Frank Pallone

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I move that theHouse do now adjourn.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, earlier this week while out on the campaign trail Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole claimed that if he were elected President, he would make education the cornerstone of his administration policy. I want to warn the American people to beware-- the Republicans, led by the dormant Presidential campaign of Bob Dole, are once again trying to convince the American people that their agenda to reduce funding for Federal education programs and restrict access to higher education is the way to strengthen the country's educational system. One need only to look at the Republican's record on education in the 104th Congress to come to the conclusion that there objective is exactly the opposite of what Bob Dole says it is. In short, it is abundantly clear that Republicans who run Congress are determined to destroy the quality of education in America. During last year's budget negotiations, the Republicans tried to blackmail the Nation into accepting their extremist budgetary agenda by forcing repeated Government shutdowns. Two times they succeeded in shutting the Government down, and both times Democrats in the Congress and President Clinton stood firm, telling the Republicans we would not allow them to gut education. The Republicans, however, have not given up. With just a few weeks left before Congress adjourns for the remainder of the year, the Republicans, with Bob Dole's blessing, are yet again pushing an education agenda that would restrict access to higher education in this country by gutting student assistance programs. It's the same old story: Republicans are protecting the ability of the wealthy to send their children to college at the same time they limit the ability average American parents to send their children to college. The latest Republican plan resumes attack on the most important student assistance programs for middle- and low-income families. TheHouse's bill allows for a mere 1.2-percent increase in the maximum Pell grant award as compared to the President's budget request. This lack of funding would serve 191,000 fewer students next year and 2.7 million fewer between 1997 and 2002. The Republican plan also eliminates the Federal contribution to the fund for Perkins Loans thereby denying low-interest loans to 96,000 students in the coming school year. TheHouse's education bill also effectively realizes a long-time Republican objective of decimating the Direct Loan Program by capping the number of direct loans through a reduction in funds to administer the program. In addition, Republicans are also proposing to eliminate the AmeriCorps Program, which allows individuals to earn rewards for higher education in exchange for community service. On the other hand, Democrats in Congress and President Clinton have truly been promoting a plan to expand educational opportunity throughout the 104th Congress. The administration and WhiteHouse have joined together to fashion the Families First agenda--a plan that will not only increase the minimum level of education obtained by the average citizen, but assist them in obtaining it. The Democrats want to provide American families with a $10,000 tax deduction for college and job training--under this plan families will be able to deduct up to $10,000 from their taxes for tuition at college graduate school or job training programs. Democrats are also proposing to provide a $1,500 tax credit for the first 2 years of college for students who are prepared to work hard, keep a B average, and stay off drugs. This proposal will, moreover, help strengthen our education system by providing assistance to students to help them obtain at least 2 years of postsecondary education or through the assistance could also be used to get a good start on tuition at a 4-year college. In short, Democrats have not only proposed expanding traditional student assistance programs as opposed to the Republicans, who have voted time and again to cut these programs; we have also developed new educational plans to ensure that the dream of a college education does not reside exclusively in the domain of America's wealthiest citizens. So when Bob Dole promises to make education the centerpiece of his administration, I would say watch out, because that means the budget ax is coming and access will be diminished. Mr. Speaker, we can only hope that at some point the extremist Republican forces in Congress will realize that the American people will reject their radical plan to gut education, health, and the environment no matter how many forms it takes, and no matter how many times they try. If they do not realize it now, they certainly will in November.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just want to follow up on what my colleague from New York just said. We know what happened in the last 2 years with the Republican leadership plans to cut Medicare and Medicaid. If those plans had gone into effect, and thank goodness they did not because of the President and because Democrats in Congress constantly fought against it, if they had gone into effect what we would have seen is increased costs for senior citizens as well as the general population. We would have seen the actual costs for part B premiums under Medicare almost doubled. We would have seen copayments go up and deductibles go up for Medicare, and, at the same time, we also saw the proposal this year in 1996 that would basically have allowed doctors, if a senior stayed in traditional Medicare, to charge whatever they want over and above what Medicare pays the physician. The bottom line is that there is no free lunch. If we impose these tremendous cuts in Medicare that were proposed by the Republican leadership in the past 2 years, and even more cuts that would be proposed because of what Presidential candidate Dole is saying, we will see devastation of Medicare.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I also rise in favor of this motion to instruct. I agree, of course, with all three provisions that are being specified here. But I particularly want to make reference in support of the newborn and mother's health, with a 48-hour minimum hospital stay, addressing the so-called drive-through delivery problem that increasingly we see around the country with various insurance companies. My own State of New Jersey requires a minimum stay of 48 hours for normal delivery and 4 days for a C-section. But I have to say that, even though there are a number of States like New Jersey increasingly that are passing State laws for minimum hospital stays for newborns, there are also a lot of loopholes. For example, in New Jersey, where a lot of people work in New York City or work in Philadelphia, many times the insurance coverage is excepted from the State law because the person, mother or father in this case, works out of State. In addition, some of the insurance companies that are based out of New Jersey have claimed that they do not have to abide by New Jersey's law with regard to minimum hospital stay. We do need Federal legislation. Let no one suggest this can be handled strictly by the States. It cannot. We do need Federal legislation to guarantee minimum stays for mothers with newborn children. Mr. Speaker, I just want to relate my own experience with this situation. Both of my children were born by C-section. When my daughter, who just turned 3 years old, was born, our insurance company, our policy, allowed for 4 days for a C-section. But when my son was born, he is now 18 months, the policy had changed. The insurance company only allowed 2 days for a C-section. Some people say it is up to the doctor, the doctor can always make an exception. But what happens in these cases is that the doctors are basically told by the insurance companies that, if they make an exception and let the child or mother stay an extra day or two, then they are basically penalized. They are told, if this continues, they may lose their hospital privileges or they may not be covered anymore. We were basically told we only had the 2 days for my son. What happened is just before he was to be released from the hospital they found that he had jaundice, so they let him stay. They let my wife and him stay another day, for the third day. But that is an excellent example of the type of disorders that can be found, or that are not found unless a child stays the extra day. Jaundice is something that is not discovered very quickly, and many times children and mothers who are released from the hospitals go home and they found that they have jaundice, and they have to come back into the hospital again. I am very supportive of this legislation and this motion to instruct. There is no question in my mind that mothers should have at least 48 hours for a normal delivery and they should have the 4 days for a C- section. It is the only right thing to do. The choice should be with the mother and the doctor, not with the insurance company. I fully support this motion to instruct.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. We are primarily talking about widows, elderly women whose husbands had passed on and who did not have any pension or anything to pay their way, and were therefore eligible for this, what they called qualified Medicare beneficiaries. I only mention that again by reference to the comments that the two of you have made, which is whenever you have these Medicare cuts, there is no free lunch. Essentially what it does is drive up costs in every other way. You mentioned about the higher premiums for Medicare part B that were proposed by the Republicans in 1995. You mentioned the higher deductibles. You mentioned the higher copayments. But we also had this year, in 1996, actually as part of the budget that the Republicans passed in the spring, the idea of eliminating balanced billing. In other words, essentially, if you decided you wanted to stay in traditional Medicare, you did not want to go into an HMO or managed care, under the present Republican budget for 1996, the one that passed in 1996, you could actually be charged an unlimited amount by the physician over and above what Medicare could pay. So if it is not a question of a higher premium or a higher deductible then there are going to be overcharges. They basically have that right on the table now as we speak in 1996, that doctors can charge unlimited amounts over and above what Medicare could pay, now pays, if you stay in your traditional Medicare plan.

Mr. PALLONE. Not only strictly party line, every Republican voted against it, but if you remember when it came to the floor, Speaker Gingrich had said he was going to correct it and he never did. He actually came here one day in the well and said he was going to correct that, and it was not going to be in the bill when it came to the floor, and he never did.

Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. These were people that could not even afford to pay the $46 that the average person pays now for Medicare part B to pay for their doctor bills. Under the Republican proposal that was considered by this House, and actually passed by this House in 1995, that money would have been taken away. So essentially those really low income senior citizens would not have had Medicaid paying for that Medicare part B premium. I was talking to people who could not afford to pay another $7 or $8 a month.

Mr. PALLONE. I just wanted to follow up. It is funny you are talking about these Washington think tanks. I was just harking back to during the August district work period when we were not in Washington, I had a lot of senior forums. Over and over again, I just got these commonsense approaches from the seniors in my district about what to do to improve Medicare. And they all talked about long-term care, preventative measures. In New Jersey, we have with the casino revenue fund. We refinance a program where if you are below a certain income, I think it may be probably close to $20,000 now for a two-family household, where if you are below that income, the casino revenue money pays for your prescription drugs. You have to pay like $5, but then you get the rest of the prescription drug for free, paid for with the casino money. Also the State has experimented, I know other States have as well, with home health care. In other words, where over and above Medicare right now, they will pay for a certain type of home health care cost on an experimental basis. All the seniors kept telling me the whole time is, why are you guys talking about these negative changes, if you will, that the Republicans are proposing on Medicare. Why not think of some positive ways to save money through prevention or through dealing with long-term care problems. And it is true. There is no question that in New Jersey, once that prescription drug benefit came into play with the casino revenue money, which we were fortunate to have, that it saved a lot of money for people that did not have to be hospitalized or did not have to be placed in nursing homes or boarding homes. And the same with the home health care. They have personal care, attendant service for certain people that come in so that they can stay in their apartment or stay in their house. Over and over again, studies have been done for the House of Representatives, for various committees, that show if you move in that direction, that ultimately you will save money because you prevent institutionalized care, which is so much more expensive. We do not hear about that from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They just want to talk about scrapping Medicare, having it wither on the vine.

Mr. PALLONE. I thank the gentleman for what he said. I just wanted to follow up on what he and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] said. It is amazing to me how the other party, the Republican leadership, keeps trying to talk about these changes in Medicare and these cuts in Medicare as if they do not really have an impact on real people. But they do. When both of you were talking about some lower-income seniors, I had the best experience with that when I had a senior forum in 1995, at the time when the Republican leadership was talking about eliminating the Medicaid payment for Medicare part B. In other words, if you are below a certain income so that you are eligible for Medicaid, right now Medicaid pays your part B Medicare premiums, which is for your doctor bills, to pay for your insurance so your doctor bills are covered.

Mr. PALLONE. I wanted to raise three other instances. It is not just seniors that are going to end up paying more because of these cuts; the general public will as well. First of all, the fact, I do not think you mentioned it, you may have, the fact when you cut Medicare, and it is already happening, those that have supplemental insurance, most seniors carry supplemental, Medigap type insurance, the cost of that keeps going up. I see the gentlewoman from Connecticut is here, who has been so much involved and taken a leadership role on this issue. In our States, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, Medigap insurance costs have gone up from 11 to 14 percent every year in the last few years, all time highs. A lot of that is attributed to the cuts in Medicare. If you cut Medicare, then you are going to see higher costs for your Medigap insurance. Also in New Jersey, let me give you an example, most of the hospitals that I represent in my district rely on Medicare and Medicaid for a majority of their reimbursement, a majority of the money they are taking in. When there is a shortfall, either they close or they find some other way to pay for things. We have seen arise in uncompensated care. We actually have a tax, if you will, on uncompensated care, that we end up paying. So the general public ends up paying for the difference too. Taxes and costs go up for the general public, because the hospitals are not getting the reimbursement rate they were previously getting. So it is not just seniors that are going to pay more. Everyone is going to pay more, and they are going to pay it in various ways that maybe are not as obvious, but they still end up paying.

Mr. PALLONE. I also wanted to say, I know the gentleman mentioned Medicaid as well, and we talked about that a little, and the same phenomena, particularly by reference to what it means for people other than seniors, their children and grandchildren. A part of the Republican leadership strategy from the beginning has been to also cut back on Medicaid, and the majority of the money in Medicaid right now pays for nursing home care. So, again, it primarily deals with taking care of the health care needs of the senior citizens. We fought a very hard battle, you and each of the four people and the others that spoke here this afternoon, in trying to make sure that Medicaid was not cut back and also that it was not block granted. If it was block granted and it was cut significantly, I think what you would have seen essentially is that the States, in taking on more responsibility and relaxation of Federal standards and Federal requirements, basically would have shifted more and more of the Medicaid burden, the nursing home burden, if you will, to children, to spouses, to grandchildren. Right now, as we all know and we have talked about this before, a State cannot go after a spouse for certain purposes. They cannot take their home. They cannot take their car. They have to leave them a certain amount of living expenses if one's spouse is in a nursing home. They cannot go after children or grandchildren to pay for Medicaid nursing home expenses. But the Republican legislation that was before the House last year and again this year basically would have eliminated those requirements and allowed the States to go after those people in order to recover costs. So what we would have seen is the cuts in Medicaid to finance these tax breaks primarily for wealthy individuals. More of the costs would have been shifted to the spouse, who is still living at home, to the children, to the grandchildren. Again, there is no free lunch. The end result of that would have been hardship for those people, hardship for children who instead of paying college costs, which are a big burden for them, for their children, would end up having to pay for nursing home care for their parents. Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of shifting of costs that really bothers me. The other side of the aisle, Gingrich and the Republican leadership, they want to give the impression that we can make these cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and it is not going to matter. It is not a big deal. They keep saying we are really only cutting the growth, we are not doing anything that will harm anybody. But it has a direct impact in the shifting of costs not only to the senior citizens but also to their families. That is what I think we fought very hard against and we have to keep fighting for.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I support tax cuts cuts. We all support tax cuts, but not when they are at the expense of Medicare. We have already witnessed attempts by the Gringrich-Dole Congress over the last 2 years to raid Medicare for tax breaks for the rich. Democrats stood up and stopped the Republicans dead in their tracks, preventing the demise of Medicare as we know it. Today, Bob Dole is back in town, meeting with Speaker Gingrich behind closed doors, likely discussing ways to attack Medicare again for their tax break schemes. Last year Speaker Gingrich and former Senator Dole proposed the largest Medicare cuts in history to pay for a tax break that would have primarily benefited the wealthy. Mr. Speaker, it is the same old story. GOP truly means get old people, again and again.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the thing that I liked best about the President's speech at the convention is that he was basically talking about very modest proposals; progressive steps, if you will, that could move us forward toward helping the average American, and basically giving them responsibility and opportunities so people could do things for themselves, in a very modest way. He did not talk about any grandiose scheme that was going to solve all the problems of the world. That is the kind of thing that I get from my constituents. They come up with very commonsense proposals, like we talked about the education proposal with the tuition tax deduction or the credit, $1,500 a year, something like that; modest things that will move us forward. I was very happy when the President came out with some new environmental initiatives. Again, they were not anything grandiose, but he talked about how in the last 3 years since he has been in office, in the Superfund Program, we have cleaned more Superfund sites in the past 12 years, and he says he is going to make a major initiative over the next 4 years to clean up, I think, two-thirds of the sites or something like that; you know, use the existing program to try to do the right thing, to clean up these sites. That is what I hear. I had a couple of environmental forums in towns that have several Superfund sites. In each one of them there has been significant progress on cleanup, real cleanup, permanent cleanup, not just capping the site with asphalt or something like that. They understood when we said, look, we are making progress progress, but we want to do more. We want to accelerate the progress. That is understood, as the President said.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take the floor tonight and address my colleagues over the fact that over the past month, essentially since we adjourned on August 2 for the 3- or 4-week district work period, I had the opportunity to have a number of forums, both general forums with my constituents or specific forums or town meetings on the senior issues, on environmental issues, and also on education issues. What I heard over and over again from my constituents was that they were very upset and they were very much opposed to the Republican leadership agenda that we have seen in the Congress over this last session now almost 2 years. What my constituents were telling me over and over again was that they did not want to cut Medicare. They did not want to cut Medicaid. They did not want to see massive cuts in higher education programs, and they certainly did not want to turn the clock back on the last 25 years of environmental protection that has been implemented by this Congress and by presidents on a bipartisan basis. My constituents could not have been any louder or any clearer on this issue. They felt very strongly that the Republican leadership, in this case Speaker Gingrich and the rest of the Republican leadership, have the wrong priorities, that when it comes to balancing the budget and when it comes to the priorities that have to be implemented in order to balance that budget, that Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment were not the areas where cuts should be made. Essentially what I was getting was the impression that the Gingrich Congress, if you will, is out of touch with the American people and their concerns. I just wanted to review, because I think many times now we are getting very close to the election and a lot of times the public hears things that are very different from the actions that have been taken in this Congress by the Republican leadership in the last 2 years. I just want to remind my colleagues about some of the initiatives that we have seen in this 104th Congress. We have seen an unprecedented Republican record of voting for extreme cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment essentially to finance tax breaks for the wealthy. Since the Speaker Newt Gingrich, first pounded the gavel in January 1995, Medicare has essentially been under siege in this Congress. The Gingrich Congress again and again has tried to destroy Medicare, threatening to inflict major hardships on millions of senior citizens and their families. Also this has been the biggest anti-education Congress in history. The Gingrich Congress has continually gone after education funding as a piggy bank, again for their tax breaks for the wealthy, targeting student loans in particular. What I was hearing from my constituents at the various forums that I had was that right now the cost of higher education is prohibitive, and whether you are going to a public school, public university or a private college or university, the costs continue to skyrocket. The only way that most Americans, that the average middle class American, can afford a college education today is if they have some combination of scholarship or grant or student loan or work-study program, and yet what we have seen here is the Republican leadership constantly go after those very student loan programs or those very Federal grant programs or even the work-study programs that make it possible for many people, most people, if you will right now, to go and to continue with their higher education. And essentially, if the Gingrich Congress gets its way, students and their parents would pay thousands of dollars more for a college education at a time when tuition is already spiraling out of reach for many working families. So either they are going to pay more or they are not going to be able to afford to go to college or to graduate school, and they simply forgo that because they will not be able to get the help that is now afforded by the Federal Government. On the environment, basically the Gingrich Congress rolled into town in January 1995 determined to roll back major environmental protections in order to pay back the special interest polluters who finance their campaigns. What we saw was that from the very beginning the polluters were sitting down with the Republican leadership at the table and writing, or rewriting if you will, environmental laws. I do not think that is in the best interests of America's families. Obviously, people feel very strongly that they should be able to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and rolling back the environmental protections, which we have seen put in place on a bipartisan basis by Congress for the last 25 years since Earth Day, is clearly not the way that my constituents, and I think that most Americans, feel that we should be going. Let me just give you an example. You know one of the things that we keep hearing is that this Congress has changed, that somehow the Republican leadership now understands that they cannot roll back environmental protection, and they are starting to do a few things here and there that maybe show that. But you know if you look at the budget that was adopted earlier this year, in the spring of 1996, you see that it still contains all these poison pills from the old budget, extreme proposals that go against America's values. It still eliminates the Medicaid guarantee of meaningful health benefits for millions of Americans, it still threatens Medicare with excessive cuts and damaging policies, it still cuts education, and it still takes the environmental cop off the beat. What I mean by that is it cuts enforcement, and I have said over and over again here in the well that it is very nice if you have good environmental laws on the books, but if you do not have the money to enforce those laws, to send out the investigators, to have the environmental cop on the beat so to speak, you might as well not have the laws on the books at all. And this is what we are seeing, a budget that basically disregards America's values. I wanted to go into some of the points on this budget, but I see that the gentlewoman from Connecticut, who has been so much a leader on making some of these points, has joined me, and if she would like to have some time yielded at this point?

Mr. PALLONE. The other thing, when you were talking about the pensions, I heard a lot about the portability. In the same way we were talking about the health insurance portability in the families first agenda you have the pension portability. A lot of people came and said, ``You know, I can't take my pension with me if I change my job.'' That I think is part of the families first agenda too, which is a great idea, because so many people today have many jobs over the course of their time they are working.

Mr. PALLONE. I agree. In fact, one of the things, I did have two forums, I guess there were three forums where we talked about the family first agenda, the Democratic family first agenda which, again, is a very modest series of proposals, but realistic in terms of our ability to pay for them and I think our ability to get them enacted. Again, it kind of reiterated what you just said, which is that the families are hurting and that they need the Government to help in some ways to make it so they can take on more responsibility and work together with the Government to improve everybody's lives. Going back to health care again, there was a lot of support for the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill which the President signed while we were in our district work period. But people also said they would like to see some of the additional changes that were in the family first agenda, the idea of kids-only health insurance for people that cannot get health insurance just for their children, addressing the drive-through deliveries. I was so pleased to see that the President mentioned that at the convention, in his speech, that he would sign the bill that would prevent drive-through deliveries so that women would be guaranteed, I guess, at least 48 hours for natural delivery and 4 days, I guess, for a C-section. These are the kinds of incremental proposals on health care and dealing with health care issues that I think we can get passed, and that the President has said ``Send me this legislation and I will sign it.'' But, again, we have had a difficult time, an impossible time with this Republican leadership, in moving on this agenda.

Mr. PALLONE. Just to fall back again on what I was saying before, I had, I think, 3 senior forums, at least 3 senior forums during the break, When I started the forums, each of them had 200 or 300 people. I was amazed at how may people came out because they were concerned about what the Republicans were doing on Medicare and Medicaid. They started out in each case by giving me very positive suggestions about how Medicare could be changed to save money but actually accomplish more, things like, well, we should include prescription drugs, maybe we have to pay something, $5 or something like that but cover everything else for prescription drugs because if you do that, that will prevent us from having to go to the hospital or having to go to the nursing home. Preventive. People started to talk about nutrition programs, better diet or whatever for seniors as a method of prevention. Or about home health care and how the Medicare was so limited in home health care and if you included that home health care, it would prevent institutionalization. Prior to this Congress, in Democratic Congresses, we were talking about expanding Medicare to do those things with the idea that you could save money. But all of a sudden that was off the table. We have not heard anything like that for the last 2 years. These were just commonsense things that I was getting from my constituents. They were saying, those are the ways you can change Medicare to save money but be more helpful to us as senior citizens in terms of our health care. I had to basically say, well, the reason the Republican leadership is not doing that is because they are really not trying to save or improve Medicare, they just want to cut it so they can give back these huge tax breaks for the wealthy. They want it to wither on the vine. They did not even want it from the beginning. You talking about positive ways to improve this. That is not what this Republican Congress has been all about. It is hard, though, to convince people of that because they have a hard time believing that elected representatives would come down here and actually try to dismantle something that has been so effective, but that is the reality.

Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate that. I just want to thank the two of you for joining in this special order tonight. We sort of started out by saying how the Gingrich Republican leadership agenda was really out of touch with America's values and what people think we should be doing here in Congress. But, at the same time now, as Democrats we have our own agenda, the families first agenda. More and more what I found during the August break was that people understand that, and they think that is the way to go, modest proposals to move forward in a progressive way to help the average American.

Mr. PALLONE. Exactly.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We have no objection to passage of H.R. 3871 before us today on the Suspension Calendar. As was mentioned by the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin], the bill amends the section of current Medicaid law which requires that Medicaid beneficiaries cannot constitute more than 75 percent of the membership of any prepaid health maintenance organization. Basically 3 plans, Health Partners of Philadelphia, Fidelis Health Plan of New York, and Managed Healthcare Systems of New York, would continue operating under their federally approved waiver of this provision for an additional 2 years, and under the conditions of the waiver the Health Care Financing Administration will continue to monitor these plans to ensure that these Medicaid beneficiaries are receiving appropriate quality care. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Manton].

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton].

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise in support of H.R. 1514, the Propane Education and Research Act. As Chairman Schaefer noted, this bill authorizes the propane industry to establish a propane checkoff fee to fund propane research, development, and education, including propane safety. Among other things, the bill establishes boundaries and obligations on the use of the collected funds and requires the Secretary of Commerce to report on propane prices and demand in the marketplace. I am a cosponsor of this bill. I believe that the authorization of privately funded research into improving the safety of propane use is important to the public. I also endorse research into propane's potential benefits for the environment. We cannot afford to overlook any alternative in our energy mix, and this bill will help maximize the benefits of this fuel. I commend the bill's author, Mr. Tauzin, and the propane industry for working to move this bill forward. This legislation was unanimously reported by the Commerce Committee on June 27, and I believe it has at this time, some 230 cosponsors on both sides of the aisle, including many members of the Commerce Committee. I know of no objections to H.R. 1514 on this side of the aisle, and I would urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I spent most of the month of August during our district work period at forums and town meetings throughout my district. I have to tell you, overwhelmingly the public that I represent was opposed to the Gingrich Republican agenda that seeks to cut back on Medicare and Medicaid, that seeks to cut back on student loan programs and education programs, and that also tries to roll back the environmental agenda and the environmental protection that we have fought so hard for over the last 25 years here in the Congress. What my constituents were telling me is that they feel there needs to be more student loan programs and programs that allow students to finance their education at college or graduate school. The same thing about Medicare; the senior citizens feel that Medicare should be expanded so that it covers prescription drugs, so that it covers home health care. And with regard to environmental programs, they would like to see more cleanup of Superfund sites and better protection and better enforcement of our environmental laws. One thing is absolutely clear, that is that the Gingrich Republican agenda has really created a mess and the last 2 years have been a failure.