John Mica

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. No, but if we get into these court-ordered recounts, we can go on. We have 67 counties to choose from, and we can continue this for some time. We see some of the problem, particularly this subjective evaluation of ballots after they have been counted several times.

Mr. MICA. The gentleman is correct.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, that is, in fact, what happened, not only in Palm Beach County, but in all of the 67 counties across Florida, that there were large numbers of ballots thrown out. Under our laws in Florida, one cannot vote for two people. Under our laws in Florida, one must indicate who one's choice is on the appropriate ballot. We have many different formats of ballots throughout the State.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, that is correct.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, we use a simple ballot in which you have an arrow with a space in-between and you connect the lines.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is correct. In fact, in Duval County, which is Jacksonville, they had over 20,000 ballots that were discarded, a higher number with a lower population and lower voting number.

Mr. MICA. Well, the purpose of the ballot is the same as the ballot that we have; but let me tell the gentleman from Georgia, I sat in on the review of the ballots in Seminole County, Florida; and I have never in my life seen more ways to check a ballot in my life. It seems like a simple process to connect the lines, but people circle them, they X them, they cross from one to the other, and that is part of the problem we get into with some of these ballots. There are mistakes, and people submit improper completion of ballots, whether they are in my area or in Palm Beach County.

Mr. MICA. No, we do not.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I represent Volusia County, Orange County, and Seminole County, just above Orlando, in central Florida.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. I would tell the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, I do not know if they have. Unfortunately, this adds more questions to this whole process going on in Florida. People want a fair count. They want all the votes counted. As I said, we had on election night a ballot that was valid, at least under the requirements of the congressional and constitutional law and, again, the State of Florida law. We had a recount as ordered by the State of Florida in a close election. That is an official recount. Each county had to certify those votes. We are now getting into a very murky area with, again, these recounts. Some of them I think to date have shown in favor of Governor Bush, and some are yet to be tallied. That is not the question.

Mr. MICA. If the gentleman will yield further, one of the things that concerns me about getting into this subjective third and in some instances fourth count is they are taking a ballot, holding the ballot up, and it may be marked for all Democrat members of different offices or officeholders on the Democrat side, and subjectively saying that since they voted for all and they did not vote for President, this must be a mistake, and count that in the Democrat column. Now, that is not fair if they are doing it for a Republican or for a Democrat. The other thing, too, I am concerned about is the judge-shopping. They are going out to find judges to come up with a decision that they like, but at some point this must stop. Florida law requires that at 5 p.m. tomorrow, and I am glad to see that our Secretary of State Harris is enforcing that law, that that ends the process. We have had a period for a general election, as required by law; a recount, which was done in every one of the 67 counties; and some additional recounts which have already been done and also submitted. But to drag this on and on, tampering with the ballots, coming up with a subjective interpretation, or standing out on the street yelling ``My vote wasn't counted'' or ``My vote should have been counted.''

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I have received information that these demonstrators were paid, a PR firm was paid to make calls to get them out to start stirring this up. It is unfortunate it is being done in this manner. It is unfortunate because a lot of people voted with great sincerity, with great devotion to candidates on both sides. It is also unfortunate because it will further divide this country, and more than anything, this country needs to be unified. We should not be pitting the young against the old, the rich against the poor, one social class or ethnic class against another, we should be bringing people together. There will be, no matter how this is resolved, 50 percent, because this is a close election, of the people who will be disappointed. But we must have a process that adheres to the law, the law of the State of Florida and under the Constitution of the United States. We cannot make a mockery out of the process. Otherwise, not only will we have disappointment, we will have disillusionment with the system. That is what we do not want.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, could the Chair remind those in the gallery that that is inappropriate; that they are represented in the House by their representative, and they should not express their opinion for or against statements made on the floor?

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, is it not appropriate under the rules of the House that those in the gallery not express their favor or disfavor to a statement on the floor by a Member?

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I make a point of order.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), and maybe he could remain. I just want to go over a few points today. I would say to my colleagues that we do have an incredible process in our country. We all get to participate. Election day is an exciting day, and no American can be denied access to the ballot box under our laws. We want to make sure that everyone has equal access to the ballot. There has been a great deal of confusion. Some of it has of course been in my State, even in my locale in central Florida. I have just returned from observing some of the process. In the Florida House of Representatives, I served on the ethics and elections committee and helped write some of the laws that we now work under, and some have been changed since I left there and came to Congress some years ago. But basically, under the laws of this State of Florida, and under the laws and the Constitution of the United States, there is one date set aside for the election of the President of the United States. Just look at article 2 of the Constitution and it is there, the method for electing the President. We all cast our ballots on that date. In Florida, there was a vote taken, and the results of that vote are public record, and it is all submitted through the supervisor of elections to the State Secretary of State. In a close election, Florida law provides that where there is one-half of 1 percent difference, that there is an automatic recount. Neither side has to ask for a recount; a recount is ordered. So in Florida we had under the Constitution and State laws a legal, valid election in which Governor Bush led. We had a recount. The Secretary of State gave them until Thursday at 5 p.m., last Thursday at 5 p.m., each county the right and obligation to submit a recount, and each one was to conduct that, and I believe the Secretary of State even gave some extra time. In my county, we stayed up until 4 a.m. in the morning, and we were the last, Seminole County, to report. All 67 counties in a recount reported under the laws of the State of Florida in proper order. Now we have gotten into recounts of the general election, recounts of the recount, and we are into this sort of fuzzy area. Mr. Speaker, the law, and it has changed since I was in the legislature, allows for manual counts; but unfortunately, there are no guidelines for this. So what I saw over the weekend in these manual counts, even in Volusia County, is sort of disorganized; I do not want to say chaos, but it is sort of recounting the second time by the seat of your pants. And it is somewhat subjective. That is what we do not want in this case. We have two valid counts, and that is what we need to take. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) pointed out that in Palm Beach County there were some 16,000 invalid ballots. We have also documented throughout the State, almost in every county we had invalid counts. So we have two counts. Tomorrow the Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, has very appropriately said she is going to abide by the law of the State of Florida. That is, by 5 p.m. they will certify a count. The three members of our State Canvassing Board, the Secretary of State, now the Commissioner of Agriculture since the Governor recused himself, and one other elections official will serve as the canvassing board, and at 5 p.m. those will be the votes that are counted. Courts can extend this. They may very well do this. But the ultimate decision is up to those three individuals who will be the State certifiers. Finally, let me just make one other point. The only other ballots that will be counted when all this is said and done, according, also, to law, and we must adhere to law, are the overseas ballots, which must be in by Friday at close of business. All the rest of this, dragging people in from Chicago, Reverend Jackson from wherever he comes from, and all these other folks, is just in fact a sham, and it sort of insults the process. I am sorry to see that so many people have ganged in here. We need to follow the law and the procedures, and we will elect a president.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I especially want to thank the chair of the full committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), for his leadership. And I wanted to reach across the aisle and thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and others who have worked so hard in making certain that today we saw this legislation before the Congress. I particularly, as an observer of this process, want to pay thanks to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw). We have 435 Members, but to get something to final passage takes the perseverance and the dedication and commitment. I was in the legislature in Florida back some 20-some years ago, and they talked about saving the Everglades. I have been in the Congress for nearly 8 years, and they have talked about saving the Everglades. This today shows and demonstrates what the persistence of one individual can do and has done. So I salute the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) for his tremendous efforts. I think as we grow older we see how important it is that we preserve the natural treasures around us and certainly the Everglades is a national treasure. So today is an important day, an historic day. But one individual has helped make that possible. So I come to the floor to salute my colleague, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw), again for making what others have talked about a reality.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the House tonight. Many of the Members are curious as to what is going to happen. The House and Congress have a responsibility to pass measures to fund our Government. I do want to say that the two previous speakers on the minority side, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), are not usually part of the problem; they are usually part of the solution. They are conservative and very moderate in their views and also very fiscally responsible, and I applaud their efforts. I worked many times with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), on the balanced budget amendment. I remember coming as a freshman with a gleam in my eye, coming from the private sector saying that we must balance the budget. He, in fact, was one of the leaders on the other side calling for fiscal responsibility. So I do not consider the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) or the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) part of the problem. We do have disagreements on some of the reasons why we are here. The reason why we are here is we have 435 folks. I always joke that my wife and I almost not a day passes, although I love her dearly, been married 28 years and there is only two of us but there is not a day that the two of us do not disagree on something. That does happen. As the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) says, imagine serving in a place where you have 435 class presidents and all of them think they are right; not to mention that we have to deal with another body, the very esteemed Senate that Bob Dole used to say one of the things he enjoyed over there with the Senators is watching paint dry. They sort of take their time in getting things done. That may be the case here, and that was really what the Founding Fathers intended that we do have someone that can look at problems with a longer term and then the House, which is the people's house and immediately responsible, we are all up for election every 2 years and responsive to the people, but we are here because there are differences. Some of them are glossed over by the media and not apparent, and many people in America, my colleagues, are out there just trying to make a living, get their kid through school and pay their bills and make certain that they provide for their future and they do not pay a whole lot of attention until hopefully an election comes up or some major issue, but there are some differences. There are some things in the bill that are unpalatable that are just not acceptable to us on this side. I come from a State, Florida, that has suffered from illegal immigration. In fact, I held a hearing in Fort Lauderdale yesterday and after the hearing I met with Coast Guard officials; and they said, Mr. Mica, we have some news for you and it is not too pleasant. They said the numbers of illegal immigrants coming in to Florida off the coast has dramatically increased. I said, where are they coming from? They said, it is from all over, Chinese, coming in through the Caribbean and the Florida waters, Haitians, Dominicans, South Americans in large numbers. We have a number of countries in South America that are undergoing severe crisis, Colombia. The situation in Panama has been difficult since the United States left there. Ecuador, Venezuela has been destabilized by some of its current government and other problems throughout Latin America. So I think that one of the provisions that has raised some great concern is the President's insistence on granting amnesty to literally millions of individuals. Now, I must also speak from the standpoint of being the grandson of immigrants on both sides of my family, Italian and Slovak immigrants who came here almost 100 years ago, worked in the factories and worked real hard to raise families and did not have any government programs; had to come here in good health; had to fend for themselves and something has gone wrong if, in fact, we do agree to granting amnesty at this time. What a message that would send to so many people abroad. The United States does not pay any attention to its laws. You can come in illegally and you will be granted amnesty and can stay here. It is sad. We have also created sort of a haven and magnet. One of the ladies that I talked to recently at home came up to me and she said, Mr. Mica, I have a neighbor down the street and she is here. She is not a citizen. And she said to me, Mr. Mica, I get less than $500 a month in Social Security. I worked all my life. I am an American. I was born here and the lady down the street is not a citizen, not here in the same manner that others have come here. She gets more payments than I do. She has all kind of benefits and health care and other things that she did not have. Somehow the system has skewed in the wrong direction. But for us to cave in at this point and to go along with the President's demand to grant amnesty to millions of people who are here illegally, it just sends the wrong message. For those who came legally and worked and raised families, were contributing citizens, one of the neat papers I have in my family's little folio is the naturalization papers of my grandparents. I know how much they treasured becoming citizens in a legal manner. Again, we throw a lot of that out the window if we just cave and accept this. What a wrong message we send. Here we are increasing the bipartisan and immigration spending in these bills, but why bother if we ignore the laws that set some parameters and some standards by which you become a citizen in an orderly fashion? Let me say I am a strong proponent of legal immigration. It has made this country great. It is diversity; it is bringing people from all over the world together in a melting pot and allowing people to be their best. To have the best opportunity is something I would never want to diminish in any way. But this is wrong. It is a wrong message. I am sorry we have a disagreement on this; but again, it is something that I think lies below the surface, but also creates opposition at this juncture. There are other serious differences: school funding. Now, all of these differences are not money, and I have to agree with the gentleman who just spoke on the other side, we are spending in these bills more than we would want. Some of us like myself and some of the others who spoke again from the other side are fiscal conservatives, and we want to stay within those limits that we worked for in 1997 to create a balanced budget, to get our Nation's finances in order. Mr. Speaker, one can do amazing things when one has their finances in order, whether it is personal or Federal. It is not that complicated. We just had to limit the amount of expenditures not exceeding the money coming in, the revenues; and we balanced the budget in a short period of time. But we have to stick to that formula. Now, we are very fortunate. The economy has dramatically improved. We have more money coming in. The estimates are somewhere around $240 billion. We do not know exactly how much we are going to spend of that annual surplus. It may be $30 billion, $40 billion, I have heard estimates as high as $60 billion, and some of us on both sides of the aisle disagree with that. But at some point we have to stop the expenditure of that surplus, because then our promises and our pledges to balance the budget that we made in 1997 are meaningless. So there are many people who do not want to go home. They will stay here through the election; they will stay here until the Potomac freezes over and we can put up the Christmas lights and begin that celebration of the holiday, because they do not want to spend us back into deficit. They do not want to spend the surplus. One of the things we have tried to do on our side is come up with a 90-10 formula, that we use 90 percent of the surplus to pay down the national debt. I know one of the hardest things I have when I go home is convincing folks that we have actually paid down a little bit of the national debt. When I leave here, whenever I leave here, I think I am going to look back and say that under my service, and under the service of some of those who were fiscally responsible, we began paying down that enormous debt, and it is not $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Even the previous speakers alluded to the incredible debt we have of money that has been taken out of Social Security, taken out of trust funds, taken out of pension funds, unfunded liabilities. So it is much more. We have just paid down a little tiny bit. But for those of us who feel it is important to be here, to be responsible, to not yield any further on spending, it is another reason to be here. We do have differences. There are people who would spend it all; there are people who have been here who have spent it all. There are differences in Medicare and payments for HMOs. I sat on the floor and heard the debate this week. One of the great things about being here when we do not have a full legislative agenda and running to hearings and all of that is one can actually listen to more of the debate. I thought the HMO debate was quite interesting. I have had folks write me and say, Mr. Mica, I want to address my concerns to you, and one gentleman from Winter Springs, Florida, wrote and said, Mr. Mica, I want to address you and the other dummies in Congress. I thought he had a very good point, because he was trying to illustrate that we are not paying attention to what is happening out there with HMOs. He said, you are arguing about whether I can sue my HMO. He said, Mr. Mica, my third HMO has gone under, out of business. I am concerned I do not have an HMO that I could even sue. And that is part of the problem, is that HMOs which were designed to give broad health care at low cost with a minimum package of benefits have now been forced to go under. But the debate was interesting. Some from the other side say, we are paying HMOs too much money. Part of the debate here also is how much in this final bill that we do pay HMOs. We have HMOs that are closing, they are closing for our seniors, they are closing in rural areas. They are not closing because they are making too much money. Some folks on the other side said, well, they are getting huge amounts of money. Well, part of the debate here is over whether we pay them 1 percent or somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 percent. I would venture to say that if someone is going under, it is not because they are making too much money. Some HMOs are for profit. We also heard accusations that executives of HMOs were getting huge fees, and that may be true in some cases. We also heard the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson), who came up and said, I hate to tell my colleagues, but my HMOs in Mexico are all not-for-profit, run by various churches, Catholic and other churches, so they are not getting too much money in her State. They need the funds to survive and to provide health care. Mr. Speaker, we cannot have people forced out of nursing homes. There have been record bankruptcies in nursing homes in this country. We cannot have people forced in rural areas not to have health care provided. Now, it would be nice, in one of the motions to instruct, to require HMOs to provide service forever and ever, but that does not happen. It does not happen in the real world. HMOs, whether they are not-for- profit or for-profit, if they do not meet the bottom line, they will fold. So we have a responsibility to make certain that these health care service providers, whether it is home health assistance, which is so important; whether it is hospitals, nursing homes. Again, not-for- profit or for-profit, HMOs do require our attention. There has been agreement on almost all the points, although I know there is a disagreement on the lawsuit point, but I can tell my colleagues that as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service for 4 years in the Congress, I oversaw the largest health care plan in the country, the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program. It serves 4.2 million Federal retirees and employees. I will tell my colleagues, I watched that program, and partly under my tenure, the President came up with a so-called Patients' Bill of Rights, or patients' protection proposal. We conducted hearings on that, and I lined the folks up and said, well, what is the patients' protections going to do? What medical benefit is there going to be to it? No one could testify to a medical benefit. This particular proposal did not have a lawsuit element in it. But each of them testified that there is no specific medical benefit. What we saw happen is that the President, by Executive Order, which he does so often, instituted that on the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plans. There were almost 400 to choose from before he imposed these new regulations and requirements and paper work and reporting on them, and that has dropped dramatically the last I heard, 60 or 70 had dropped out, because again, when we impose more regulations, more costs to deliver the health care, some of these marginal providers will not be able to perform. What was interesting too is we saw dramatic increases, almost double digit, when the private sector was having 4, 5, 6 percent Federal employees, including Members of Congress have been getting close to double digit increases. So the more regulation we put on health care, the more restrictions we impose, and we do need some reform of HMOs. The law has not kept up with the delivery of service. But we have to understand, the more we require of them and the more paperwork and the more reporting, the more the cost is. We are going the wrong way in looking at suits. Talk to anyone in the medical profession today. It is no longer a question of getting compensation where someone has been negligent. It is almost a case now of extortion, where suits are being filed. They never even make it to court. If we do not think that adds into our health care costs, whether it is drugs or hospitals or any health care provider, every health care provider is conducting what they call defensive medicine. You go in for a hang nail and they are going to run 20 tests on you, because if something goes wrong, they are liable to be sued. But we are headed in the wrong direction there. Prescription drugs is a similar issue. I do not know if my colleagues have noticed the lack of some vaccines on the market. I held hearings on the question of some of the immunization vaccines; and immunization vaccines, I am told, can be produced for $1 or less per vaccination. But what has happened is, first of all, very few people, I think we are down to one or two manufacturers, who will even produce vaccines. The cost of the vaccine, the substance, may be $1, but the insurance on the vaccine and the other costs may, in fact, be $18 to $20, if we can find someone who will insure you, and if someone will produce it in the United States. That is why drugs are cheaper in Mexico. We do not have the protections, we do not have the liability, and if we talk to those involved in drug manufacturing even in Europe; in Europe, I asked the drug manufacturers when I met with them how much R&D they do, and they said zero, zip. We do not want to discourage R&D; we should be supporting R&D. By research and development, we can bring the costs down, and that is something we should be looking at. By limiting some of the exposure on these suits, we can also bring the costs down. If you have someone who has lost a loved one or a limb or someone who has been negligent, they should be properly compensated for that negligence, but the whole system is out of kilter; and that is part of the problem. But part of the reason we are here is to make certain that our nursing homes are provided adequate compensation, that they are not closing down, and that our HMOs are adequately compensated. We cannot continue to limit their reimbursement to 1 or 2 percent, when even inflation is higher than that rate or their cost is higher. It will not work. They will go out of business. We can play these games, but we cannot force people to provide health care if the bottom line is not met. So those are some of the reasons that we are here tonight. There are differences. I am hoping they can be settled. I do not enjoy being here; I would much rather be with my family. One of the other issues, and I am going to really talk about two issues here, Mr. Speaker, and I want to talk a minute about something I heard yesterday morning. I turned on the television and in his bombastic manner, Vice President Gore, he was saying he was going to save Social Security. I sort of broke into chuckles, having come to the Congress in 1993, I sort of thought, I guess yesterday was Halloween and here was the Vice President saying he is going to save Social Security. It just struck me as very humorous. Because when I came here, as Vice President, I never heard him ever offer a solution to Social Security. In fact, he is one of the people who was in the other body, the United States Senate in the Congress, when year after year they raided Social Security. We have to remember, in 1993, when he became Vice President of the United States, they submitted, the Clinton-Gore administration submitted a budget to this Congress; I came here as a freshman, and that budget had in it a $200 billion-plus deficit that they presented to us. Now, that deficit alone was bad enough because that is $200 billion, but on top of that, they were taking all the money out of the social security trust fund. So here is the person who is now saying he is going to save it proposing a budget that had a $200 billion deficit, and raiding all the money in social security. Not only had they raided it in 1993, they raided it in every year I believe he served in the United States Congress. So for him yesterday on Halloween to get up and say he was going to save social security, and I am sorry I have to chuckle, I just could not keep a straight face. Here he had proposed a budget again that was running us further into debt, $200 billion just for that year, and on top of that taking the money out of the trust fund, and had done that year after year after year. So suddenly he has become the savior of social security. What is sad about that budget too is if we looked at that budget, and we have copies of the budget that was presented by the Clinton-Gore administration in 1993, this year in 1999 it would have projected a close to $200 billion deficit this year. That was with, in 1993, the largest tax increase passed in the history of Congress being part of their package and remedy. So they increased taxes. The deficit was running $200 billion plus, a $200 billion plus projected deficit, even with that tax increase they proposed to us. The records are there. I am not exaggerating this in any way. It does concern me that the people who raided the trust funds, and if it was just social security, that would not be excusable, but they took from the highway trust fund. They diverted money from the infrastructure of the country. When we fill up our tank and pay gasoline tax to the Federal government, now it is 18.4 cents, they were taking money out of the highway trust fund dedicated for infrastructure and spending it on other programs. They were taking money out of aviation trust funds. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service, I was absolutely appalled, stunned. When I came from the private sector as a businessperson to take over chairing the Subcommittee on Civil Service and I looked at Federal employees' pension funds, there are about 38 Federal employees' pension funds, it is absolutely incredible that about 33, I believe, of the 35 had zero dollars in them. They did the same thing to social security that they did to these pension funds, Federal employees' pension funds. They put in nonnegotiable certificates of indebtedness of the United States, paying the lowest possible interest rate, but there is no hard cash in all but a couple of these funds. The few that have some hard cash in them, it is a minuscule amount. The gentlemen that were speaking before me talked about unfunded liabilities for social security. If we start adding in unfunded liabilities for these pension funds, we are talking probably in the neighborhood of a $19 trillion-plus deficit. There are trillions of unfunded liabilities. So here again, the folks that were taking out, the tax and spenders were taking out of these funds money that should have been set aside. This raises a very important issue. I really admire the courage of our Republican nominee, George W. Bush, because it is a very tricky issue. Seniors become very concerned when they hear anything about reforming social security. Everyone knows we have a problem. I borrowed these charts from the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith), who comes to the floor very often and does a great job on explaining the problem with social security. But for a presidential candidate to stand up and say, we have to do something about this, and propose some reforms, I think is very significant. He is not brushing over this issue. It is an issue that needs addressing. Members can see from this chart that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) provided, we have a short-term surplus right now if we continue with a good economy and all of that, and we are good stewards, we keep the money in the trust fund, we do not raid the trust fund. But if we get down here to somewhere around 2011, it begins to go south. This is the problem we have to face. Now, some of the solutions that are being proposed are not realistic. Governor Bush is in the private sector. I came from the private sector. There are only several things that one can do. First of all, we can either increase the contribution, the payroll tax for social security. We have done that. If Members have not looked at their paycheck lately, and the gentleman from Michigan again brings out a great chart, it even caught my eye, but 78 percent of the workers in this country pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. This is part of the problem. We have gone from a 2 percent charge for social security back in 1940 to 12.4 percent, so people are paying as much as $9,448 in the year 2000. We cannot tax our way into making this solvent. It just will never keep up to get us out of this red hole. The other part of the problem is, and this is, again, one of the charts of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) which I will borrow tonight, it just shows we have 38 workers, I believe, in 1940, or at the time we started social security a little bit before that, I believe, and in 2000 we have six, and we go down to just four here in 2025. So we have fewer workers contributing, even paying. That makes the equation even worse. Another factor is, just like the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), who is getting older by the hour serving in Congress, particularly in these long sessions, the population is growing older. We are living longer. People used to retire and they died earlier. Now, through medicine and again many health improvements, people are living longer. So we have fewer people contributing, we have people living longer, and we are starting to max out on our tax base. So this is the coming problem. Governor Bush has said very simply, we have to get, first of all, some pressure and some relief. No one wants to touch the benefits of anyone now. The only way we could really change this equation without either increasing taxes, now, there is another source of taxes that would be Federal taxes to put in to subsidize this, but again, it would be a very awesome responsibility. So today we have to start planning for retirees for tomorrow, young people. They are not going to get that, first, when we have no money. There was no hard money in the funds. And again, the folks who I chuckled about who are here to save social security were taking any hard money out, putting in these nonnegotiable certificates of indebtedness of the United States. What were they paying in return? They are paying on average 1.9 percent. Even a senior citizen who does not know much about finances would be very reluctant to put their savings account in a bank that paid a 1.9 percent return. I know we want also security for our social security dollars, or any trust funds or pension funds. That is important, that they be secure. But even with government-backed securities, we could double and triple the return. Even by giving people a small option to take part of their money in an account with their name on it, they could get a better return. There is no way we can solve this problem without owning up to the problem. There is no way we can solve it without reforming it. Now, no one will change any of the existing benefits. In fact, we can grow the benefits if there is a better return from the funds, and again, on only secured investments. We are not talking about penny stocks or investment in speculative issues, we are talking about backed by the security, full faith and credit of the United States of America. But a few dollars of these funds could turn this situation around. It is the only way we can turn it around. We are starting to max out again on what we can tax folks for. We have this expanding population of elderly. I read a report from the University of Florida, my alma mater, their school of medicine. By mid century, we will have 2.5 million centenarians, I believe that is the term, people who are 100 years old, 2.5 million. It also said in the article that when Willard Scott started announcing the birthdays, I guess it was in 1980, they got in about 400 requests maybe in the year in 1980. Now they are coming in by the thousands. The population of elderly is dramatically growing. So we have to be honest, we have to own up. We cannot scare senior citizens. All Republicans have elderly relatives, parents, and many of them, my family has many who have relied on social security, who have worked hard and did not have any pensions, and rely on it. My mother did, and other family members. So we would not want to do anything that would reduce benefits or endanger the fund. But I am so glad to have someone who comes from the business sector look at this, as Governor Bush has done, and said, we have to make a change. It is interesting, if Members travel around the world to Third World countries or other countries who have had failed social security systems, they are making some of the same changes that are proposed. So we do not want to be behind the Third World countries, we want to push off the inevitable disaster that we can face here in not preparing for retirement security for our young people today and those who are older. One of the other provisions that we have had in the tax bill that the President vetoed, we had actually two provisions, that was to increase IRAs from $2,000 to $5,000. It was a good provision. It allows people to save money for themselves. Not everybody can save that amount of money. One of the other provisions we had in there was to allow people over 50 to double some of their contributions, because people who are 50 are going to need to retire early. I regret that the President vetoed those measures. We thought we had an agreement. That is another reason why we are here, because it is unfortunate, but I think the President put politics in front of people. We cannot do that, we really cannot. I know it is sort of a last gasp here to focus attention on his presidency. But people, I think, have tired of that method of bickering, of a lack of agreement. We thought we had a gentleman's or a gentlewoman's agreement on some of these issues, and now at the last minute to cloud them, to politicize them, to put the political fortunes ahead of the people's fortunes I think is really unfortunate. I am dismayed by it. I think we will all be happy when this era is behind us. People do not send us here to bicker and fight, they send us here to solve their problems. This is a problem that we face, a very serious problem. Mr. Speaker, I also want to talk tonight about something that I have talked about for probably some 40 or 50 special orders, something that is extremely important. I chair the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. I inherited 18 or 19 months ago from the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now the Speaker of the House, the responsibility to oversee our national drug policy. The gentleman from Illinois during his tenure and service in this subcommittee's responsibility made a great attempt and some tremendous progress in restarting our war on drugs. Quite frankly, I have heard many people say that the war on drugs is a failure. I cite that the war on drugs basically closed down with the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration in 1993. The Clinton-Gore administration took some very specific steps that got us into a situation that we are trying to bail out of right now with drug abuse at record numbers, with drug deaths at record levels. I inherited that responsibility. I take it very seriously. Even when I was a Member of the House in 1993 to 1995, when the Democrats controlled the White House, the House, and the United States Senate, I requested hearings on the House side. There was one oversight hearing in 2 years conducted. It was shameful that they would dismantle a serious war on drugs that had been developed by the Reagan-Bush administration and had made such tremendous progress and declining drug use in this country, but they made some very serious mistakes and they have had some serious consequences. When you close down a war on drugs, you pay the price, and we are now paying the price. It is an expensive price. As our subcommittee learned in the last month, drug-induced deaths in the United States now exceed homicides for the first time. I believe these are the 1998 figures. I do not have 1999, but I think the situation that we will get from last year is even worse. More people are dying from drug overdoses and drug-related deaths than by homicides. It is a problem that has been swept under the table. A problem that has been compounded by some horrible policy decisions of the Clinton-Gore administration. This chart illustrates where we have come from, 11,700 deaths to 16,926 deaths. I have not doctored these figures. They are provided by the administration. They are, in fact, a record of failure, a record of illegal narcotics becoming a national epidemic, a national scandal and very little being done. I do want to say that we have made an attempt as a new majority to try to put back together Humpty Dumpty, try to put together a serious war on drugs. One of the things, of course, that is lacking is a national leadership on the issue, which we saw under President Reagan, who made this an issue, which we saw under President Bush. They started initiatives, the source country programs, to stop drugs at their source, the most cost-effective way to keep the flood and tide of illegal narcotics coming in. If that is not a responsibility to protect our shores from deadly death and destruction of illegal narcotics, I do not know what is a Federal responsibility. But they dismantled those programs, slashing the international and source country programs by more than 50 percent, by slashing the interdiction programs, by taking the military out, by cutting the Coast Guard budget and the antinarcotics effort. A report that was released to me in the early part of this year by the General Accounting Office said that anti-drug smuggling efforts flights, surveillance flights, had been cut some 68 percent from 1993 to 1999 by the administration. Maritime interdiction had been reduced by 62 percent, and those actions have some very serious consequences, and that is a tide of hard drugs, drugs that are pure and deadly, unlike anything we have seen in the past. One of the problems that we have is again the administration closing down the war on drugs. I did not say this, the Drug Czar, Barry McCaffrey, he said in 1996, in September of 1996, the U.S. took its eye off the drug war, and this is the results as of 1996. Unfortunately, the story gets even worse. This is what Barry McCaffrey said. Of course, this is the consequences of, first of all, coming in and firing everyone but 20 of the 120 folks in the drug czar's office. That was cutting the size of government. Then hiring Jocelyn Elders as the chief health officer who just said maybe, or comments of the President, which he was quoted as having said if I had it to do over again, I would inhale. These things have a direct effect. Young people pick this up, and we see the results. We also saw the results of their closing down some of these antinarcotics efforts. This is not my quote; this is the DEA official, when I was with the DEA just a few years ago, I was spending half of my time figuring out ways to eliminate or downsize agency operations, while the drug cartels were expanding theirs. And this is Phil Jordan, a high-level DEA official. He said that in 1998. Again, reflecting on the closedown on the war of drugs, not what I am saying, what DEA officials said. Mr. Speaker, since this may be my last special order for some time, I want to make sure we get all of this in here. Again, these charts and information were provided, some of it, by the administration. This is by our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. We know where the problem has been, where cocaine and heroin have been coming from, and they have been coming from South America, primarily Colombia and also Peru and Bolivia that we do not see on here, up until the Clinton administration, they were transited and actually the dealerships and cartels were located in Colombia, and then came up through Mexico into the United States. Mr. Speaker, to deal with this, in the Reagan administration, at Panama, and this is Panama here, I have this little sticker, this is where we headquartered our forward-operating locations, FOLs they call them, to go after drug traffickers, at least as far as surveillance, getting the information to the countries, the countries would either go after the traffickers, shoot them down or whatever. The first thing that the Clinton administration did was stop these flights and also sharing the information, which even the Democrats went crazy over. Then the next step that the administration took was to decertify Colombia without what they call a national interest waiver, that was to allow Colombia to get aid to fight narcotics. So they blocked aid to Colombia in a policy decision of the Clinton- Gore administration. From 1993 to present, Colombia has become and almost produced absolutely no native poppies or heroin, it came from zero in 1993 in this chart, producing 75 percent of the heroin coming in to the United States, and I guess it is now world production. That again is through some direct policy decisions. Incidentally, the Panama-forward surveillance operations which were closed down while the administration unfortunately bungled the negotiations to let our antinarcotics surveillance missions continue there, we are now building in Aruba; Curacao; El Salvador; and Manta, Ecuador; and three more operating locations which will not be available until 2002. So we have dramatically reduced our ability to conduct surveillance operations. Again, that is why we see this flow of incredible flow of heroin coming in to the United States. A whole series of bungling by the Clinton-Gore administration, made Colombia the number one producer of heroin from zero when they took office, and that would not be bad enough, but we have had to fund a $1.3 billion emergency package after Barry McCaffrey declared last year that Colombia had become what he said was a flipping nightmere. We had to have an emergency package, which never got to our desk until February, but we did pass it, got it through here, did a responsible thing. I am not happy that we had to spend that much money, but there are consequences to policy actions that are failure, and the Clinton-Gore administration turned Colombia into a basket case and a major producer of narcotics. The same thing happened with cocaine, almost no cocaine was produced there. Interestingly enough, Mr. Hastert, the former chair of this subcommittee and current Speaker of the House, and I went down to Peru and Bolivia. We worked with President Fujimori, with President Hugo Banzart, and we have been able to cut almost 60 percent of the production of cocaine with very little money. The opposite is true where the Clinton-Gore administration blocked assistance to Colombia back in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, could not even get last year helicopters down there that had been appropriated by us to go after some of this stuff. So we turned Colombia, through, again, inept policy from just a transit country and minor producer into the major producer of cocaine coming in incredible volumes. Another failure of the administration is when you just say maybe or you have the lack of leadership or appoint a health surgeon officer who sends out just say maybe to our kids, this is the result. It is not a doubling, but a dramatic increase in the amount of kids that have used marijuana, students who have used marijuana in this country. Today I saw in the paper, statistics that have been released that, in fact, marijuana use among college students rose 22 percent between 1993 and 1999, according to the study this week released by Harvard School of Public Health. There are consequences to a lack of leadership and lack of policy. And these are pretty specific. Now, a lot of people say marijuana is a soft drug. Marijuana that is coming in, it is not soft. It will damage young adults and adults. It is highly potent. It is not the stuff of the 1960s and the 1970s. And everyone who has testified before our subcommittee says it is a gateway drug, almost everyone who uses it goes on to another drug. I might correct myself, not everyone, but a large percentage, unfortunately, and almost all of those, and I should correct myself there who have used harder drugs say that they, indeed, have used marijuana to begin with. The long-term prevalence of drug use, in the Reagan- Bush administration, there was a 50 percent drop in drug use in the United States, when you have a policy and a policy that deals with the supply, deals with demand, deals with leadership, even going into Panama, remember in 1989, President Bush went in to Panama with our troops and took out Noriega, put his rear-end in jail in the United States for drug trafficking and drug money laundering, that was leadership. This is a successful war on drugs, a 50 percent decline. This is the Clinton-Gore record. A little help was on the way here from when we sort of restarted the efforts. So you see a slight change in that, hopefully that will continue. But this is what their policy did, a flood of drugs; and drug use dramatically increased, and you can look at it. This is the heroin chart, again, supplied by the administration, and also reputable sources, this one is from the University of Michigan who does a study. Look at the use, the prevalent use of marijuana dramatically under the Bush administration, you see drops leveling out here. And the trends in lifetime cocaine use, back in 1991, 1992, you see the bottom, so to speak, this is 8th grade, 10th grade and 12th grade in cocaine use. The administration also has the distinct record of having the average heroin user age drop from 25 in 1993 to 17 today. Again, the Clinton-Gore legacy that I do not think you will hear about in any of these commercials or ads. Now, we do require also, and as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, we do require that we have a specific plan. This is the plan. We are trying. This plan is supposed to have a goal of getting us down to a 3 percent drug use, instead of a 3 percent drug use, the latest reports are going from 6.4, 6.20 to 7 percent. This is a performance measure that we have asked, so instead of heading towards this goal, we are reaching 7 percent of the population who are now drug users. So this is their plan. This is the results. If your children, you feel, are at risk, you should be very concerned about these trends. You can look at this chart, too, and see what they did. They cut the interdiction funds. They cut the international source country fund. They put all the money into treatment, and we have just about doubled the money on treatment. The Republicans have even added money in treatment. We have added money in education. You do have to have a balanced approach. But when you cut interdiction in international, you have a surge of narcotics that you cannot keep up with. That is partly what we have faced. A lot of people say just keep putting more money in treatment. They said that in Baltimore. In Baltimore they have gone from just a handful of addicts to somewhere in one in eight in the population are now drug addicts in Baltimore. They sloughed off on the law. They had a liberal mayor. We have put tremendous amounts of money into treatment. We will continue to do that for successful programs, but you cannot treat yourself out of the problem. This is the Baltimore record. Not only have they have had record numbers of homicides in that locale in Baltimore, they have stayed in the 300 range consistently. We see 1999 also 300, with some 60,000, 70,000 addicts. Tough enforcement locales like Rudy Giuliani in New York have cut dramatically the murder rate which was some 2,000 a year down to the mid-600s; incredible changes of a 58 percent reduction in crime. This man should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for what he did for one of the largest cities in the world. It is just incredible what he has done. All the seven major felony categories have had dramatic decreases, an overall 58 percent reduction in those major felony crimes. Murders, thousands of people are alive in New York because he had a tough zero-tolerance policy. Thousands of people are dead in Baltimore for a liberal policy, if you look at the record over these years. What is interesting is, Mr. Giuliani also did it with fewer incidents of using firearms in going after folks, fewer complaints against his officers; and he also increased the officers by some 20 percent. You can go back and look at the complaints filed against the Koch administration, the Dinkens administration. They were two and three times what they were under Mr. Giuliani. In spite of the comments of some of those who say to the contrary, those are the facts. The Washington Times outlined just a few months ago what we are facing now is we face heroin in record numbers, overdose deaths. Now we are facing Ecstasy and cocaine in tremendous proportions. Massachusetts, here is a headline from this week: ``Massachusetts Worst in Drug Use Survey; some categories highest in the United States. Half of the principals polled say drug use getting worse.'' Heroin in inner- cities worse, and if we looked at the population of our most at-risk in this country, according to 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, drug use increased from 5.8 percent in 1993 to 8.2 percent in 1998 among young African Americans. Our minorities are the hardest hit. You will not hear that in the campaign commercials. Among Hispanics from 4.4 percent in 1993, the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration, to 6.1 in 1998, even worse I am sure in 1999. They do not want to release those figures before the election. But our African Americans, our Hispanics are dying at a disproportionate rate, jailed at a disproportionate rate, and victimize the people of those communities by drug abuse. It is not a pretty picture. It is not a legacy I would be proud of. I have done my best to try to bring solutions, to restart the war that was sabotaged by the Clinton-Gore administration. The next President, whoever that is, must provide the leadership. The Congress must put together a plan that includes education, prevention, interdiction, use of military, whatever resources possible. We have never lost this many people even in some of our battles that we are losing to drug deaths in this country. No family in this Nation now is spared from the destruction of life and well-being and happiness from drug abuse. With one final warning to my colleagues who may be listening at this late hour, I will just put this chart up. This does show methamphetamine. I talked about Ecstasy, but in closing here anyone who is watching this, this is a normal brain and this is a brain that we could put Ecstasy up here and show you the same thing, the brain scans that have been provided to our subcommittee. Basically, it induces a Parkinson's type destruction of brain tissue. This is what methamphetamine will do to you, Ecstasy. People think that these are harmless drugs and young people are dying and having their brains damaged, their bodies damaged by use of this. This is what these illegal narcotics and designer drugs will do to you today. They are not harmless, and that is why we have laws to control them. So people look at what this does to your brain. I hope Members will convey this to their constituents, particularly the young people who we are now seeing as the victims of so many of these drug tragedies throughout the United States. Mr. Speaker, again I appreciate your patience. I know that we have further business to conduct, but I am not sure if I will have another opportunity. I want to thank the staff who have endured my 50-some Special Orders. I take this very seriously, and it is a serious problem for the country. Again, we must address it in a bipartisan manner but learn in fact from the past and do a much better job to bring the most serious social problem our Nation has faced in a generation under control.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and could not vote on rollcalls No. 582 and 583. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' for each of these measures.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, this debate on Saturday is not about people freezing to death or support for or against LIHEAP. Republicans are for providing energy assistance to low-income, disabled, the poor, elderly. There is no debate about that question here today. We are here on Saturday because the other side is in desperate straits. They are trying to bail out their failing Presidential campaign, their congressional failing campaigns across the country, because the American people have finally said that we have had enough. We have had enough of the partisanship from the other side of using this arena and putting politics before people. This is not about low energy assistance. It is a great program. It is a program that has grown from $50 million during the energy crisis, I believe, of the 1970s to a $1 billion program. It is a little bit of difference about helping people, making certain that the program works. Even the President of the United States, I remember, presented us with budgets that proposed some trimming, some economy in this program. But we are for providing assistance to the poor and the disabled. But, Mr. Speaker, we are here on a Saturday because they want to put politics before people. We have HMOs closing around this country. I had a gentleman write to me and said, ``You all are debating whether I can sue an HMO. I have been dropped by my third HMO which went under.'' Nursing homes are closing around this country, and the poor and elderly are being deprived of care because they want to put politics before people. It is sad, but I heard George W. Bush say the other day it is sort of a fitting end to the close of an era of contentiousness, an era of disgrace; that they, the American people, I think, want to put behind them. It is sad that we are here now, and they are using this as a last stage putting people behind politics. It is not about LIHEAP, it is not about people freezing to death, it is about changing the direction of this country. They had their chance. I heard the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant), a Democrat, say they had 48 years, not mentioning the last 8 years, and they blew it. This is not about LIHEAP. It is about changing the direction of this country. It is about other issues at the last minute, like putting provisions in at the last minute to provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. I was offended today when I heard someone say that we did not know on the Republican side about immigration. My grandparents were immigrants and they came in legally to this country, not illegally, and they worked in the factories of this country and they toiled. But if we throw in this provision to allow millions, we have cast aside our laws. What good are our laws? We might just as well tear up our laws and throw them away. What does it mean to be an American if the President can cast aside the very basis for immigration. What made this country great is people coming here legally under the laws. So this is not about LIHEAP, this is not about low-energy assistance, it is about other greater issues.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the ``Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Improvement Act of 2000,'' legislation designed to revise and improve the standards applied to petitions for compensating injuries associated with vaccines administered to children when the claims are deemed not to be covered by the ``Vaccine Table.'' The Table is used in the program to create presumptions favoring compensation coverage under very limited circumstances and pursuant to specific criteria. Mr. Speaker, I have chaired oversight hearings of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources devoted to problems and issues in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Our full committee, the House Committee on Government Reform, also has been actively engaged in oversight of this important program. As a product of our hearings and extensive oversight activities, members of the subcommittee and full committee in a bipartisan manner and without objection, passed on October 5, 2000, the report entitled; ``The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: Addressing the Needs and Improving Practices.'' Among the recommendations of this report is the need to devise an alternative standard for determining compensation for petitioners who claim vaccine-related injuries, but whose petitions are not covered by the Vaccine Table. As the report correctly explains, Congress recognized deficiencies in scientific studies on the topic of vaccine-related injuries, and intended to provide a fair and reasonable opportunity for petitioners to demonstrate vaccine-relatedness. If a significant relationship or association could be proven, compensation coverage was intended. Regretfully, the current wording of the statute has been interpreted and applied in a manner that requires a traditional tort ``causation'' legal analysis. If the traditional legal approach had been intended, Congress would simply have allowed these cases to be resolved through traditional tort liability litigation. That was not the desire of Congress when the program was established; it is not the desire of Congress today. Accordingly, a revision to the petition standards is needed to ensure that reasonable and fair determinations of vaccine association and relatedness are provided. That is precisely what this legislation does. It does not address various other reforms-- some favored by the involved federal agencies and some not, some needed and some not--that are intended to improve the program further. The focus of this bill is simply to revise and clarify the standard used in adjudicating certain petitions. This reform will foreclose the practice of effectively denying petitions when scientific studies do not squarely address the specific circumstances presented, and will provide a reasonable, fair and appropriately flexible standard for examining evidence and determining vaccine injury compensation coverage. The revised language of this legislation provides an approach and standard for coverage that is similar to that used in determining medical treatment benefits to veterans who claim illnesses presumed to be related to exposures to Agent Orange.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and could not vote on rollcalls Nos. 544 through 552. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' for each of these measures.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and could not vote on rollcalls Nos. 541, 542 and 543. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' for each measure.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, this morning we are really going to pass what I consider the most significant environmental legislation of a generation. This is really a historic occasion because we have replaced talk with action. We have replaced rhetoric with hard cash. In 1976, I was elected to the Florida legislature and they talked about restoring the Everglades; and I heard talk for more than 2 decades but finally we are taking action to restore the Everglades. I want to thank personally a gentleman who is not in Congress, a former majority leader, Bob Dole, who just down the hall from here helped to make a decision that launched this effort. I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster) and also the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw), the gentleman who is presiding now, who helped make this legislation possible; and also Governor Bush, who made a State commitment, replaced talk with action. I was raised in south Florida, and I saw what they did to the Everglades. This is my district. It is to the north of the Everglades, north of Orlando. Just for the record, I am pleased that we have a balance, that areas like the St. John's River, like north Florida, central Florida and the Keys will also be protected and preserved, and also restored, so we do not make the same mistakes we made in south Florida. This bill has a balance. It is a great piece of legislation. I thank those involved again for this historic occasion and also for listening to our concerns in the north part of Florida, the central part of Florida, the south part of Florida and the rest of the country; and I urge passage of this historic measure.