Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I would.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the Speaker and I thank the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for once again allowing the 30- Something Working Group to come to the floor tonight and share with the American people and share with you, Mr. Speaker, some of the most important and pressing issues that are before this Congress right now, and to do that in part from a perspective of some of the hardworking individuals across this country who are looking for help from this Congress, who are looking for a Congress for the first time in a long time to start standing up for average, hardworking, everyday men and women who have been getting the short shrift from this government for a very long time. I am soon to be joined by some of my colleagues, potentially Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek and Mr. Altmire to discuss some of the issues confronting us today. We will try, on behalf of Mr. Altmire and Mr. Meek, and certainly Mr. Ryan, to make as few Halloween analogies as potentially positive. We have exhausted that already this evening, and we are guilty on both sides of the aisle, so we won't talk about things being frightening or scary, at least until Mr. Ryan gets here. He may not be able to resist. It always amuses me when we are down here for one of these 30- Something Working Group hours, and a lot of times we are preceded by The Truth Squad or some of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle. Often their mantra is to preach to the Democratic side of the aisle and preach to the American people the values of fiscal responsibility. Tonight we heard a little bit about it from our friends from the other side of the aisle chastising Chairman Rangel and his new very progressive tax cut which will bring tax relief to millions of working- class families. We heard them talk about how it is time this Congress got spending under control as well. Mr. Speaker, there are short memories on the other side of the aisle, short memories which seems to only go back 10 months. They do not go back 3, or 6 or 12 years ago when Republicans took control of this Congress. If they did, they may have some recollection of the fact that they had 12 years of control. The Republicans had 12 years of responsibility over the Federal budget to get some fiscal sense and some fiscal discipline in the Federal budget. I stand here as a representative from a pretty fiscally conservative district. I represent northwestern Connecticut which is filled with Democrats and Republicans and Independents alike who care about the management of their Federal budget. They care about what this government does with their Federal dollars. They may be sort of a more socially liberal or moderate district, but when it comes to dollars and cents, people in my district care about fiscal responsibility. So I think one of the reasons I replaced a 24- year incumbent is because after a while, people in my little corner of Connecticut and from across this country woke up to the fact that while on the floor of the House of Representatives or back in their districts or on the talk shows or the cable news networks, the Republicans said over and over again that they valued fiscal responsibility, but when they had a chance to pass budgets to back up that talk, when they had a chance to get the deficit under control, not only did they not do it, they made it worse. This President with a Republican-controlled Congress in the House and the Senate, with a Republican-controlled administration inherited a budget surplus and turned that in just a few years into a record budget deficit. A chart that Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan have shown on this House floor year after year after year says it pretty well. President Bush during the time he has been in office, all of that, all of those budgets passed with Republican Houses and Republican Senates, in the time he has been in Congress, he has doubled the amount of foreign-held debt, doubled the amount of borrowing we have done which has been bought up by countries other than the United States. It took 42 Presidents 224 years to build up $1 trillion of foreign debt. And it has taken this President 6 years to go to $1.19 trillion. And this chart is a little old, too. It's even worse than that now. So it amuses me, Mr. Speaker, and a lot amuses me in Washington. As a freshman Member, I find a lot of things to sort of step back and laugh about. But to get lectured by a Republican, now in the minority, about fiscal responsibility, when it was their party in control of this House and in control of the Senate and running the administration that put us in the situation we are in today. So now it is our job to try to clean it up. When I go back to my district, Mr. Speaker, I have a hard time explaining why some of the simple, commonsense measures that we have undertaken in this Congress weren't done years, decades ago. I use for an example what is called the pay-as-you-go rule. It is kind of the rule that most families and businesses use every day, which is we are only going to spend money that we have. We are going to put money out at the same rate money is coming in. For some reason when the Republicans were running this House for the last 12 years, that wasn't the rule of the day. In fact, regularly they were spending American taxpayer dollars that they didn't have, that weren't in the bank. That is what rolled up these deficits that were rolling in at about $300 billion a year. It's spending more money than we were taking in that is now responsible for a Federal deficit that balloons over $1.2 trillion. The majority, I am not sure the majority but a large amount of that deficit, that debt, those notes, those obligations being held by China and Japan and OPEC nations, all of these countries that we are sitting across the negotiating table from, being largely compromised by the fact that we owe a large amount of money that we are asking for policy considerations from. So we decided, let's do something simple. When Speaker Pelosi came to the Speaker's chair, to the dais you sit on right now, Mr. Speaker, she decided in the first 100 hours we are here, let's say that every obligation that we decide to commit ourselves to, every new spending bill that may come before this House, let's within that bill explain exactly how we are going to pay for it. When I explain that back home, when I go to my Rotary groups or my Chamber of Commerce meetings and I explain that Congress now has decided to only spend what we have, and if we spend anything more in that bill we are going to tell you how we are going to spend it, people look at me with these blank stares saying on the inside and on the outside: Why didn't you do this before? This Republican Party that told us for years they were the party of fiscal responsibility in fact was running this budget into the ground; and could have, just by adopting a pretty simple pay-as-you-go rule, could have exerted some discipline on this House which was lacking almost completely for 12 years, now finally here. I am pretty proud of Chairman Rangel for his frankness as he was sort of mockingly given credit for earlier today, because the bill that he has put before us, the bill that fixes the alternative minimum tax, and I know we will spend some time talking about some really important topics as we head into the holidays regarding food safety and toy safety and drug safety, but first I want to talk about the alternative minimum tax because you didn't hear a word about it, you didn't hear anybody talking about it, at least when I was listening to the other side of the aisle, you didn't hear anybody talking about the very reason Chairman Rangel and the Ways and Means Committee have dedicated themselves to tax relief because we are on the verge of the biggest tax increase on the middle class in perhaps the history of American tax policy courtesy of President Bush and the previous Republican majority here. So guess what? Yet again, it's left to this Democratic Congress, the New Direction Congress, to clean up yet another mess that was created by this prior Congress. We're already trying to do it when it comes to children's health care. We're trying to reorder our energy policy. We're trying to clean up the ethical malaise that has settled on this town. So now we are also going to do it when it comes to this issue as well, to the alternative minimum tax. In 1969, when the alternative minimum tax was passed by Congress it was pretty simple. They said, listen, with of the different tax loopholes and deductions and credits and offsets that people can take, there's going to be some people who make a lot of money who may be able, through creative tax planning, to avoid paying taxes to the United States Government. That's not right. That's not right. And so in 1969, they passed a complicated formula called the alternative minimum tax, and in 1970, about 20,000 of the richest Americans paid the alternative minimum tax. Makes sense. Makes sense. Make sure that everybody pays some minimum level of taxation, especially those folks up at the top of the income stratosphere who have creative ways to avoid that tax situation. Okay. So 20,000 people pay it in 1970, but guess what? Because Congress, after Congress fails to index the alternative minimum tax, in 2006, 3.5 million people end up paying it, and all of the sudden it's not just the tax paid by the really, really rich people. It's a tax that starts to get paid for by people that look and sound and make incomes like you and I, and as we look at what happens in the next couple of years, it gets even worse. By 2010, if we don't fix the alternative minimum tax, the AMT as people call it around here. I figured out in my short time here that everything has got an acronym, everything; even things where the word itself is shorter than the acronym, that's got an acronym. So this has got an acronym. The alternative minimum tax is called the AMT. By 2010, just 2\1/2\ short years away, if we don't fix this, if we don't clean up the mess that this last Congress created on the AMT, 80 percent of people that make $100,000, in Connecticut that's a middle- income family, 80 percent of people that make $100,000 are going to be paying the alternative minimum tax, and it just gets worse from there.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me read, Mr. Meek, to you from a, you guys all say third-party verifiers, right? Validators. Kind of means the same thing. Half a dozen, six. So this is from a report called Toxic Trade done by the Campaign for America's Future, and we'll go back to this problem that we have at the CPSC regarding toy testers. It says this: The agency's toy testing department, it's lab hasn't been modernized since 1975, and the department consists of one man who drops toys on the floor in his office to see if they'll break. I mean, that's it. There you go. I mean, that's the toy testing regimen of the United States Government is a guy, and I'm sure he's a wonderfully nice guy. But he sits in his office at his desk and he takes toys and he drops them on the floor to see if they'll break. I mean, that's what we got now. That's what you got for these record deficits, for all the spending in Iraq, for breaks for oil companies and drugs companies. You've got one guy who drops toys from his desk and sees if they'll break.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me give you a quote that comes from one of these hearings and you decide, we will let the public decide and our colleagues decide whether or not this is good information that maybe we should have out there. David Kessler, who is the former FDA official and one of the acknowledged experts on food safety in this country, Kessler says, ``We have no structure,'' in this country, ``for preventing food-borne illness. The reality is that there is currently no mandate, no leadership, no resources, nor scientific research base for prevention of food safety problems.'' I think that's probably information that we should know, that one of the leading officials, one of the leading experts on food safety and food regulation in this country believes that we have absolutely no ability to control the quality of food coming into this country. He knows what we know, the amount of inspections has dropped precipitously. We did about 50,000 food inspections in 1972. We do 5,000 now in 2000. We have dropped by 90 percent over the last 30 years the amount of food inspections we do. We have these experts out there who had these opinions that they couldn't share because Congress wasn't doing oversight. Congress wasn't bringing before it the people who knew what was going on out there, knew the risk that the American public was being put at, they weren't being asked to come here and express those opinions to Congress. We are getting them now.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I will explain this to you later. It's very complicated. I reject the notion that just because a team calls itself after a big geographical area that I have to reform. I live in Connecticut, just because they call themselves the New England Patriots, but that's for another time.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me give you a quote that comes out in one of these oversight hearings.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman for yielding and I thank Mr. Shays for bringing this before the House. As the Member of Congress who now has the honor of serving New Britain, Connecticut, I can tell you, as someone who didn't know Governor Meskill and Congressman Meskill personally, that he loved the City of New Britain and the City of New Britain loved him back. He earned the nickname of ``Tough Tommy'' during his time in the Governor's mansion when he turned a very large deficit into a very large surplus in a short amount of time. As you have heard, there was hardly an office in Connecticut in any of the branches that Governor Meskill did not hold. New Britain is better off for having him. It bears his stamp. We all stand today to mourn his loss and send our condolences to the family.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, when will it end with Blackwater? Probably not soon enough. Just yesterday, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released findings that show that Blackwater has potentially misclassified hundreds of workers in Iraq and Afghanistan, evading taxes and costing the taxpayers in the United States at least $30 million. This comes a few weeks after the same committee discovered that Blackwater is raking in potentially $100 million in profit off of their government contracts. We have got to get this situation under control. That is why I, along with Mr. Welch and Chairman Waxman, have introduced legislation to require that private government contractors receiving more than 80 percent of their revenue from Federal contracts, like Blackwater, must disclose the salaries of their most highly compensated employees. It just isn't right for executives at Blackwater or anywhere else to make their fortune off of war profiteering. It is our money, and we deserve to know how it is being used. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this commonsense legislation.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, you know, we live in a world that's hard to reconcile sometimes. Now, our focus often is on the evil that exists in this world, but all too often we let that focus overwhelm the counterbalancing good things that happen in our communities every day. And I rise today to recognize that strange, delicate symmetry in my hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut. This week, the Cheshire High School girls swim team broke the record for the longest dual-meet winning streak in American history with their 235th straight victory. As you can imagine, this is a pretty remarkable record to break. In fact, the girls on this record-breaking swim team that broke the record on Monday night weren't even alive when that streak began some 21 years ago. I wasn't there Monday night, unfortunately, but hundreds of parents and friends and siblings and supporters were in attendance, and I heard that the record-breaking night was pretty magical. But strangely, something else happened that night, something that the girls probably didn't even notice or seek out. Monday night, the girls swim team at Cheshire High School transcended statistics and records and wins and losses. And the most important marker that they set down that night was not as the best swim team in the country, but as a bright, beaming emblem of a resurgent community with so much to celebrate. You see, my town has been grieving over the past several months. And it's hard to figure out what else to do when you wake up one morning and find out that three of your neighbors, a mother and her two young, vibrant daughters, lost their lives in an unspeakable act of barbarism. It becomes difficult, impossible even, to square the wonderful, serene existence of life in a quiet small town with the random and brutal acts of violence that left Dr. William Petit mourning the unexplainable loss of his family. How do you reconcile the two? How do you wake up, even for those of us who didn't know the family personally or live in that neighborhood, and pretend that the veil of safety and goodness that always seemed to envelop Cheshire, Connecticut, was still there after that? I thought about little else in the days and weeks following that incident, and I know that I wasn't alone. But then the unexpected happens. And I know it sounds silly to even talk about a murder and a swim team in the same sentence and, frankly, of course, the two are incomparable, but therein lies the problem. There is no and there will be no one clear moment when we collectively decide that the moral order has been restored in our community. And so we're left to seek out those moments that simply remind us of why we love Cheshire in the first place and why we have confidence that our community will heal, that we will persevere, and that we will recover. This week is one of those moments. I didn't grow up in Cheshire, so I certainly can't claim to know the town like those who call it their birthplace, but I did know a good thing when I found it. And Tuesday morning, when I heard that the record had broken, I couldn't help but wonder whether it wasn't just a coincidence that a national record 21 years in the making matured at the very moment that a burst of good news was most needed in our community. And I couldn't help but think about how this streak, which started two decades ago and has been the careful construction of hundreds of girls and thousands more family members, friends, supporters and coaches stands as a testament to the strength, persistence and spirit of our little town, not just on one night, but over the span of decades. And so, yes, one unspeakable act can and probably should shake the confidence and faith of a community. And nothing will ever repair that damage, certainly not for the Petit family, and probably not entirely for the community that they call home. And so we're left to look for those moments of triumph, those instances of community reaffirmation that remind us why Cheshire is such a special place to live. Well, we found one this week. And so, Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Cheshire High School girls swim team and to thank them for everything that they have done. Cheshire is a pretty special place to live, and Monday night reminded us of why that is.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I just think in the end this is about choices, Mr. Altmire. Mr. Ryan was talking about it before. This is about whether you want to continue to throw billions upon billions of dollars into a war in Iraq that, frankly, is probably making this country less safe rather than more safe as it breeds terrorism and Islamic jihadists within the boundaries of Iraq. It's about whether you want to continue to give away $12 to $18 billion of tax breaks to the oil companies that the oil companies themselves say they don't need to continue putting products into the American market. Do you want to continue to subsidize the drug industry, which is making out like bandits off of a prescription drug program that pads their pockets and their profits, as we just found out from a new report from the Government Oversight Committee that tells us that we're wasting $15 billion a year on the Medicare prescription drug program. You want to help drug companies or poor kids? Do you want to help oil companies or poor kids? Do you want to throw more money in a religious civil war, or do you want to help poor kids? I mean, the reason why these polls, one after another, come out pleading with Congress to get its act together and pass children's health care is because everybody out there in the community, at the social halls, at the union halls, at the churches, at the synagogues, at the pasta suppers and the pancake breakfasts, the PTA, they've all figured out that we're making the wrong choice; that in the end the choice is easy. You help middle-class families afford college. You help them get health care. You boost their wages up to a livable wage, and you can do that without spending another dime in taxpayer money in the end. I mean, that's the great thing. You don't want to have to raise anybody's taxes to do it. You just make different choices. Iraq, oil companies, drug companies, instead, minimum wage, health care, kids going to college. I mean, that seems like common sense, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I don't have notebooks; I just have loose scraps of paper. I haven't reached that level of organization of veteran Members like yourselves. Let me talk about one more myth. There is not a bill that comes before this House, and you and I, Mr. Altmire, are new here, so we are figuring this out as we go along. But there is not a bill that comes before this House that somebody on the other side doesn't scream ``illegal immigrants'' over. Right? That is just sort of the buzz word that accompanies every bill here. We had a Native American housing bill before this House a couple of weeks back, and somebody on the other side filed an amendment to make sure that no Native American housing benefits went to illegal immigrants. Now, I know that we run our programs pretty inefficiently in this country, but you have to really mismanage the Native American housing program in order to give some of the housing to illegal immigrants. So what they are saying on the other side is that this children's health care bill is going to go to illegal immigrants. Not true. Find me anywhere in that bill that allows for that. In fact, Mr. Altmire, it doesn't even allow for those health care benefits as part of the SCHIP program to go to legal immigrants, people who have their papers, did everything right, are waiting to become citizens of this country. They can't get the children's health care program under this bill.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We needed an off night tonight. We got an off night from the playoffs. So those of us that wallowed in the Boston defeat are glad to have a little separation to let our team regroup and rethink how they're going to approach this. It's rare that we have five members of the 30-somethings here. As the two new Members here, I want to make sure we understand our place. So I'm going to be very, very brief and just say this: To add on to all the great reasons why we should do this, this is reaching out to families that have done everything that we've asked them to do; they're playing by the rules. They simply can't afford insurance in a market in which in a State like Connecticut you're going to pay $8,000 or $9,000 out of pocket before an insurance company picks up dollar one for the average family plan that you look at on a lot of these insurance programs. It's the right thing to do because it saves money in the long run because you're getting preventative care to the kids that are going to end up sick and in the hospital later on and end up costing the system way more money because you didn't invest in prevention and end up paying for crisis care. I think it's also important to note that this bill is paid for. This bill is part of an effort here in this Congress to advance some of the most important programs in the middle class. We're talking about health care programs, student loan programs, minimum wage and do it in a way that doesn't add to this enormous, unfathomable deficit that the Republican Congress put us under. Let's just talk about the facts, because Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek especially talked about this over and over and over again on the floor here. When the Republicans took control, they had a $5.6 trillion surplus that President Clinton left them with. They have now turned it into, along with this President, a $2 trillion 10-year deficit. The debt which started at the beginning of the President's administration at $5.7 trillion has ballooned to $9 trillion. So our biggest task here is to make sure that we don't add to that just unbelievable amount of money that this country and every single citizen here owes, and guess what, we are able to do that, to pass a 5- year budget that's going to be balanced after 5 years, to pass a rule that mandates that we don't spend a dime of new money without accounting for how we pay for it. We're able to run the most fiscally responsible Congress that this country has seen in a very long time, while maintaining our commitment to expand programs that help the middle class. That's what we have to remember when we talk about this SCHIP bill, the children's health bill, is that this isn't more deficit spending. This is targeted spending on people who need it, the middle class. It's paid for.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It lays it out, black and white. So yet another example of if you say it over and over again and you hope that people believe it. As we have said over and over, the agenda here is pretty clear. Republicans and the President simply do not want this Congress to extend basic foundational health care rights to middle- class, to kids, and they are coming up with all sorts of crazy arguments that don't have truth, a strain of truth in them to try to stop them.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Ryan, let me ask you a question: When was the last year that your team, the Indians, won the World Series? When was that? It was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. It's just something you might want to remember, that there might be a reason why it's taking so long to get over that hump. There is still a game left, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the chairman. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to say it today that the conversation about corruption in Iraq, this isn't theoretical. It is not hypothetical. It is not just about numbers or statistics. Corruption in Iraq is real. It has a face. And, frankly, it is no secret to those Iraqis who are picking up their newspapers and their media outlets every day and finding out the corruption that is rampant there. So I think it is worthwhile just for a second to talk about the face of corruption in Iraq. This is Salam al-Maliki, the former Iraqi Minister of Transportation. He is also the Prime Minister's cousin. He was accused of abusing his official position to purchase real estate at a fraction of its value. But the Prime Minister issued an order barring, barring, his case from being referred to court. I want to now introduce you to Aiham Alsammarae. He was the Iraqi Minister of Electricity who was convicted in Iraq of the abuse of national funds; yet he escaped from the Green Zone with the help of U.S. contractors. He is now living, if you can believe it, in Chicago, running his own business and traveling around the world. Finally, this is Hazem Shaalan. He was the Iraqi Minister of Defense, accused of embezzling almost $1 billion that should have been spent on weapons and vehicles for the Iraqi Army. Iraqi courts reportedly have audiotapes of his deputy discussing payoffs to various officials. After his conviction, he also fled the country, and he is now living in Europe or the Middle East. Mr. Speaker, this is just the tip of the iceberg. But this administration doesn't think that the American people should be concerned or even know about this. By refusing to answer questions and retroactively classifying corruption reports, this administration has proved once again that they either don't trust the American people, or they know that their case for continuing this war is so weak that they have to obfuscate the facts on the ground. Now government contractors are getting into the game. Two weeks ago, Erik Prince, the CEO of Blackwater Security, refused to disclose to this committee his salary or the profit margins of his company, despite the fact that Blackwater makes 90 percent of its money off of U.S. taxpayers. This cannot stand, Mr. Speaker. I, for one, will never support another war funding authorization that doesn't provide for the redeployment of forces out of Iraq. But for those on this floor who do support this war, I plead with you to at least demand accountability for the billions of wasted dollars that we have thrown at the Iraqis. Do not stand here on the House floor telling us that we cannot afford to heal children throughout the United States of America if we aren't even asking questions and getting the appropriate documentation that we require on the billions of wasted dollars in Iraq.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, why is it that we have so many Republicans here in the House, a veto-proof majority in the Senate, a poll that came out showing that Republicans across this country support expansion of the SCHIP bill by a 2 to 1 margin. Why is that? Because the expansion of the SCHIP bill is not just morally responsible. It is fiscally responsible. We have to stop pretending that these kids that don't have health care insurance don't have health care. They do. But they get it in the least humane and most expensive way. We have a system of universal health care in this country. It just doesn't get care to these kids until they are so sick and so crippled by their illness that they show up at an emergency room and get the worst care and most expensive care that you can get in this system I come from a morally responsible district, but I also come from a fiscally responsible district, Madam Speaker, and that is why they support expansion of the SCHIP program.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 507, the Vision Care for Kids Act of 2007. This issue is simple, Madam Speaker, kids can't learn if they can't see. Providing early vision screening for our nation's children will make sure they are all ready to learn when they enter school and the Vision Care for Kids Act will help provide states with the means to offer this important care. When I was in the Connecticut State Senate, I championed an initiative which made school-based vision screening a priority through the mandated reporting of pediatric vision screening on school health assessment forms. The passage of today's legislation will enhance my state's ability to enhance vision programs for children by providing a much needed federal stream of funding. Importantly, it will allow Connecticut's children to receive followup care when uninsured children are identified through my state's existing vision screening program. The passage of today's legislation is another example of how this Congress is actively working to provide health services to our nation's children. This week, as the House contemplates whether we should provide 10 million American children with health insurance through the SCHIP program, we should take today as an opportunity to affirm our commitment to comprehensive health screening and coverage for all American children. Madam Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support H.R. 507 and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It goes to the very subject that we opened with in talking about here, which is the war itself, and we believe that there is a much better way to spend pretty much all of that money, whether it be rebuilding our schools, educating kids, giving health care to children. But even, even given the vast amount of money that we are spending over there, there has been virtually no check, virtually no oversight by this Congress and this administration. A great example is the Government Oversight Committee, which has done really yeoman's work in trying to make up for the complete absence of oversight during the past several Congresses. The Oversight Committee held a hearing, very well attended, very highly publicized hearing a few weeks back with the CEO of Blackwater, who came before Congress, Blackwater, the private security firm which has basically created a privatized military in Iraq today. Blackwater came before us, the CEO of Blackwater came before us the other week, and we asked him simply this. We said, tell us how much profit you are making. Tell us how much profit Blackwater is making off of U.S. Government contracts and said, You know what? It's none of your business. I can give you an estimation. I think we are making about $85 million a year in profits off of $850 million in contracts. But, basically, it's none of your business, United States Congress. There weren't a lot of people on the Republican side of the aisle, on that government Oversight Committee that blinked at that suggestion, because that has been the practice in this Congress over the past several years. That has been de rigueur, as a matter of course here, that we don't ask any questions, that it is okay that Blackwater security, a private military operating in Iraq, can make $85 million in profit off of doing what we know the United States military could do themselves. So it's endemic when you talk about private tax collectors, it's endemic when you talk about the issues such as PAYGO that Representative Wasserman Schultz raised and certainly in spending on the war. Time after time again we have seen no fiscal responsibility here, and time after time this Congress, Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, is shedding light on that misused taxpayer funds, but passing legislation like the bill that we passed today, which changes the course, and we start spending tax money wisely once again.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr. Meek, and my condolences go out as well to the Davis family. Mr. Meek, I am glad you started where we left off last time, talking about children's health care, because it is still on the table. For a lot us, we still believe that it has hope. This 2-week period in which we postponed a vote on the override will give our friends on the other side of the aisle the opportunity to rethink their position on this issue, to go back to their districts and talk to the millions of families, thousands and thousands of families in each congressional district across this country who are struggling with the real peril associated with trying to get health care in this country. We are talking about 6 million kids which are going to lose health care if we don't reauthorize the national Federal Children's Health Program, the SCHIP program. We are talking about 4 million new kids that don't have health care now that could have health care. We are really talking about families that are playing by the rules, who are doing everything we ask of them, working one job, two jobs, maybe even three jobs, but can't get health care through their employers. It just makes sense for us to reach out and try to help those families. Mr. Speaker, it makes sense not only because it's the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, but we care about our fellow human beings, and we are our brother's keeper. But reaching out a helping hand to a sick child who lies in their bed simply because their parents can't afford a doctor, that is part of our moral obligation as Members of Congress, but it's also the fiscally responsible thing to do. These kids get health care, but they don't get health care until they get so sick that they end up in emergency rooms, and they end up getting the least humane, most expensive health care available to them. Madam Speaker, this bill, the SCHIP bill, the Children's Health Insurance bill, which we hope we will have enough votes to override the President's veto on next week, this is not just about our moral obligation as a Congress, but it is also about our fiscal obligation. I know Ms. Wasserman Schultz will talk about this today. It is also about choices. This is not about play money, found money or new money. This is about taking funding that we have been sending for far too long into the civil, religious conflict in Iraq. Thirty- seven days worth of funding of that war could insure every child that the SCHIP bill seeks to cover, 10 million kids. In the end, this is just about choices. Madam Speaker, we have still got time to convince a few folks on the other side of the aisle to join us. You remember, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, when this bill first came before the House, there were only a handful of Republicans that supported that. They went back to their districts over the course of August and they came back to take another shot, and, guess what? We had almost three to four times as many Republicans who, after they went back and heard from their constituents on this, decided they were going to stand with us, stand up for children's health. I think the same thing can happen again next week if families throughout this country, if hardworking Americans who have no health care, go to their Members of Congress and say, listen, it is time to do the right thing for kids, time to do the right thing for families, time to do the right thing for health care. I think we can have a victory.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me tell you a story. I know you have heard it, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, but it is pretty indicative of how low the other side is prepared to go to try to undermine children's health care. There is a family, the Frosts. Their son, Graeme Frost, doesn't have health insurance. He is 13 years old and suffers with severe brain injury as a result of a car crash. The family has been the face of some of this discussion. The father is self-employed. He is a woodworker. The mother has had some part-time jobs on and off. They are not living in destitute poverty, but they are playing by the rules and doing everything we ask them to do. They are paying their taxes and contributing to society. But because their son has a preexisting condition, they have been turned down for health insurance time and time and time again. And so they have to pay for injuries from a car crash for a 13-year-old boy out of their pockets. This is the kind of family that we are talking about. This is a family that has done everything that we have asked, a family that is getting by, but because their son has an injury that excludes him from most private insurance, he has no other recourse than the SCHIP program, a stopgap solution until the family finds some insurance program that does cover him. Well, what happened. This family had their whole life uncovered by the right wing that is trying to stop children's health care from going forward. Every tax return, every purchase they have ever made, right down to the type of countertops they have in their kitchen was exposed by the right wing of this city to try to prove that this family is just leaching off the government. This is a 13-year-old kid with brain injuries and a family that has done everything that they can to try to find insurance and haven't found it. I was home this past weekend, and on Monday I listened to one of the talk show hosts in my district talk about the fact, he said: I don't understand why people are saying the poor can't get health care insurance. I went onto a Web site for one of the big health insurance companies, and I just plugged in for a family of four to see how much it would cost. He said, it is reasonable. You can get a 80/20 plan, he said, 80 percent covered by the insurer, 20 percent by you, with a $5,000 deductible for only $300 a month. That's a deal. That's a deal. Madam Speaker, think of that, for a family making a little more than minimum wage, maybe making $22,000 a year, which in Connecticut just to have a roof over their head is paying about $10,000 a year in rent, now has to pay $9,000 a year for insurance.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. In my district, forget buying a house, if you want to rent an apartment with a couple of bedrooms, it is at least $600, $700 a month. You are talking $10,000 a year when it is all said and done. You add on $9,000 for health care costs, which under that plan that he found on a website, the minimum amount you have to pay before you even have a dime of health care coverage kick in, and you have $2,000 or $3,000 left over to do everything else, to put food on the table and educate your kids and pay for heat. It is mind numbing that people can't see that health care is so expensive that it is prohibitive for families doing the right thing. This is humane and it is right. The conspiracy that gets thrown out there, and the stats and the numbers, by the right wing on this issue are pretty easy to punch through in the end.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I was going to pick up on that point. We are so close. This has been a bipartisan effort. We have the votes necessary to override the President's veto in the Senate. You have Senator Hatch saying that the SCHIP proposal is an honest compromise that improves a program that works for America's low-income children. You have Senator Grassley saying it is a good bill, it is a good comprise. Pat Roberts rises to express his support for the SCHIP bill. So with 45 Members in the House supporting this bill, we are so close. This is a picture, I believe, from earlier in the year. We have a President standing out in front of his loyal soldiers, the Republican caucus in their winter coats, which suggests it was one of the early meetings the President had to galvanize support for his plan to escalate the war. We have seen, as time goes on, that if the President were to regather this group for a conversation on SCHIP there might not be as many Republicans there. I think as Members go back to their district and start to hear from constituents about how important this SCHIP bill is, all of those loyal soldiers are going to get a little smaller and fewer every day. As people start to figure out that the President is so far out on a limb on this issue, that not only is he doing damage to America's children, but he is doing damage to the prospects of his colleagues in the House, you are going to find a lot more people seeking that courage and finding that wisdom and coming on board here. We hope it happens next week. But if it does not happen next week, we are not going away because the 4 million kids out there who are showing up in emergency rooms because they can't get the treatment to try to prevent the mental illness that will cripple them as an adolescent, they can't get the treatment to try to cure that physical ailment that ends them up in the emergency room, those kids aren't going away, so we won't go away. If we fall 15 votes or seven votes or two votes or one vote short, we will be back here next year, we will be back here next summer. If there is anything that is important to us, it is standing up for the kids. If there is anything that should be important to the entire Congress, Republicans and Democrats, it is standing up for the kids. That is our message here tonight. It is not just that we hope that the Republicans go out and find that courage and that wisdom, but they know, and all those children and all those families know, that we are not going to stop until we get a bill that insures kids of families in this country who so desperately need our help.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Do you know how much it costs to ensure a child in the SCHIP program?

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. $3.50 a day. I'm not a big coffee drinker, but I've got to imagine that one of those big fancy mocha grande lattes probably costs more than it costs to insure a child in this country, Mr. Ryan. That's cost efficient. That's being good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank my friend from Ohio. There is delusion that's been happening here for a couple of days, and you hit a couple of nails right on the head. But there is this idea here; you mentioned what Mr. Buchanan said in the Chris Matthews' show that has been perpetuated on the House floor here for the last couple of days that they should pay for it themselves, the family, the kids, whomever it is, should pay for themselves. You know and I know that the reason we're here talking about expanding out access to 4 million new kids is because there is less private health care available today for more and more families. Families throughout this country who are doing the right thing, playing by all the rules, doing everything we've asked them to do, go out, get a job, maybe two, maybe three jobs, don't have access to health care. Their employers don't offer it because the costs have gotten so high that they're crippling small and medium-size employers, so they can't get it anymore. But here is the illusion, the idea that these kids don't get health care is an absolutely false reality. And to think that when a kid gets sick, that he doesn't end up on somebody's dime is to delude yourself. So what happens, and the President said it himself the other day when he said these kids can get health care, they can just go to the emergency room. Well, he's right, because we actually do have a system of universal health care in this country; it's just the most inhumane, inefficient system of universal health care in the world because it says to these kids, to a 6- or 7-year-old who comes down with pneumonia, who can't get to a doctor for treatment for medicine because his parents can't afford it because his parents' employer doesn't cover it, he ends up in the emergency room. He ends up getting much less efficient, more expensive care in the long run. So for all of our fiscally conservative friends on the Republican side of the aisle who decry this as some expansion of government-run health care, this is cost-efficient health care. Getting these kids some preventative health care up front is not just the right thing to do, it's not just part of our moral obligation as a Nation to see an injured child next to us and reach out and give them a helping hand, it's part of our fiscal obligation as stewards of taxpayers' money here in the House of Representatives. We have an obligation to construct a health care system that actually spends less money rather than more money. And that's what this bill is about. It's not just about the moral obligation; it is about the fiscal obligation as well, Mr. Ryan.