Buck McKeon

Mr. McKEON

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. May I inquire of the time remaining.

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. If the gentleman is prepared to close, I am in strong support of the manager's amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Before this reauthorization even began, I was involved in an innovative, bipartisan effort known as the FED UP project that laid the groundwork by reducing red tape, eliminating outdated rules, and streamlining Federal financial aid programs. The late Representative Patsy Mink and I joined together to solicit input from the higher education community to increase the effectiveness of our Federal financial aid programs by cutting through the red tape and regulations. We did this because over the years, colleges and universities have become subject to an increasing level of Federal regulation. Unfortunately, when new regulations are layered on top of the old, we often end up with duplication and confusion. Today, as we contemplate another set of new programs, regulations, and requirements, I believe we need to renew that commitment to less red tape. That's why I am proposing a comprehensive study of the regulations that impact higher education. Under my plan, the National Research Council will undertake a governmentwide review to identify regulations that are duplicative and unnecessary. Particularly in a bill with so many duplicative and unnecessary new programs, there is a danger that we may be exacerbating the college cost crisis by burdening colleges and universities with excessive new reporting and compliance costs. With this study, I hope we can move in a different direction. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. We are discussing all four amendments at this time en bloc?

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I support the amendments, with a couple of caveats. The Inslee amendment, while we are not objecting to this amendment, we do have some concerns about the consequences of the amendment. The requirement that these sustainability grants provide for greenhouse gas emissions reductions will increase operating costs for colleges and universities. If that happens, the result will be still higher tuition and fees for students at a time when we're trying to lower the cost of the higher education. And some comments on the Susan Davis amendment. I appreciate the amendment. I served with Mrs. Davis on the Armed Services Committee, and I appreciate her efforts. There are some questions that I do have. First, what her amendment does, it says that an individual that is serving on active duty during a war, performing qualifying National Guard duty during a war, military operation or national emergency and is serving in the area of hostilities in which service qualifies for special pay, I'm hopeful that that includes everyone that we're trying to reach in the service, and I'm not sure that that is totally inclusive for what she's trying to cover. And then the next concern I have is that the borrower must have obtained their loan through the government-run direct loan program. Currently, the direct loan program only provides about 20 percent of the loans, so that would mean that if one of these military personnel got their loan through one of the other programs, they would be excluded from this. I believe her intention would be to grant this benefit to all serving in the military in wartime. So I'm hopeful that we can clean that up, make changes in that during the conference, because I believe that that's probably her intent on that. And, finally, I would like to also say to my good friend, Mr. Kildee, the 10 years have gone quickly. But he looks just as young as he did 10 years ago, and I appreciated working with him then, as I do now. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, this amendment essentially requires a feasibility study on market mechanisms that could then be used to determine lender returns when making student loans. Had we not just adopted an auction process for student loans in the recently passed budget cutting bill, this might make sense. This amendment may be couched in terms of a study; however, it's difficult to see how the Secretary would study something like this without actually implementing a broader pilot, and that is the main concern that we have. The Department of Education conducted a market mechanism study several years ago with the GAO and others. That extensive study did not find auctions to be a workable mechanism for administering the student loan program. Taking another look several years later may have shed new light on the subject. We need the Department to focus on the creation and evaluation of this auction before we decide to push for studies or implementations of other auctions. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, it pains me to oppose the amendment of my good friend from Wisconsin. We've served now on the Education Committee together for almost 16 years, and he's always concerned about protecting the taxpayer and the taxpayer dollars. I think that I'm not so concerned about the study. It's the way the amendment is drafted that looks like it will impose the full program before the study so that the study could be made complete. And I understand that auctions are taking place all the time, but they're not generally done by the Department of Education. They're done by the Department of the Treasury and other branches. I'm not sure the Department of Education has that expertise. But as we move forward on this, hopefully, maybe in conference, this could be cleared up and the intent of the gentleman could be carried out. That would be my hope. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I yield the remainder of my time to the subcommittee ranking member of Higher Education, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller).

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. McKEON. And we have the right to close?

Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON

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

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I likewise support the amendment, and I thank the gentleman for presenting it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of mine safety and in opposition to this bill, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. The men and women who work in and around our Nation's mines are often unrecognized for the integral role they play in powering our country. These individuals work hard, in difficult and often dangerous conditions, to unearth the raw materials that each of us relies upon in our day-to-day lives. While mining is inherently dangerous, there are steps we can take to mitigate that risk. For that reason, mine safety has been an ongoing priority both legislatively and within the context of oversight. Although our commitment to mine safety is constant, we also recognize that new mandates from Washington translate into major changes within the operation of our Nation's mines. For that reason, we do not and we must not take a piecemeal approach to mine reform. Rather, we should develop thoughtful, comprehensive consensus reforms, and then give those reforms a chance to work. I am pleased to say that we did just that less than 2 years ago. In 2006, Congress passed the MINER Act which required MSHA to revise its penalties, increase penalties for major violations, undertake several studies regarding mining practices, and work to improve the technology for communications underground. The MINER Act received strong bipartisan, bicameral support. It was backed by both industry and labor, and its reforms were understood to be the most significant in a generation. With the MINER Act, we called on the mining industry to overhaul itself, to develop and implement new technologies, and to comply with strong new protections that were to be developed by the experts. This type of transformation cannot take place overnight; but let there be no doubt, change is well under way. Mr. Chairman, I fear that with this bill before us, we run a very real risk of derailing that progress and returning to square one on many critical mine safety issues. H.R. 2768 ignores the safety guidelines being developed through expert research and review, and replaces them with arbitrary new mandates established by Congress. This bill makes an end run around the regulatory process, shutting stakeholders out. Simply put, the S-MINER Act abandons the mine safety momentum of the MINER Act and sends us back to the drawing board. I appreciate Chairman Miller's concern about the dangers faced by our Nation's miners, and I share his desire to see strong reforms in place that will promote safety. That is why Republicans will offer a substitute amendment that would accomplish exactly that. The Wilson/Kline amendment will balance successful implementation of the 2006 MINER Act with a number of mine safety enhancements. I look forward to supporting that amendment when it is offered, because it provides a real opportunity to promote mine safety without backing away from the progress that has been made. In addition to the Republican substitute, we will consider a number of other amendments today, including one to be offered by Chairman Miller. I would be remiss, however, if I did not point out the rather transparent political expediency of one portion of that amendment. Included in the Republican substitute is a proposal to implement mandatory drug testing within the mining industry. A similar proposal was offered by the late Charlie Norwood, our colleague from Georgia, who was a stalwart on this issue. The ravaging impact of drug abuse among miners came into sharp focus this past weekend, when the front page of the Washington Post carried a story of miners who struggle with addiction to pain killers. We believe that mandatory drug testing is the most effective and, indeed, the only way to immediately address the prevalence of drug abuse that is putting miners' lives at risk. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, however, appear to have discovered the devastation of drug abuse among miners only late yesterday afternoon. At that time, several hours after the deadline for submitting amendments, the chairman was permitted to resubmit a revised version of his manager's package that included a hastily drafted study of drug abuse among miners. While this amendment may offer a fig leaf now that the issue of drug abuse can no longer be ignored, it should not be mistaken for a legitimate attempt to deter drug abuse in the way that testing would. Mr. Chairman, the S-MINER Act is fundamentally flawed. It brings the progress of the 2006 MINER Act to a jarring halt, creating instead a package of new prescriptive mandates from Washington. The bill imposes $1 billion in unfunded mandates on the mining community, placing the jobs of miners in jeopardy. This bill is the wrong answer at the wrong time for our Nation's miners. There is a better way. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, the S-MINER Act was first introduced nearly 7 months ago. It was voted on in the Education Committee more than 2 months ago. Yet in all this time this bill has been under consideration, the critical issue of drug testing was not inserted until the second try on the manager's amendment, submitted after yesterday's deadline. Forgive me if I am skeptical that we would have been given the same opportunity to revise our amendment at the last minute if we had sought to do so. Nevertheless, the amendment now before us replaces the previous version of the legislation, and it deserves our thorough review. I want to thank Chairman Miller for recognizing some of the flaws in the S-MINER Act and attempting to address them. The amendment includes some modest improvements, including an extension in the timeline for installation of the new generation of fire-resistant conveyor belts. At the same time, I am troubled by the proposal to limit the ability of mine operators to comply with breathable air requirements. With the ongoing backlog of the SCSRs, the breathing device required in mines, today we demand mine operators to, at a minimum, offer a purchase order to demonstrate their effort to comply with the requirement. By preventing mine operators from producing proof of SCSR purchases as evidence of compliance, this amendment could push mines across the country out of compliance, despite their proven effort to comply with the requirement in the only way possible. What would the penalty be for the Nation's mines being deemed noncompliant? Would these mines be shut down, leaving miners without work? What possible rationale could there be for threatening mine workers' jobs as they struggle with today's economic pressures just because there aren't companies that have the ability to produce these required instruments? Similarly, but perhaps even more troubling, the amendment imposes the same backwards logic on the new requirement for possible refuge chambers. On the one hand, it mandates that mines have these refuge chambers in order to operate. On the other hand, it makes clear that mines which purchase the chambers but through no fault of their own must wait for them to be manufactured, will be unable to operate without this very specific and widely unavailable product. The majority knows that portable refuge chambers will have a production backlog of years. They also know that in being so specific as to mandate portable refuge chambers with no alternative, this provision guarantees that mines will be shut down while waiting for the product to be manufactured. I don't know if that is the goal, to shut down mines, but that will be the net result. On the issue of drug testing, while I question the last-minute addition of this proposal, I appreciate the belated acknowledgment that drug abuse in the mining community is a significant problem that demands action. Unfortunately, this amendment offers little in the way of action. Instead of immediately implementing a drug testing program, this amendment calls for a study. We don't need a study to tell us whether drug abuse is a problem in the mines. All you need to do is pick up the front page of The Washington Post Sunday edition and read about it. At this time I would like to submit this article, written by Nick Miroff, into the Record. You will see the pervasiveness of this problem. [From the Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2008] A Dark Addiction (By Nick Miroff) Tazewell County, VA.--The crowd is gathering early in the dirt parking lot outside the Clinch Valley Treatment Center, the only methadone clinic within 80 miles. Third in line, Jeff Trapp smokes Winstons in his pickup, watching the cars turn off the highway and settle behind him, tires crunching on cold gravel, headlights glaring. It is 2:45 a.m., and Trapp has been awake for two hours. The clinic does not start dosing until 5. Like Trapp, many of the patients who filled the lot one recent morning have jobs at far-off mines that start at 6 or 7. They sleep upright in their vehicles, slumped against the steering wheel, dressed for work in steel-toed black boots and coveralls lined with orange reflective strips. Dark rings circle their eyes where the previous day's coal dust didn't wash off. ``Everybody you see here works,'' says Trapp, his smoke- cured voice a low rumble. A $14 plug-in heater from ``Wally'' (Wal-Mart) whirs on the dash. ``Ain't no spongers. No loafers,'' he says. Work in the mines hasn't been as good as it is now in a generation. With per-ton prices doubling in the past six years, Virginia unearthed about $1.6 billion worth of coal in 2006, much of it to feed the growing energy demands of the Washington region. Wages are up, bosses are hiring and rookie miners can start at $18 an hour--a small fortune in a region where, as Trapp says, ``if you ain't working in the mines or in the prisons, you don't make money.'' But it is a boom clouded by drugs. Nearly a decade after OxyContin slammed into southwestern Virginia and much of Appalachia, the abuse of prescription painkillers in the region is worse than ever, police and public health officials say. Publicized efforts to crack down on drug dealers and manufacturers through tougher street-level enforcement and tighter prescription regulations have failed to curb the crisis, and the result is a quiet catastrophe unfolding largely out of sight, in private bedrooms and isolated trailers far from the drug war's urban front lines. A record 248 people died of overdoses in Virginia's western region in 2006, more than those who died from homicides, house fires and alcohol-related car accidents combined. That was an 18 percent increase from 2005 and a 270 percent increase from a decade ago, state medical examiner records show. The problem is most acute in Virginia's poorest rural areas, and it is not limited to miners. In 2006, accidental pain pill overdoses killed more people in Tazewell County (pop. 44,000) than in Fairfax County (pop. 1.1 million). In Wise County, where Trapp lives and the per capita income is $14,000 a year, the fatal overdose rate for pain pills was 13 times those of Loudoun and Fairfax counties. ``The abuse and misuse of painkillers is the worst I have seen it in the 16 years I have worked narcotics in this area,'' said Lt. Richard Stallard of the Big Stone Gap police department. He is director of the Southwest Virginia Drug Task Force, which operates in Dickinson, Lee, Scott and Wise counties. His officers made 442 arrests through the first nine months of last year, an 86 percent increase from the same period in 2006. In what is perhaps the most troubling sign of the problem's intractability, the single deadliest drug in the region in 2006 was the same one being legally distributed to addicts through treatment clinics such as the one Trapp visits: methadone. A large black market has emerged for the drug, which is supposed to treat addiction or chronic pain with less risk than OxyContin and other oxycodone-based opioids. But methadone was linked to 78 deaths in western Virginia in 2006, and experts say that whatever ground was gained against the illegal use of OxyContin is being lost, engulfed in a widening circle of abuse that extends to painkillers, antidepressants and other prescription drugs. Round-the-clock security is posted at Clinch Valley Treatment Center, a two-story cement building along Route 19 that was once a hamburger restaurant. It serves almost 1,000 patients, drawing them from steep-sided mountain ``hollers'' and tiny coal towns such as Dante, Dungannon, Honaker and other places where the winter sun casts long shadows but little light. Every morning before sunup, Trapp drives 120 miles--from his home in Coeburn to the clinic and back--stopping once for coffee and gas at the Double Kwik in Lebanon. He has been going for two years, trading this dependency for the $600-a- day oxycodone habit that made his nose bleed and his wife cry. He is 54, with a pale moustache, a four-pack-a-day wheeze and the drained, sallow expression of someone who has not slept in a long time. When the clinic doors open at 5, the crowd streams into the warm hallway, squinting in the indoor light. Trapp hands over $12.50 at a payment window, then lines up at another window for his dose: 80 milligrams of liquid methadone, mixed with juice in a little white cup. He must gulp it down quickly and get back on the road. His boss expects him at 6:30. ``This methadone makes you feel like a human being again,'' Trapp says. With disability rates as high as 37 percent in coal-mining areas such as Buchanan County, the region has many people with long-term pain management needs. As is the case with lots of aging miners, Trapp's addiction to pills began in a doctor's office, not a back-alley drug deal. ``Busted-up'' from 30 years working as a heavy-equipment operator and mechanic on the massive excavators used for strip mining and mountaintop removal, Trapp needed multiple surgeries to fix seven ruptured and herniated discs. Doctors wanted to implant a magnesium rod to stabilize his spine, but Trapp refused. ``I've known too many people who've done it, and they can't tie their shoes,'' he said. So Trapp loaded up on painkillers, first Percocet and later OxyContin. When the prescribed dose no longer did the job, Trapp took more. Then more. He began ``doctor shopping,'' driving to Roanoke and Richmond to find physicians who would give him prescriptions. When the pharmacies couldn't provide enough pills, Trapp found dealers who would. Friends were melting oxycodone tablets and injecting themselves--``bangin' OCs''--but Trapp was too squeamish to mess with needles. He crushed the tablets and snorted them like cocaine off his kitchen table. He didn't feel high, just ``good.'' The relief was instant. ``I got hooked on those bad boys real bad,'' he says. But when Trapp didn't have pills, the withdrawal symptoms left him ``sick as a dog'' and bedridden. ``Every muscle in your body craves it,'' he says. ``You can't sleep, can't eat. It's like the flu, but 10 times worse.'' In two years, Trapp put $60,000 of his retirement savings, maybe more, up his nose. His daughter begged him to get help, as did his wife, Sue, who works as a shift manager at a Hardee's and as a guard at Red Onion State Prison, the supermax facility where sniper Lee Boyd Malvo is being held. Trapp was ``wormed over'' after three days into involuntary withdrawal when his wife took him to a clinic to get help in 2005. He couldn't walk, and he couldn't hold up his head. He began taking methadone that week. Foreman Gary Boyd steers through the tunnels of Pioneer Coal No. 1 in a low-rise electric cart, sloshing across channels of cold, muddy water. His nickname, Stork, is stenciled on his scuffed plastic helmet, and a slug of dipping tobacco bulges in his lower lip. ``The good Lord put me on this Earth to be a coal miner,'' he says, ``and I can't think of nothing I'd rather do.'' He ducks slightly when the ceiling height drops to 40 inches. A bearish man with a soot-streaked beard, Boyd stands well over 6 feet tall outside the mine. But underground, in a 3\1/ 2\-foot ``low coal'' operation such as this one in the mountains near Vansant, VA, Boyd mostly works on his hands and knees, crawling like an infant. He and the other men spend the entire shift, sometimes 12 hours or more, without ever standing up. Compared with the large, corporate-owned mines that use the latest technology and enforce tighter safety codes, Pioneer No. 1, the company's only mine, is a mom-and-pop affair, run by a single operator and a 10-man crew. It extends horizontally into the mountain through a maze-like network of wide, low tunnels, and a red plastic sign along the access road outside reads ``AMBULANCE ENTRANCE.'' With narrower profit margins, small-scale outfits such as Pioneer, often known as ``dog holes,'' typically pay less and don't offer benefits such as health insurance. But for miners who have been fired from corporate mines for drug violations or other infractions, smaller mines, which must still meet state safety standards, are a good fallback. The ``face,'' where Boyd's crew was working that day, was a half-mile into the mountain. A massive grinding machine called a continuous miner chewed at the coal seam with a spinning, snaggle-toothed steel cylinder. Water seeped from its mouth and trickled from its sides to cool the metal teeth and keep the dust down. The greasy, jet-black rock came off in chunks onto a conveyor belt. As the machine worked, the tunnel walls cracked and groaned under the shifting pressure of the mountain. Crew members scrambled to stabilize the roof with wooden posts, wedging them into place with hammers. ``You're as safe as you would be in your mommy's arms--if you watch what you're doing,'' Boyd said. He checked a hand- held meter every few minutes to measure carbon dioxide, which is poisonous, and methane, which can explode. Flecks of coal dust swirled in the yellow beams of the miners' headlamps. Drug use by miners who snort or shoot up underground has been a growing cause for concern among state regulators, and a law approved last year in the General Assembly imposed stringent drug-testing policies. All newly hired miners must be screened, and random testing requirements have increased. Those who fail risk losing their miner's license. The impact of the new policies was immediate. ``I can't find nobody to work,'' said Noah Vandyke, 60, a lifelong miner who runs Pioneer Coal. ``The younger generation, you can't hardly find one that will pass a drug test.'' Since the new testing policy went into effect in July, Vandyke has lost eight crew members who were fired because of drugs or quit, possibly to avoid having their miner's license revoked for a ``dirty'' urine sample. ``Every family in the area has been affected by drug abuse,'' Vandyke said, ``and it ain't just coal miners.'' In recent years, two of his sisters have died because of drugs, and two brothers, both injured miners, are deep in the grip of addiction. Unlike some operators, Vandyke is known as a boss who will not turn a man away for trying to get help at the methadone clinic. One of those is his on-again, off-again ``scoop man,'' Jeff Vandyke, who shuttles coal inside the mine in a huge, spoon-shaped electric cart. The two men are not directly related--Vandyke is a common name in the area--but their lives have been intertwined since the elder miner gave the younger his first job underground 15 years ago. Like Noah, Jeff Vandyke, 34, grew up in Buchanan County near the town of Grundy. With his horizons blocked by the mountainsides, he found a new world underground. ``There's nothing like coal mining,'' he said. ``You know that nobody else will ever go where you're going. Just the people in that mine, that day.'' The mines led Jeff Vandyke to another love: drugs. He got his first prescription for OxyContin after a rock fall accident that left him with broken ribs, shoulder damage and spinal injuries. Disabled and addicted, he thought he could get away from drugs by leaving, so he moved with his brother to Arizona and got a job as a trucker. Soon they were buying pills along the Mexican border, 1,000 at a time, he said. Methamphetamine kept them awake, and OxyContin kept them high. By 2003, Jeff Vandyke was back home and drifting deeper into addiction. He lived for more than a year in a broken- down trailer with the electricity, water and heat cut off. He spent most of his days on a couch in the dark, stirring every few hours to warm the air under his blankets with a propane camping stove. The crippling pain and nausea of withdrawal pushed him to get help. He drives to a Kentucky clinic for a two-week supply of liquid methadone and says he has been clean for three years. He and his girlfriend, Daisy Ratliff, live with her two sons in a trailer with a thick coal seam visible on the hillside in their back yard. She has brightened the black lockbox where Vandyke stores his methadone with stickers of hearts, stars and red letters that spell ``I LV U.'' ``My truck's paid off,'' Vandyke says, his long, blond hair tucked under a camouflage cap. ``I've got four bows, three shotguns.'' He takes time off from the mines in the fall to hunt deer, grouse and squirrel for winter meat. And yet, some of the damage from his drug years can't be undone. Vandyke's father no longer speaks to him, and he and his brother haven't said a word to each other in nearly two years, ever since he said his brother shot at him with a .38 and tried to steal Ratliff's car. ``I'll probably never get off methadone because of the shape I'm in,'' said Mick Wampler, a disabled coal miner who lives in a small room at the end of a narrow hallway in his sister's house. Wampler, 47, started working in the mines four days after his 18th birthday. His mother needed the money after floods wiped out the family's home in Haysi, VA. But he never had the nerves for it, he said, and the sight of accidents sent him over the edge. He watched one friend lose an arm to a rock hauler and saw another electrocuted by a 900-volt mining cable. Wampler began taking Valium just to go underground. ``A lot of people are scared on the job,'' he said. ``They'll use alcohol, anything.'' After falling off a loader and breaking his leg, Wampler got a prescription for oxycodone. A diabetic, he had needles, and shooting up was easy. Soon he was hooked on high-potency Fentanyl patches, ripping them in two to wring out the drug, which he would cook up with vinegar and inject through the veins in his feet. ``It was as good as heroin,'' he said. He dabbled in that, too. Years of negative publicity about OxyContin have made doctors wary of it and other oxycodone-based drugs, local health officials say, but records show that sales of the drug have increased. In 2006, 746,901 grams of oxycodone were distributed for retail sale in Virginia, nearly triple the amount sold in 1999, according to the Virginia Department of Health Professions. Although sales have slowed since 2001, they increased 9 percent from 2005 to 2006. Police in the region say pain pills are entering Virginia from other states, even Mexico, where they can be casually bought along the border. They can also be ordered on the Internet through shady online pharmacies. The familiar schemes remain popular, too. We can't stop people from going doctor shopping,'' Tazewell Sheriff H.S. Caudill said. ``We need a nationwide program to check if John Doe has already been to another pharmacy.'' Doctors, meanwhile, have been giving out more methadone than ever. From 1999 to 2006, the amount of methadone distributed for retail sale in Virginia jumped from 30,531 grams to 146,479. An underground market for illegally diverted tablets and liquid doses is thriving. ``When we had problems with OxyContin being diverted, doctors started prescribing methadone,'' said Martha Wunsch, a researcher who has a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study southwestern Virginia's drug deaths. Wunsch says that methadone in pill form, not the liquid version legally distributed through addiction clinics, is to blame for the bulk of fatal overdoses. In one study, she found that more than half of all fatal overdose victims had legitimate prescriptions for methadone tablets. On its own, methadone can't deliver a ``high'' like oxycodone or other opiates, so users combine it with anti- anxiety drugs such as Xanax to intensify the effect, creating a toxic, often fatal, cocktail. Prescription pills have surpassed marijuana as the top drug of choice for new drug users nationwide, according to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. ``There's not much to do around here,'' said Jeremy Lowe, 22, a miner who got hooked on Lortab (hydrocodone) after breaking his hand in an accident a year ago. Now he is one of the patients who wait in line at the methadone clinic every morning. ``A lot of my friends who went off to universities ended up coming back home and getting hooked,'' he said. ``It's like it's fashionable to do drugs.'' To many, the growing traffic at the Clinch Valley Treatment Center has made it a shameful symbol of the region's drug problem. Several Tazewell officials want to shut the center down or force it to move, seeing its for-profit business model and treatment mission as a conflict of interest. According to the clinic's policy, patients can buy methadone as long as they want; detoxification is voluntary. The clinic's counseling staff members say that many patients need to be on some sort of drug to cope with severe, long-term pain and that methadone has made them functional. And for those who lack insurance or access to more personalized care, it is often the only affordable option. ``We need to change the way people look at successful drug addiction treatment,'' said the clinic's director, Sterlyn Lineberry. ``Are we reducing harm to the individual? Is the person working? Taking care of their family?'' Wunsch, who used to run a methadone clinic in the region, says the biggest problem is the lack of state and federal support for more comprehensive treatment programs. And powerful stigmas persist. ``A lot of people in southwest Virginia believe this is a moral weakness, not a public health problem,'' she said. Jeff Trapp knows people who have died from methadone but no one who has gotten off it the hard way. He has tried to decrease his dose, but the cravings come back every time. So instead, he drives. Trapp sets his alarm for 12:30 a.m., waking after a few hours of sleep, and gets dressed in a dark room. His boss does not like that he goes to the clinic, and even less that it has made him late to work, and has threatened to fire him. In the kitchen, Trapp makes coffee with the light low. There is a plastic bin above the cabinets to catch the rainwater where the roof leaks, and a picture of his wife at her high school graduation hangs on the wall. He carries another photo of her riding a motorcycle. She weighs 95 pounds, but she's a tough lady, he says. When Trapp starts the pickup down the driveway at 1 a.m., the dogs stand on the doorstep and watch him go. Last year, he put 60,000 miles on the pickup, a 1993 Chevy. The road signs say his route is a designated scenic byway, the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, but Trapp drives it in the dark, and there is nothing to see. ``I don't want to be dependent on doing this every day,'' Trapp says. He could get permission for a two-week take-home supply of methadone, if he wanted it. He hasn't had a dirty test yet. But does he trust himself? No. So instead, he drives. ``I don't want that temptation on me,'' he says. ``I'd probably drink two bottles just to see how it felt.'' He opens the window a crack to light another Winston, watching the shoulder for deer. When a car passes him on the left, Trapp recognizes the vehicle. He has seen it before, parked outside the clinic. There seems to be no hesitation in this body about implementing mandatory drug testing for Major League Baseball. Yesterday, Members on both sides of the aisle spent more than 4 hours examining the question of drug abuse among baseball players. I don't know what the danger is there. I hate to see records broken by somebody because he's taken drugs, but the danger underground in mines of somebody using drugs is really a real live danger. One area on which everyone seemed to agree was on the need for mandatory drug testing for the ballplayers. Yet for our Nation's mine workers who risk their lives by entering the mines, we propose only a study. We need to protect these miners now. That means testing and nothing less. Mr. Chairman, this amendment includes some modest improvements. It makes other changes that are ill defined that create new unanswered questions, and it makes some changes that could actually worsen the bill. On the whole, this amendment, like the S-MINER Act itself, remains an unnecessary diversion from the bipartisan, widely supported mine safety reforms enacted in 2006 through the MINER Act. I oppose this amendment because I continue to oppose the underlying bill. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McKEON. I am happy now to yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline), the ranking member of the committee, such time as he may consume.

Mr. McKEON

Mr. McKEON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Since the 110th Congress was gaveled into session, not a single bill within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Education and Labor has been considered under an open rule. Sadly, today's bill is no exception. Nonetheless, I do want to thank the majority for making the Republican substitute in order. I believe the S-MINER Act is fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed with discrete amendments. As such, anything short of the Republican substitute will only result in cosmetic changes to a bill whose flaws run much deeper. Each of us recognizes the importance of mine safety. The individuals who work in mines supply the energy that powers this Nation. Their job is dangerous, yet vital, and keeping them safe is critical. Our commitment to mine safety is nothing new. In fact, it was nearly 2 years ago that we first took up the MINER Act in an effort to implement the most comprehensive reforms to mine safety in a generation. That bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support as well as the backing of both labor and industry. The MINER Act was signed into law just a year and a half ago, and already it is producing major changes in the operation of our Nation's mines. The law included an aggressive implementation timetable, and the mining community has acted quickly to embrace the law and make its required changes. Our committee has monitored implementation of the MINER Act in order to ensure it is quickly and effectively put into place. There should be no question about our commitment to mine safety. Yet, here we are today to consider a bill that in many ways ignores the progress that has been made. At best, the S-MINER Act is premature. The 2006 MINER Act has not yet been given the chance to take root, with many of its reforms still being developed by MSHA and those in the field. At worst, the S-MINER Act could actually derail ongoing progress by sending regulators and the mining community back to square one on many critical safety issues. I would like to quote from an article published by the Lexington, Kentucky Herald-Leader by Rick Honaker, Mining Foundation distinguished professor and chairman of the University of Kentucky department of mining engineering: ``But now it seems very strange, almost incomprehensible, that a move is afoot in Congress to impose an entirely new set of requirements on coal mine operators and mine inspectors even before there has been an opportunity to comply with the far-reaching provisions of the MINER Act. It threatens to disrupt the all-important emergency rescue provisions of the law. Simply put, additional legislation now serves no useful purpose.'' Madam Speaker, Republicans have developed an alternative to the S- MINER Act that we believe strikes the appropriate balance between strengthening mine safety and maintaining the widely supported reforms enacted less than 2 years ago. First and foremost, our substitute underscores the importance of the MINER Act reforms and restates our commitment to seeing them implemented fully and forcefully. In addition to supporting these strong reforms, our substitute goes further to protect miners by allowing them to be full participants in the safety process. During the Education and Labor Committee's consideration of this bill, Representative Kline offered an amendment that would have taken meaningful steps to enhance mine safety, without jeopardizing work already under way. That amendment, like our substitute, would empower miners by directly engaging them in the development of safety policies and procedures through the formation of safety teams. Currently, nonunionized miners may be prohibited from working with management to promote safety through teams. To further protect miners, our substitute would enhance the MINER Act reforms by fostering communication between MSHA and the Bureau of Land Management; studying the conditions the next generation of miners will face with deep mine conditions, as well as fostering a better understanding of retreat mining using pillar removal; and clarifying information dissemination in the event of a tragedy. Lastly, we would implement a testing program for illegal substances. This would not only protect those in the mines, but also identify miners who are struggling with addiction and in need of help. The States of Virginia and Kentucky have already implemented this safety measure, and miners have been protected because of it. Madam Speaker, I cannot help but notice that the amendment offered by the distinguished chairman of the committee also includes a provision to address the issue of drug abuse among miners. I also cannot help but notice that this provision was inserted at the very last possible minute, several hours after the deadline for amendments to the Rules Committee. I hope this 11th-hour acknowledgement of the crippling problem of drug abuse among miners is a signal of genuine interest in addressing the issue. Unfortunately, by providing only a study rather than a strong testing program like that called for by Republicans, this gesture rings hollow. Madam Speaker, although the rule makes in order a strong Republican alternative, it remains flawed because it allows consideration of a bill that should not pass. The S-MINER Act abandons bipartisan mine safety reforms and replaces stakeholder expertise with bureaucratic Washington mandates that threaten mine workers' jobs. I urge a ``no'' vote.