portman-Cardin bill was an unwieldy package of disparate measures cobbled together by the pension industry. Although the bill included a few changes that were helpful to average American workers, its critics (of whom I was one) charged that most of its provisions would simply lavish further tax breaks on the most affluent Americans, who were hardly the group of workers most in need of governmental paternalism to help them save for their retirement. The only provision to help lower income workers save for retirement--a modest tax credit proposed by the Democrats--was watered down by House Republicans and is set to expire in the year 2007. (Ironically, this is the only provision that under the proposed Portman-Cardin extender would not be made permanent or even extended.) A benefit supposedly designed for women who return to the workforce late in life applies to men or women, regardless of whether they were out of the workforce, and in any event is only helpful to those few people who can afford to contribute at least $20,000 to their 401(k) plan. Worse still, the bill included several provision (supposedly to reduce regulatory burdens) that all but invite existing plans to reduce benefits for rank-and-file workers, while maintaining, or even improving, them for the owners of businesses and their most highly paid employees. The sponsors of Portman-Cardin dismissed criticism of their bill. Instead, they argued that the bill would provide compelling new incentives for small businesses to adopt and expand their retirement and 401(k) plans. Congressman Portman and Cardin thus contended that the net effect of the bill would be to create thousands and thousands of new plans, whose very existence would benefit middle-class workers. Many of the bill's provisions were so technically complex that their likely impact could only be determined by pension experts. Thus, many in Congress uncritically accepted the lofty expectations of Representatives Portman and Cardin (and industry lobbyists) and persuaded themselves that they were voting for a bill that would increase retirement security for middle-class Americans and in particular women. So far, there is no evidence that the bill has done any of that, but there is evidence that many of the technical provisions are being manipulated by pension planners to allow the most affluent Americans to greatly reduce their taxes and to reduce retirement benefits for middle-class workers. If any legislative action is to be taken now, it should be to scale back Portman-Cardin's one-sided tax breaks for the wealthy, extend and expand the tax credit to help lower income people save for retirement, and to repeal the Portman- Cardin provisions that some firms are using to reduce benefits for middle class and lower-income workers. In any event, it is certainly premature for Congress to make the Portman-Cardin provisions permanent, just one year after their enactment and nine years before their planned sunset. Before taking that step, Congress should at least wait long enough to study the real-world effects of Portman- Cardin, to determine whether it has helped or hindered the average American worker's efforts to save for retirement. Instead of precipitously acting on the important questions of whether to modify, repeal, or make permanent the Portman- Cardin provisions, Congress should ask the General Accounting Office to engage in a study of Portman-Cardin's effects on the retirement security of America's working people. There will be time enough to act when the results of such a study are in hand. Please note that my comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Alabama School of Law Sincerely, Norman P. Stein, Professor of Law. Mr. Speaker, this is the letter that was referred to by the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui). It is always interesting to come into the well of the House on a day like today. We are celebrating baseball victories. And we have a simple one-page bill here. I mean, it is nothing. My mother, my brother, my grocer, the girl who makes my coffee could read this bill and understand what it is about. It makes permanent the provisions of a bill we passed last year. This has been a very interesting procedure we have done over and over again. We passed the bill and then we come into make it permanent the next year; so we get two votes on it. But the letter from the professor in Alabama lays out the case very well for why we should not be extending it permanently. If we realize that 70 percent of what happens for the pensioners in this country goes to the top 20 percent and 42 percent of what comes out of this bill goes to the top 5 percent, we realize whom this bill is for. It is not for ordinary pensioners. It is not for ordinary people or women or people who enter the workforce. This is a bill about giving more to the rich, letting them use the tax policy. And why do they need the repeal today? Mr. Matsui acts as though we should be doing it or that it is a mystery why we are giving it to them now. It is because people who have a lot of money plan way out into the future. Most of us who are living paycheck to paycheck, we do not know where we are going to be in 9 or 10 years, but if someone has $50 million in their family or whatever or if someone makes $150 or $500 million in Enron, suddenly they need time to plan to deal with how they are going to deal with all that money. Those of us who go down and get our paycheck and spend it that month, and wait for the next one to spend it that month, do not need a bill that goes out 10 years into the future. Those provisions would be bad enough if it was not for what has not happened here around the issue of Enron. Enron went in the tank. They manipulated the pensions and the 401(k)s of their employees, and 100 Enron executives recently got more than $300 million in severance pay while the employees suffered devastating losses in their income and retirement packages. Those people at Enron who were working there, all they have left is their Social Security because we got away from defined benefits, and we gave them a defined contribution. We said, here is the money, and they can put it anywhere they want as long as it is Enron stock. When Enron stock went in the tank, they went in the tank. They have no job, no pension, and all they have left is their Social Security. That should be changed, and that is in the substitute of the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui). There was no hearing. When we get on the substitute, Members will say we have never had a hearing on these provisions in the Committee on Ways and Means. Why not? Because we have to protect the people who got all this money, and we have to get their pensions set up, never mind the hundreds of people who lost their money at Enron. The Committee on Ways and Means has never looked at this issue. We have another issue, and that is corporate investments, inversions. Presently when a company moves to Bermuda, the shareholders pay capital gains taxes when they exchange their U.S. shares for the shares in the foreign corporations. But the corporate executives, on the other hand, are not required to recognize accrued gain on their stock options. So again, the ordinary folks, they have to pay taxes; but the corporate executives, they can go over there, and they do not have to recognize it. They flip it over, and away they go. That should be changed. Members will say we have never had a hearing in the Committee on Ways and Means on this issue. That is right. Nobody is going to bother Stanley Tool or anybody else going to Bermuda. That is why this is a bad bill. It has not been considered enough, and we ought to reject the rule and reject the bill and go back and do what needs to be done about corporate governance.