Tim Murphy

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. The President's jobs bill has a surprising number in it for rebuilding our infrastructure. Most Americans would be surprised that that number is only $27 billion. Divide that between States, and you barely have enough to put some tar and chips on the roads. And yet, as the President is out touting this jobs bill and talking about our crumbling infrastructure, it just isn't going to do the job. How about this number? $129 billion to build roads and buildings and water projects? Unfortunately, that number is not being spent in the United States; rather, that $129 billion is the number that Americans pay in foreign aid to OPEC countries to build their roads, their palaces, their buildings. Now, unfortunately, that money goes to more than just their infrastructure. It also goes to countries like Iran that fund their nuclear weapons programs threatening Israel and the neighboring countries. It goes to Iran to fund their assassination attempts against Saudi Ambassadors. Iran used it to fund terrorist weapons and IEDs to kill our soldiers. We pay for both sides in the war on terror, and much of that comes through buying foreign energy. In the meantime, our roads are crumbling, our bridges are rusting and corroding, our locks and dams are decaying, our water and sewer pipe lines are collapsing. And listen to the cost. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the numbers are staggering: $935 billion are needed to fix our roads and bridges; $87 billion for aviation; $12.5 billion for our locks and dams; $255 billion to fix our drinking water; $75 billion for energy infrastructure; $50 billion for inland waterways; $50 billion for levees; $265 billion for transit. Where is the money going to come from? What is being proposed are long-term and permanent taxes, about 30 years worth of more debt and borrowed money from China for a small $27 billion to do this. It's not going to do the job, and raising taxes and creating warfare between classes is not going to do it. Here's what can do it. We have, off of our coast, about 85 to 115 billion barrels of oil, trillion cubic feet of natural gas, trillions. We have massive amounts of money off our coast. Unfortunately, the administration says no, we can't use our money. We have to continue to borrow from China, increase debt or raise taxes. Those approaches to rebuilding America will not do. What we need to do is free up American resources, use our resources, use our funding to rebuild America. And think what comes out of this. From the royalties, the leases, and from the income taxes that come from hiring, yes, millions of people to involve with civil engineers and operating engineers, laborers, architects, steamfitters, welders, people who work on the rigs, you create $2 trillion to $3 trillion worth of revenue over the next 20 years. What we need to be doing is making a commitment to invest that money in American infrastructure, American resources, American funds for American infrastructure. Think of what this also does for our manufacturing. When you create that kind of demand for steel and concrete and that kind of demand for equipment to be purchased over a long time, this is a real jobs plan. We don't need to be going back hat in hand to other countries and saying, please let us borrow more from you. We don't need to be having class warfare. We don't need to be saying, let's just attack people who make a certain amount of money. We don't need to be saying, let's take all the revenue that comes from taxing these corporate jets for 10 years and use it to fund the government for a lousy hour and 45 minutes. Those may be great talking points, but they are not a jobs plan. America wants to work and America wants us to use our resources. America wants to stop funding both sides in the war on terror. We can do this. And it doesn't take some sort of super plan to do this. It just says, America has all the resources. I call upon my colleagues to continue to push for ways that we can free up American resources, stop saying no to American jobs, stop simply using political rhetoric to block these things, but really create this mechanism by which we can pay for rebuilding America. We can do it. We have the resources to do it. We have to have the way and we have to have the will.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Instead of appealing to America's greatest aspirations, hopes, and dreams, there are those who are appealing to our basest character, using fear and envy and greed to prey upon those we are supposed to lead. We can no longer sow the seeds of this dependency, feed it with despair in hopes of reaping the benefits of power, all the while weakening the iron will of this Nation and plummeting it into mediocrity. We must encourage inventiveness, entrepreneurship, and the risk that comes with leadership. We must not attack and mock those who work hard. It is not a path to greatness but a road to mediocrity and servitude where people are encouraged not to reach for the stars but to grab what they can get from the government. Those who prey upon the fears of the weak insult them twice--once in trying to frighten them, another for believing they are too weak to understand they're being fooled. We have had enough of unemployment, of the weakening of our Nation, the drama of hand-wringing, the cowardice of blaming, finger-pointing and deflection, insults to opportunities of job creators, and the ransom we pay to other nations in the form of energy, manufactured goods and massive interest on our massive debt. Mr. Speaker, it is time for leaders to stop using ``success'' as a dirty word and as a justification to take more and more from those who create jobs. Whether the worker wears a blue collar or a blue suit, all work is good and noble, and it is time to encourage, not to criticize, the work.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Nebraska. That line through Canada, less than 800 miles long, to add an additional almost 10,000 miles to go through the Panama Canal to Shanghai doesn't make economic sense. And let's keep in mind, Canada is our neighbor. They are our friend, our most consistent and reliable ally, and I trust the way they are going to be working on many things with us. But I also trust the workers who will work on this pipeline, American workers from here in the United States, well-trained people who have gone through good training programs as apprentices and journeymen. Construction of this pipeline will generate about $20 billion in economic output, perhaps $13 billion in direct work on the pipeline itself. Now, some estimates have said that for every $1 billion you spend on infrastructure, it yields about 35,000 jobs. That's some jobs that go for manufacturing, that's some jobs that go for the actual construction, and some jobs that go for all the supports that help those workers as well as the places that they will spend money-- steamfitters and welders who make $45 to $50 an hour, operating engineers, laborers who will earn between $23 and $31 an hour. And, yes, this is a time we need to do this, not with more delays and more problems, but at a time when we need jobs. Let's keep this in mind too: Construction of this pipeline with oil from Canada is going to make us less dependent on OPEC. Right now we send $129 billion a year to OPEC. That's $129 billion in foreign aid which we do not have to send to those countries there, $129 billion which we wouldn't have to be spending on countries that sometimes turn around and use U.S. dollars against our soldiers and then we end up fighting for both sides on the war on terror. This is what we need to keep in mind: This is a jobs bill; this is a bill dealing with a friend; and this is a bill that makes a lot of sense, and we shouldn't put more delays and restrictions on this because we have to get off of our addiction to OPEC oil.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. I want to talk for about 5 minutes here on an issue that you brought up, Dr. Gingrey, about the $575 billion from the Medicare program that also cuts $135 billion from Medicare Advantage plans, forcing over 7 million seniors out of their current Medicare plan unless they pay more. I wanted to help point out that while the President and others are out there saying we're trying to cut Medicare and what it does, nothing could be further from the truth. What we're trying to do here is show how if Medicare is handled differently--not by IPAB or a board of bureaucrats, but by letting the plans work and letting doctors work, they can drive down cost by improving quality. Let me explain what happened in the Medicare Advantage program that was gutted in the health care bill that was passed out of the House. Well, seniors are able to make choices right now--with Medicare, they can get Medicare part D drug coverage and supplemental Medigap policies with the Medicare Advantage plan. What the Medicare Advantage plan does is allows some management of diseases that are chronic illnesses, which is very different from the current fee-for-service where somebody would get paid based upon the number of procedures they do. Under the regular Medicare fee-for-service plan, hospital readmission rates--that's 30 days post-discharge for the country--in 2007 was over 18 percent, but the average readmission rate across Medicare Advantage was 13.5 percent. Why? Because it allowed physicians and nurses to talk to the patient, to follow the patient, to work with the disease, to make sure whatever complication they had--an infection or heart disease or lung disease or an orthopedic problem--to pay that physician and staff to work for them. Here is another interesting thing: The Medicare fee-for-service rate of preventable emergency department visits was 15.5 visits per 100 beneficiary months in 2007. But the average rate across Medicare Advantage plans and study was two visits per 100 beneficiary months--86 percent lower than Medicare's national average. Here's another point: Actual cost for the drug plan we know, Medicare part D, comes out 40 percent under budget because insurers are forced to compete with each other. Now imagine this: Seniors can choose Medicare supplemental plans, and those plans compete for seniors' coverage. The drug plans compete for seniors' coverage. What happens if seniors are allowed to also choose their main Medicare plan? Well, listen to this additional issue about drugs: The Intercontinental Marketing Services, IMS--I should say this comes from the Deloitte & Touche Web site--the Institute for Healthcare Informatics study concluded: The average cost for drugs frequently used by Medicare prescription drug part D beneficiaries declined since the implementation of the program in 2006. Between January, 2006, and December, 2010, for the top ten therapeutic classes, part D drugs decreased by over one-third, from $1.50 to $1. The study projected that costs will continue to decline by 57 percent from 2006 to 2015, reaching 65 cents by the end of 2015. That's a massive decline. Why? Because plans are competing against each other. Plans innovate, they try and do things better and smarter, with better quality, and they ask seniors to choose their plan. Seniors then, by signing their name, can choose a plan that works for them. Why not allow seniors to have Medicare choice with their major Medicare plan? Why not allow seniors to have Medicare Advantage instead of gutting the program? This is the very thing we're saying; by improving efficiencies and qualities within the program, a lot of cost can be reduced. It can't be reduced, however, by the status quo. As you pointed out, Dr. Gingrey, and my colleagues, keeping the status quo means there won't be Medicare. There will be Medicare for those currently on it. It won't be there for their children and certainly not for their grandchildren. We want to save Medicare, but you can't save it by the continued way it's being done now. Quite frankly, the system that's being done out there now to frighten seniors, to say that if we don't simply pass this debt limit increase without strings attached, that seniors won't have Social Security or Medicare, this is such a falsehood. And it's a serious problem in two ways: One, it's serious because it's telling a falsehood to seniors; and two, it looks down upon seniors thinking that they're susceptible, not smart enough to figure out that this is false. It is so important, and we want the American public to understand: We are trying to save Medicare because we do want it to be there for the future, but it means making it more efficient. And what's wrong with letting doctors be the ones who call the shots on improving care?

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, while deliberations continue on dealing with our $14.3 trillion debt and while deliberations continue on raising the debt ceiling, Americans are very concerned about where we're going. June unemployment at 9.2 percent and a growth of only 18,000 jobs translates into a meager 360 jobs per State. Now, when you look at how many high school students graduated in June, that's 3.7 million. Colleges graduated 1.7 million. Those 360 jobs barely equal the size of a typical large American high school graduating class, and certainly barely covers students at one typical college per State with a typical major. No wonder Americans are worried about our economy when so many youth are entering the job market only to find there are no jobs. So while our leaders on both sides of the aisle are deliberating-- and, unfortunately, too much of this immediately becomes a battle of words--let's keep in mind that one way to balance America's budget, one very important way to deal with America's debt, is to grow jobs. For each 1 percent decline in unemployment, it's $90 billion per year in Federal revenue. That's a decrease in unemployment compensation. That's an increase in Federal revenues. That's 1.5 million jobs for every 1 percent decline in unemployment. Let me quote our colleague from across the building here, Senator Rubio, who said: This is not about increasing taxes; it's about increasing taxpayers. And this could do it. Now, the cost per job in the failed stimulus bill was at least $278,000 based upon $660 billion spent. Of course, that number per job increases dramatically and rapidly if you include the interest paid on that stimulus bill, which takes us over the $1 trillion mark. That sort of approach is not going to work, and if we open our eyes, we can all honestly admit that. Increasing unemployment is not going to decrease the Federal debt or deficit. We have to grow our way out of this. Now, a bill that I've introduced and that several colleagues in a bipartisan way have signed onto as cosponsors--and I ask my colleagues to join on as cosponsors--is H.R. 1861. This bill would allow us to say, instead of sending $129 billion a year to OPEC for foreign aid, to buy their oil, we drill for and we use our own. It would yield somewhere between $2.2 trillion and $3.7 trillion over a 30-year period in Federal revenues, not from raising taxes, but from using the standard royalties and lease agreements that come from this. It starts out as a crawl and increases to a walk and then into a run as this money comes through. What we do in this bill is about growth in America. It isn't just talking about it. It's putting our money where our jobs are because it leads to 1.2 million jobs annually based upon estimates of the American Energy Alliance. That's jobs making steel, making steel pipes, wire, software, technology. It's jobs for the roughnecks. It's the steelworkers, the electricians and the laborers who work on these rigs. It's jobs for those who take this oil and convert it into gasoline, and it's jobs for those who have to put together all the infrastructure to make that happen. Beyond that, what we do is we dedicate these funds into the infrastructure which America needs. According to the American Society for Civil Engineers, we need over $2 trillion to deal with our current infrastructure needs. Many States find that 25 percent of their roads and bridges are structurally deficient, which is unsafe; but for every $1 billion we spend on our infrastructure, it yields 38,000 jobs. Those jobs are for operating engineers and laborers and carpenters or electricians and engineers and for those who make concrete and steel and all the things that go with what we need for our roads, our highways, our bridges, our locks, our dams, our water and sewer systems. Let's grow our way back to prosperity. Let's stop saying we're going to send money to OPEC and watch them grow. Let's stop just pointing fingers and blaming and complaining about China. We have the tools here in America to make this happen. So, while our leaders are over at the White House, arguing about how to take care of the debt, let's not forget that, overall, Americans are saying that one way to grow out of this debt is to grow more jobs, to grow more taxpayers, not just to find ways of taxing them. We can do this. Again, I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 1861, where we can do this. Let's not talk about jobs, and let's not complain about it. Americans know when the wool is being pulled over their eyes, and Americans know when they're working. Let's truly help them out and get jobs back on the table.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 478, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, there are massive inefficiencies in Medicare that are causing the program to go bankrupt. One example is infusion therapy, or the intravenous delivery of medication administered to patients suffering from cancer or serious infection for which they cannot just take a pill. But it requires specialized equipment and supervision and often lasts several hours a day over a period of several weeks. It's very expensive for patients to get this care in a hospital. Although private plans have been covering home infusion therapy for decades, Medicare still forces people to go to a hospital, where they also have increased risk for infection by going there, and it costs thousands of dollars for delivery, as opposed to hundreds of dollars when they get it at home. That's why today, Representative Eliot Engel and I are reintroducing the Medicare Home Infusion Therapy Coverage Act, so patients can receive the same treatment in the comfort and convenience of their home at a lower cost. Our bill saves taxpayers money, about $6 billion over 10 years. Mr. Speaker, our proof is that this is one more way we can find significant savings in Medicare, or simply wait for the program to go bankrupt. And I urge all of my colleagues to support our bill to give patients better quality and better care at lower costs.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I would like to engage in a colloquy with the gentleman from Alabama about some concerns about the Chemical Facilities Antiterrorism Standards, known as CFATS. The Committee on Energy and Commerce has voted by more than two- thirds to favorably report to the House a bill to extend authorization for CFATS through fiscal year 2017. Our bill also contains authorizations for appropriations for the full 7 years, and that provision conforms to the majority leader's CutGo protocols. I recognize the need to fund the CFATS program for the next fiscal year, but I'm hoping that the gentleman will provide me with an indication of his support for the authorizing committee to get its job done on this matter.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. I thank the chairman for his support.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, a gallon of gas is over $4, heading to $5. The average family spends $2,200 more on gas than they did 2 years ago. Fourteen million Americans are out of work and wondering how they are going to put food on the table. America's infrastructure is crumbling. A quarter of our bridges are structurally deficient. The American Society of Civil Engineers says all our infrastructure needs are going to cost over $2 trillion for roads, bridges, water, sewer systems, airports, locks and dams. Where will we find the money? Well, we send $100 billion each day to foreign nations for oil. OPEC exerts control over world oil prices and wants it to be $200 per barrel. We are 60 percent dependent on foreign oil, and climbing. As a country, we waste 20 to 40 percent of our energy in inefficient buildings and factories. Mr. Speaker, we want clean air and water. We want to see our highways and bridges fixed. We want clean power plants, lower energy prices, and don't pollute our environment. But where will the money come from? Today, my colleagues and I on the Energy Working Group are introducing the Infrastructure, Jobs, and Energy Independence Act, a bipartisan bill that for the first time brings forward a comprehensive plan to rebuild America, take back our energy future, and create millions of jobs. We can become energy independent, we can create these jobs, and we can do it all without raising taxes or adding to the national debt. How? Well, America has enough offshore reserves to replace all oil imports from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for the next 80 years and enough clean natural gas to power industry for the next 63 years. Yet the drilling moratorium means that instead of using our own resources to grow jobs, we are supporting the economies of unstable regimes that want to do us harm. Our plan opens the door to the safe, responsible expansion of energy production off our coasts, where there is $8 trillion worth of economic output in oil and gas reserves offshore. Over 20 years, that translates to between $2.5 trillion and $3.7 trillion in new Federal revenues, from lease rights and royalties, without raising taxes. That is $440 billion for infrastructure of our roads and bridges; $330 billion that we will invest in renewable energy sources and buildings and transportation; $220 billion for clean coal technology; $88 billion for environmental restoration to clean up our lakes, bays, rivers and streams; $66 billion in energy conservation; $110 billion for carbon-free technology and nuclear energy development; $66 billion to rebuild our water and sewer systems in small towns and big cities all across America; $44 billion for LIHEAP; and $660 billion for States that are producing; and also several hundred billion to pay down the national debt. Mr. Speaker, there is a plan for jobs and energy in America, and this is the plan that estimates are will create about 1 million jobs each year, new jobs in building highways and bridges, new jobs in developing our energy resources. And we can do it all. I ask my colleagues to support the Infrastructure, Jobs, and Energy Independence Act. Let's rebuild America, let's create jobs without raising taxes, let's stop borrowing from foreign nations, let's pay down our national debt, let's stop buying from OPEC, and let's use our rules and our laws to make sure we do all of this in a way that is environmentally sound so we can create jobs and have energy independence for this and the next generation.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Okay. Here we go. When we discussed the cap-and-trade bill, it worked sort of like the Seinfeld show. George Costanza comes to Jerry and says, ``You know what we should do with this show, what it should be about?'' Jerry says, ``What?'' George says, ``It's about nothing.'' Here's how cap-and-trade works: Factory A has something coming out of its smokestack; Factory B doesn't. So Factory B sells their ``nothing'' to Factory A. Factory A adds that cost to the cost of their products. Sooner or later, they raise costs of electricity, raise costs of their products. They can't make it in America any more. America figured this out long ago, and they said we're going to see energy prices go up, we're going to see jobs and income go down. We don't want it to work this way. We want clean air, clean land, and clean water. But the way these things are working is not what's going to make it happen. So the American people say don't export our jobs, don't export our factories, don't export our manufacturing and then end up importing emissions from other countries. It's a global problem. It's something we have to deal with. But having the EPA do this without working through Congress isn't the way to make this happen. Let's come up with a real solution here but not continue on down this road of exporting our jobs to other countries.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. I thank you for yielding, Dr. Gingrey. You know, all of us in the Doctors Caucus are people who have treated patients, and we know full well the value of quality health care. We also know what happens when bureaucracy gets between the patient and the doctor, and you find yourself spending as much time worried about paperwork and forms and what the government is going to do than sometimes your dealing with your patient. That's not good health care. And that certainly isn't good health care reform. All of us who are health care professionals know that the treatment should not be more harmful than the illness itself. And what happens with the health care bill that was passed, when you look at some of the parts of this and realize what it does to the patient, to taxes, to employers, to hospitals, to community health centers, to the cost of drugs, you have to conclude that we did not fix the problem; we financed the problem and it is growing and growing. And that's not the right direction. Let me give you a couple of examples. This bill, this act, actually creates about 1,900-plus new duties and responsibilities for the Secretary of Health. It has a hundred or more boards, panels, and commissions of people that we don't yet know who they are to write regulations that we don't yet know what they are. We also know that despite the words about the goal, the actual means to get there and what happens isn't what is purported to be doing. Let's look at, for example, we keep hearing about 35 million Americans will be covered. And yet, we also hear from various consulting firms that it won't be 9 million Americans that will lose their health insurance, it may be tens of millions of people who will lose their private insurance. So covering 35 million but perhaps the same or double that losing their insurance doesn't get us to where we need to be. We also heard that health care costs were going to go down. I had someone from HHS from Philadelphia come to my office and they told me with a smile that wasn't it great that health care costs were only going up 2 or 3 percent. I asked this person if they bothered to talk to some of the employers in the State of Pennsylvania, because a lot of them told me their health care costs are going up 20 and 30 and 40 percent. I asked if they'd talked to some of the families whose children were covered on plans before that exclusively cover children to find out that those plans were not going to cover children any more because of the way the government decided to design those. Our goal should be to treat. Our goal should be to help. Our goal should not be to stop at just rhetoric and say, ``We have good intentions, and therefore we have good outcomes.'' But good intentions don't make good outcomes. Where we could be spending money is on some real reforms. One of the issues that we've been united on has been to help community health centers. One community health center in Pittsburgh that I visited with, the Squirrel Hill Health Center, treats about 700,000 individuals through more than 2.3 million visits annually. These community health centers in Pennsylvania, there are 45 in 67 counties--60 percent urban and 40 percent rural. Their patient base is 68 percent Medicaid, uninsured, and 93 percent of patients of incomes at or below the 200 percent of the Federal poverty level. What is interesting is how much lower in costs those clinics throughout Pennsylvania, quite frankly throughout the Nation, could provide high-quality health care. But what we've created is a couple of burdens. I found it interesting as part of the health care bill that one of the things we passed was an amendment that Congressman Gene Green, a Democrat from Texas, and I had authored to allow doctors to volunteer at community health centers. If Dr. Gingrey wanted to go to a community health center and volunteer, and if I wanted to and any of the other ones, we couldn't do it. And the reason being that those community health centers say, ``We can't afford to have you volunteer.'' Because in order to volunteer, they'd have to pay the medical malpractice costs instead of having them in the Federal Torts Claims Act--employees of those clinics can do that--and that adds to their costs. In the meantime, those clinics are short 10, 15, 20 percent of what they need in providers. They are a tried and true method of bringing people together, people from a wide range of disciplines: OBGYNs, family practitioners, dentists, podiatrists, social workers, psychologists, to work. That's one of the many things we could be doing. But along those lines, there are a great many things that we can be doing.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 220, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 176, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, currently, U.S. families spend about $1 billion per day on imported oil. We import about 1.6 billion barrels from politically unstable nations with a corresponding instability in prices, which influences our dollars, our economy, and sometimes our soldiers having to look at defending these areas. We are currently losing 220,000 barrels per day in domestic production because of the administration's moratorium on Gulf of Mexico oil rigs. This also means the government is losing almost $1.4 billion in revenue that we so sorely need. Keep in mind that each one cent increase in the price of gasoline costs American families $1 billion per year. That's money that is not going into our economy. Because 60 percent of our oil comes from foreign countries, it is money that is going into other economies. Now, while this moratorium is taking place, at least 12 rigs have already departed from the gulf, some not to return, as they move these rigs to operate in other countries, which can cost $1 million a day. Four more are considering leaving. That's 6,000 jobs in jeopardy. Currently, more than 30 drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are idle; and even though the administration is now allowing just one of those rigs to move forward with exploration, all other exploration is still off limits with something of a permitorium, as they're looking at their permits all over again. That is why yesterday I introduced the Safe Exploration Coming from Underwater Reserves of Energy Act, or the SECURE Act. This bill allows all of those Gulf of Mexico drilling permits to move safely forward, those which have already been approved by regulators. Keep in mind, all of these have been reviewed thoroughly. It takes a lot of time to do that, and they all follow strict regulations. There are no shortcuts on safety, and there is no bypassing environmental regulations. Quite frankly, I trust our environmental regulations to protect the environment more so than those of other countries. What we have from the lost production of the domestic oil industry means we are increasingly dependent on those unstable foreign regimes to meet our needs, which puts our economy at risk should another spike in oil prices occur like the one we have now. Add to this and punctuate this with the recent unrest in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and whatever country may come next, which helps point out a lot of our vulnerability: the vulnerability of what happens if the Suez Canal is closed down even for a short period of time; the vulnerability that comes if Libyan oil production declines; the vulnerability that comes with Iran and its use of oil revenue to put pressure on other nations to support their efforts to develop nuclear weapons, their threats to Israel and their threats to dominate the Mideast. The cost of an arms race in the Mideast and an arms race in the world with new nuclear weapons far surpasses anything we can imagine--as are the revenues we can get from oil. So I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, the SECURE Act, so we can secure our own energy future, so we can lower gas prices, so we can create thousands of jobs right here at home: from drilling on these rigs, from developing the pipe, from building the rigs, from so many other supply chains of what we have in this Nation to do this, and above all, so we keep our domestic oil at home rather than pay for our own dollars to go to other nations. We can drill for our oil and our own jobs, and we can boost our own economy; or we can continue to be dependent on unstable nations, rising prices and, sadly, paying for both sides of the war on terror. It is a sobering thought for Americans to think that every time they go to put gasoline in their tanks they're funding both sides of the war on terror. That alone should be enough to make us change our approach. That alone should be enough to say let's use our oil and our resources instead of propping up the economies of other nations. That alone should be something that motivates us to make sure we are working on these issues. Hopefully, that means we can melt this moratorium on our own domestic oil production. The choice is ours. I hope all of my colleagues will choose to support jobs of the United States of America as opposed to supporting those dollars that are just going to other countries.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, as a Member who represents the area of Pittsburgh that is also part of the Pittsburgh diocese, I would also like to welcome Cardinal Wuerl to the House of Representatives. He is a great leader in the faith community and a friend, and certainly a friend to everybody in the Nation now as well as those in the Pittsburgh region. He began his career as an assistant pastor at Saint Rosalia Parish in Pittsburgh. There he became secretary to Pittsburgh Bishop John Wright. Then at Saint Paul's Seminary in Pittsburgh, he worked as a rector. In 1988, Bishop Wuerl was installed as the 11th Bishop of Pittsburgh, where he led 18 years. He led 800,000 Roman Catholics in 214 parishes throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. I should say we also knew him from his television series called ``The Teaching of Christ,'' which was distributed throughout the Christian Associates cable channel, and his best-selling catechism of the same name, which is now I believe in its 30th year of publication, translated into over 10 languages. I echo the comments made by our Speaker in terms of the Cardinal's leadership and the esteem we all hold him in. We are most grateful that he came here today and led us in prayer.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, we now have 29 million people in America who are either out of work or looking for work, and we also are facing a problem of trillions of deficit spending that affects those jobs. There's four pillars to what we need to do to turn our economy around. One is the issue of cutting government spending and turning that deficit around. Two is to deal with making sure we're keeping taxes low and regulations fair that promote growth of jobs and not hinder that growth. We must also have trade enforcement law changes that allow us to grow in another way. China alone, for example, is exploiting loopholes big enough to sail a freight ship through. They tax and embargo the export of raw materials and rare Earth minerals. They mandate local content requirement so American companies can't build in the U.S. and ship to China. They steal patents, copyrights, and reverse-engineer U.S. technology and products. They offer below-market government loans to their companies, and they manipulate their currency. All of this has created a great wall of illegal and unfair manufacturing trade practices, and we cannot sit by while they undermine our jobs. But a fourth pillar has to do with how we need to grow our resources, an important issue for the Energy and Commerce Committee. While the Outer Continental Shelf of this country is off limits for oil drilling, we are passing by massive amounts of jobs and massive amounts of economy for our Nation. If we were allowed to have drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, the Federal revenue alone, without borrowing money, without buying from OPEC, without increasing our trade deficits, would yield $2.5 trillion to $3.7 trillion in Federal revenue, and all of that based upon 1970s estimates of how much oil is out there. In addition to that, even though there is not supposed to be a moratorium on drilling off the Gulf of Mexico, there is in effect a ``permatorium'' because all of these wells which previously have been permitted are now told they can't drill. Regulatory agencies dither, which means higher oil prices at the pump for American families, greater reliance on OPEC, and with the threats of Egypt and the worries about the Suez Canal, we are sitting by as American families wondering what's going to happen next. Let's deal with all these issues and grow American jobs.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, tonight we will hear about the State of the Union. I hope we hear the sometimes painful truth about the State of the Union: more jobs lost in the last couple of years and we need to do something about that. But the answer is not more spending that leads us to a greater deficit and more borrowing from China. The answer is not to continue to have higher gas prices because we are buying our oil from OPEC, which they use to build their lavish palaces and drive their Rolls Royces while our communities are trying to find ways to afford the patching compound to patch up our potholes. What we need to be doing is taking action that uses our resources to create American jobs. A bill that I am going to be reintroducing from last year is one that says, Let's stop this moratorium that prevents us from using our oil, from drilling our resources. We can actually create jobs and have about $3 trillion-plus in Federal revenue without raising taxes, without raising our trade deficit, and without sending more money to OPEC. I hope this is something this Congress considers and this President has an open mind to dealing with so that we can create jobs without creating more deficit.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, Republicans agree, and we want families to keep their kids on their plans if they wish. And last Congress that's why we offered proposals that would have allowed dependent children to stay on their parents' plans. But once again, the other side is trying to hide 3,000 pages of a law by discussing only 10 pages. We all want to work on this, and we will achieve this in the replacement bill. But the other side also fails to mention the other part of this 2,900 pages that will ignore what's going to cause health insurance premiums to go up 17 percent because of this care plan. What good is coverage on a policy if a family can't afford it? On another issue, chronic illness consumes 70 percent of health care costs and 90 percent of Medicare. The health care bill, however, cuts $500 billion from Medicare, and much of that by eliminating chronic care management that otherwise could save lives and money. So for 7.4 million seniors on Medicare Advantage, if you like your plan, you can't keep it. So what does chronic disease management do? UPMC in Pittsburgh reduced hospitalization rates for diabetics by 75 percent. Washington Hospital in Pennsylvania cut readmission rates 50 percent for heart disease. And Gateway Health Plan reduced asthma readmissions by 28 percent. It's better care at lower cost; but the health care bill says if you're sick, you're on your own. Tragically, it pays to amputate the feet of a diabetic, but won't pay a nurse $5 to make sure you are following up on prescriptions, therapies, diets, and treatments. The new law does have a pilot and grant program to be sure, but you will find no reimbursement code for disease management. That's why we must repeal and replace this bill for the sake of our seniors and for the sake of our children.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. I appreciate that. Let me talk about a couple of important aspects of this bill and understand that if you have a car and it has a flat tire, you don't get rid of the car; you change the tire. But if you have a car with a great tire and the car is not running and it's broken down, you get a new car. What we have here is a health care bill that indeed does have a few pages and some parts that we all agree on and we want to work on those together. However, there are also thousands of pages of other problems and tens of thousands of pages, perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages yet to be written by boards, panels and commissions yet to be appointed on issues we have yet to know what is going to be included in this. And that is part of the reason why employers are frightened about what may be in this bill. Members of Congress shake their heads and say how could something so massive--and it's going to cost over a trillion dollars a year to administer this plan--how could this happen without Congress really having oversight? Let me mention two areas of this which I am deeply concerned about. We know that one of the ways we can provide better care and ultimately save a lot of money has to do with disease management, or care management. This is when perhaps nurses or other specialists within the doctor's office or working with the hospital, work to stay in touch with the patient, patients who have asthma or diabetes or heart disease or other chronic illness, because they know if they can get that patient to follow up with their medications, their treatments, their therapies, they can prevent problems from worsening. They can help make that patient better. They can keep that patient out of the hospital. In the area of mental health, chronic illness has twice the incidence of depression when it's not picked up, and when depression is present and not treated, costs double. Now, unfortunately, this bill not only doesn't pay for this, but if you want something, the important area that did pay for it in Medicare Advantage, this bill in order to try and pay for it cut $500 billion worth of Medicare, and a significant portion of that was in something called Medicare Advantage which covers millions of people, 7.4 million seniors around the country. One of the clear, distinct advantages of Medicare Advantage is it provided this disease management. Here are a couple of examples: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center found they could reduce rehospitalization rates for diabetics by 75 percent. Another hospital in my district, Washington Hospital, reduced readmission rates for heart disease by 50 percent. Another plan reduced asthma rate readmissions by 28 percent, all by doing this important care management. Well, unfortunately, if you like the plan you have, you can't keep it because this bill guts that and eliminates that portion of it. Now out of this 2,900-roughly-page bill, to have a couple sections that people are talking about, the benefits of why we should keep this bill, these are areas we agree on: maintain preexisting coverage, don't cut people because they're sick, let kids stay on their parents' policy for a little bit longer, all important parts and things we will continue to work on as a conference because we understand health care. And in particular this caucus made up of health care providers, we work with patients for many, many decades all together, hundreds of years, and we understand the bottom line is we must work on health care reform, and this bill just doesn't quite reform that.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Another couple of brief points I would like to bring up, because out of a sense of compassion, we want to continue to practice health care and we want patients to be able to afford it. But let me point out a couple of ways this bill is trying to fund the expanded government-run health care that actually increases cost. One is that the very thing that we should be working on to reduce costs such as medical supplies and other practices will be taxed. Pacemakers will be taxed. Heart monitors will be taxed. Artificial joints will be taxed. The knees and hips that people will have replaced will be taxed. Stents, diabetes supplies, and prescription drugs are going to be taxed. That tax is an increase in the cost of health care and something that has to be paid for, which gets paid for by increasing the cost of insurance. Employers also have to pay increasing taxes: if they don't have enough insurance or if they have no insurance for their employees. And if they have too much insurance for their employees, instead of rewarding them and saying this is good that you are providing comprehensive insurance for employees, that gets taxed as well. And employees themselves, if they are not covered, they have to pay taxes or, because the way this bill works because there is no time frame, they can get it when they are in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Another point. Part of the funding for this is to take $70 billion from a long-term health insurance plan called the Community Living Assistance Services, which is the CLASS Act. Before it even starts, they will take $70 billion out of this over 10 years; but what happens is the premiums will need to be paid in actual claims. Actually, it is far less than will be needed. Now, if any of us tried to start an insurance plan and took all of the money out before it even got started, well, you wouldn't be able to get a license to provide that insurance. It is one of the many flaws in this program that does not have the money to pay for it. It is another reason why the bill had to be repealed before it is replaced.

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Section 4: ``Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.''

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, well, here we go again. Gasoline: $3, $4, and soon $5 a gallon. Oil at $100 a barrel. Yet America's offshore resources total more than 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough oil to replace imports from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for the next 80 years. But the administration's moratorium says ``no'' to American oil and ``yes'' to OPEC. We don't have to buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil from OPEC, borrow $900 billion from China, run a massive trade deficit or raise taxes. The revenues and leases from offshore exploration can bring up to $3.7 trillion in Federal revenue to slash our deficit, build clean power plants, clean up our air and water, increase renewables, and rebuild our crumbling highways and bridges--all while creating millions of jobs and trillions in economic output. I hope my colleagues will join me as I reintroduce the bipartisan American Conservation and Clean Energy Independence Act so we can work on securing America's prosperity and American jobs using American resources. Stop talking; start building.

Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 652 H. Con. Res. 336, Providing for the sine die adjournment of the second session of the One Hundred Eleventh Congress. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania

Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 653, H.J. Res. 1776, Providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 105) making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2011, and for other purposes, had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''