Frank Pallone

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, let me start by saying how wrong it is to conduct this debate while our troops are in harm's way. Saddam Hussein will surely be emboldened by the Republicans' comments and conduct today and that will undermine our policy toward Iraq and our national security interests. Since we have nonetheless decided to proceed, I want to take issue with the opening remarks of the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Hyde. I deeply regret his effort to characterize the impeachment of the President as necessary to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. He is wrong, wrong, wrong. Equally offensive to me was Mr. Hyde's suggestion that the Radical Republicans who seek to impeach our President today are carrying out the legacy of Moses, ancient Greece and Rome, the Magna Carta and all the precusors of Democracy, which we hold so dear. The Radical Republicans who seek to impeach the President are, in fact, the heirs of those who would undermine our democracy--their precursors are those who would inspire a tyranny of the majority: Cromwell and his Puritans who sought to use the British Parliament to abolish freedom of religion, Robspierre and the French National Assembly who initiated the Reign of Terror, and most analogous--the Radical Republicans, who contrary to the wishes of the assassinated President Lincoln, salted the wounds of a divided America after the Civil War and unjustly impeached President Andrew Johnson. Mr. Hyde said the Republican effort today is not a vindictive political crusade. I fact, that is exactly what it is--one of the darkest days in the nation's history, and a blot on our democracy just as dark as the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson without cause. Why do I cite the tyranny of the majority? Because the Radical Republicans will not let the Members of this House consider and vote on a bipartisan compromise of censure. The Radical Republicans are guilty of thwarting the will of the American people Why do I say that the Radical Republicans are not honoring the Constitution? Because the President's conduct, while reprehensible, does not fit the definition under the Constitution as an act of treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors, and therefore does not rise to an impeachable offense to justify the removal of the President. I listened carefully to Mr. Hyde's remarks earlier and he seemed to suggest that it was necessary to lower the bar for impeachment to include lying about sex because the President held such an important position and needed to serve as a moral authority. But our job under the Constitution is not to set moral standards, as Mr. Hyde suggests, but to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. The Radical Republicans in seeking to impeach the President do the opposite. In the tradition of their predecessors after the Civil War, they rip apart the Constitution in a politically vindictive tyranny of the majority.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, let us not kid ourselves. The Republican leadership was not prepared to do anything that was really important or address any of the real issues that the American people cared about in this Congress. Fortunately, we as Democrats were able to push them as part of this budget agreement to address a few things, most importantly to add 100,000 teachers in the elementary school classes, and also to make sure that the Social Security trust fund was not drained, if you will, for tax giveaways. But there is a lot more to be done here and this do-nothing Congress, this Republican leadership leading this do-nothing Congress did not address managed care reform, did not address campaign finance reform, did nothing to deal with the severe problem of teenage smoking, did nothing really to deal with most of the education initiatives that the Democrats have put forward. Most importantly, they refused as part of this budget deal to deal with school modernization. We have classrooms, we have schools throughout the country that need repair, that need to be upgraded to deal with computers. There are a lot of other education initiatives that were not addressed as part of this Congress. I am happy today we just joined with the President, we are happy that they added the 100,000 teachers and that that will be part of this budget deal. We are happy that the Social Security trust fund is still intact, but there is a lot more that needs to be done. Let us not kid ourselves by saying anything that this was nothing but a do-nothing Congress.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, we are still likely to be here a few more days as we hammer out this budget agreement, but I want to say that I am very proud of the Democrats who have stuck it out and demanded that this budget agreement address education initiatives. It appears, and I say it appears because we do not know for sure, but it seems like the Republicans finally have agreed to our proposal for 100,000 teachers that are going to be hired across the country with Federal dollars. I just want to say it is only because Democrats have kept insisting that this education initiative be in the budget that we may finally realize that hope of having those 100,000 extra teachers spread around the country to reduce class size. But we still do not have the modernization initiative. The Republicans should agree to this as well. This is the initiative that says that we will spend Federal dollars to try to improve schools around the country, to renovate schools, to put in new roofs, to also upgrade, if you will, schools for technology, for computers and other things of that nature. I think it is very important that we continue to stay here until that initiative is also included in this budget. I know the Republicans do not want to hear it. They keep saying that this is unnecessary, but it is important.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. I agree with the gentlewoman from California, and I think it is, you know, very obvious that all of us, you know, we try to help private schools when we can as well. But the point is that overwhelmingly in almost every district, I think, the students are in public schools, and frankly we know how difficult it is for the local school boards to raise the funding or, as you mentioned were the bond issue, to get the bonds that float the bonds to put additions or do renovations. And so we cannot just neglect them and say there is no Federal role. There is clearly a Federal role. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. PALLONE. We have got to have a whole change of attitude in terms of what Congress is going to do in terms of its commitment to public education. They obviously still do not have it when they are taking pride in the fact that they did not get the school modernization program in here.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I listened to my Republican colleagues tonight on the other side when they started to talk about the agreement that has been reached between the House and the Senate and between the Democrats and the Republicans and the President, and I must say that I am pleased also that this agreement has been reached. Particularly, because it does include one of the major Democratic initiatives, and that is to add 100,000 teachers across the country to our various school districts. But I do want to say that although I am happy with that result, the bottom line is that the Republican leadership has refused, really, to address the Democrats' education initiative. For a long time, they were opposed to 100,000 teachers. They continue to be opposed to the school modernization plan. Do not let them kid you and suggest that somehow from the very beginning they were interested in having the Federal Government more active in education and helping our local school district, because the fact of the matter is they have been slashing funding for education on a regular basis here for the last 4 years since they have been in the majority. I would also point out that the record of this Congress, even with this budget agreement, is dismal. This is clearly the do-nothing Congress. This Congress has not addressed managed care reform. This Congress has not addressed the need to increase the minimum wage. It has not addressed campaign finance reform. It has not addressed teen smoking. It has taken no action to safeguard the surplus for Social Security. And, essentially, this has been a do-nothing Congress. The fact that in this last few days, because the Democrats have insisted that we include this additional funding for the 100,000 teachers, while that may be good, it does not take away from the fact that there are so many other initiatives that the American people have been crying out for that simply have not been addressed. I heard some of my colleagues on the Republican side tonight talk about the Republican education initiative. Let me just indicate that over and over Democrats have tried this year to talk about initiatives to reduce class size and modernize our classrooms for the 21st century. But each time Republicans have rejected them. So do not let them come to the floor now and tell you that they were for 100,000 teachers and this Democratic initiative. On two occasions this year Democrats offered amendments that would have given local school authorities billions of dollars worth of new low cost bonding authority to build new schools and modernize their existing classrooms, and Republicans rejected this amendment both times, in May and again in June of this year. Several weeks ago Democrats offered an amendment that would have started the effort to reduce class size in first through third grade classrooms to 18 children per class and Republicans opposed this proposal, too. That was in September. I heard some of my colleagues on the other side say, we were always for this 100,000 extra teachers initiative. We wanted the Democrats to show how they were going to pay for it. It was not until the last couple days, when the Democrats agreed that they would pay for it by making cuts elsewhere, that we agreed to it. From the very beginning of this year, when the President introduced his budget and he talked about the school modernization initiative and adding the 100,000 teachers, the President's budget in January of 1998 included all the offsets that were necessary to pay for both of these education initiatives. In fact, the 1998 Democratic budget resolution provided funding for hiring the new teachers and $21 billion in low- cost construction bonds for local school authorities while staying within the guidelines set by the 1997 balanced budget agreement. And Republicans rejected this budget and instead adopted a budget that cut education by $5.7 billion. So do not let them tell you that they did not come to this dragging and screaming. They did. I know we have gone through these various attempts that the Republicans have made over the last year to try to destroy public schools and eliminate equal education opportunities. I am not even going to talk about all of them, but I want to mention some of them. First, eliminating the Department of Education. From the very beginning they have been continuing to talk about the need to eliminate the Department of Education. They have also spent a tremendous amount of time, wasted time all year trying to divert billions of dollars in public school funds for private school vouchers, taking the money away from the public schools, giving it to private schools. That failed. But do not forget that that was a major part of their efforts this year. Also cutting school lunches for poor children, block granting critical education programs, destroying bilingual education, eliminating the summer jobs program, eliminating school to work opportunities for high school students, and eliminating the safe and drug free school program. So again, I am very pleased tonight to hear them all say that they are now for the 100,000 teachers initiative. But all along they were against it, and all along this year they have been trying to slash education funding. I am joined this evening by some of my colleagues. We are going to talk a little bit about the Democratic education initiative and some of the other things that we have wanted that have not been enacted in this Congress. I yield to the gentlewoman in California (Ms. Sanchez).

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, and I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder.)

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman and I want to emphasize again, as you have, that the arguments that our Republican colleagues are using with regard to the school modernization really make no sense. From listening to some of the speakers on the other side tonight, after saying that somehow they were in favor of the 100,000 teachers, which we know they were not, because we know there were votes taken that I mentioned before that they actually voted against 100,000 teachers or additional teachers, one of the other arguments they were making, which is not a legitimate argument, was that somehow the Democratic proposal was giving control to the Federal Government and that we were going to be controlling these 100,000 teachers, how they were hired or how they were going to be administered, whatever. And then they used the same argument with regard to school modernization, that they are not in favor of this program because it is Washington bureaucracy and walking away from the local school boards. I just want to say, nothing can be further from the truth. I even heard the similar argument used with regard to the cops grants, that the cops grants was no good initially because we were going to control the cops grants from Washington. But once it was decided that the local authorities would control it, then it was okay. Well, this is just a lot of garbage, frankly. From the very beginning with the cops grants and also with the 100,000 teachers, the Democrats were saying that we were simply providing the funding. The teachers would be hired locally just like the policemen were hired locally. There were almost no strings attached other than you had to use the money for teachers or you had to use the money to hire the police as opposed to just giving a block grant where the towns can do whatever they want with it. The same is true for the school modernization. The way the Democratic program is set up, we are essentially giving money to basically pay the interest on the bonds for the construction of the school, which lessens the cost for municipalities that have to build new schools or renovate the schools. But local school boards are going to decide what to do with the money, whether to renovate schools or wire schools or build additional classrooms. There is just no basis at all to some of the arguments that they are using. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez).

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman's comments. What she is pointing out we are just basically saving the local school districts money, and that lowers property taxes. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to also say, because I know the gentlewoman brought it out, and both the gentlewoman from California and the gentleman from Arkansas pointed out that we have to beware, so to speak, the next few days when we look at this document to see what is in it. The gentlewoman mentioned how we have not addressed the issue of teenage smoking, one of the issues that has not been addressed here. Yet, the other day, I was at an event where we had the copy of the amendment or a portion of this omnibus bill that was supposedly going to provide $10 million to promote the sales of tobacco or cigarettes overseas. So there are all kinds of things that we have got to look at to see what is in here. We may very well find, as we proceed, that they put in things that are actually contrary to the Democratic initiatives that we have talked about and have not actually been included and have not been addressed here. So I want to mention the early speakers that have pointed out about what we do not have in the bill. We need to beware. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman and particularly what she pointed out about the transportation bill. Because we have heard Republicans say many times on the floor in the last few days how the Federal Government should not be spending money on education infrastructure, yet it is okay to spend money on transportation infrastructure. There is really no reason why we should not do both. I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez).

Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman and also the gentlewoman from California really brought up one of the other points about this modernization program and, that is, communications, technology, computer needs. A lot of this money where as you say is not really money but the tax breaks for the local towns would actually benefit the school systems because they would be able to upgrade communications, technology systems, put in computers, and that takes a lot of money. They just do not have it. It is not just bricks and mortar, it is obviously a lot of these other things that are important because of the communication and technology needs that we have today. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. PALLONE. It is interesting what the gentleman said about the quality of the schools when we were younger, because I went, my school district, and where I still live in Long Branch, New Jersey, is an urban district and they have managed in my opinion over the years to keep up, if you will, by renovating the school and having good laboratories and facilities so that the science and math programs that you mentioned I believe are really still topnotch. But it has been at tremendous cost to the taxpayers. Their property taxes in the town are very high compared to a lot of the other school districts in my district, primarily because they have decided that they are going to invest that money. But it has been a cost to them because of property taxes. I know that when I decided to go to college and I ended up going to a private college after I had gone to public school from kindergarten to 12th grade, that one of the reasons that the college was interested in me is because they knew that the school system, that the public school that I went to had good science and math programs, and that was a major factor for my being able to get into that school. In fact, I never felt that I was that good in science and math compared to some other areas, but I realized when I got to school even though it was a private college or university that I had really been prepared well in those areas even though they were not the areas that I really liked that much. It is very difficult for the school systems to keep up. I do not know if it is true in every State but I know that in my State the municipalities usually vote on whether or not they are going to have a bond referendum to build a new school or to do these kind of additions and it is very difficult to get support from the local taxpayers for those bond issues because of the expense and the impact on the local property taxpayer. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. PALLONE. And I think also that what we are trying to do as Democrats is make the point that the Federal Government has to make more of a commitment to public education. It is great that we have the Republicans agreeing now to this initiative of 100,000 teachers, but if they do not continue and agree to the school modernization initiative, it is only half a loaf and if we want to see this Congress and future Congresses go on record as being supportive of public education and a Federal role or commitment to public education, we need to keep pushing for the school modernization program.

Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman, and I appreciate the fact that you are pointing out very clearly that although this Congress is coming to an end, that these problems that this Republican Congress have failed to address are not going away. In my district every day people complain to me about problems with HMOs, and those problems are not going to go away unless we pass patient protection legislation like our democratic Patient Bill of Rights. And the same thing is true for campaign finance reform. We are about to go into this campaign with all kinds of soft money being used back and forth and the Republicans spending something like 30 or $40 million of soft money on various campaigns. We need to reform the system. They have ignored that. It is not going to get better, it is going to get worse unless this Congress does something about it. And the same is true for minimum wage. The minimum wage is too low. We have economic prosperity, and things are pretty good out there, but a lot of people are not benefiting from it because the minimum wage is too low. We have to do something about it. We have to change it. We have to raise it. And we once again talked about public education here tonight. I am glad that the Republicans agreed to this hundred thousand extra teachers initiative, but there has to be a greater commitment to public education here, and you know that the Republicans are just going to go back to their anti public education agenda.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, let me also if I can just take a minute to also express really the friendship that I have had over the last few years with Tom Manton. He is also on the Commerce Committee with me and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns) as well. I have always admired him for the reasons my colleagues have all set forth but just to mention a couple of things. My father was a policeman. I know what it was like to have a policeman, to serve on the police force, and I know that he is the kind of policeman or the person in the police law enforcement background that is really kind of the perfect image, if you will, of a law enforcement individual. In addition to that, I have seen him as I think the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns) said really be a consensus builder on the committee. The committee can often be very contentious, not only Republican-Democrat but even within the Democrats. Tom was always the person that was out there trying to bring us together on so many very important issues. I also saw him operate with the Hellenic Caucus. I do not know if that was mentioned tonight, but he worked very hard with the Greek community and he was a leader dealing with those issues as well. I really admired him for a long time. We worked on the Merchant Marine Committee together. He was always a person that was trying to help other Members of Congress, to help his colleagues at all times and do what was best for the country and for his State and for his district. Thanks again, also. I am going to miss you as well. Madam Speaker, I just wanted to take some time this evening, if I could, to essentially refute, if you will, some of the statements that were made earlier this evening in the special order that my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle made on the issue of HMO reform. I have taken to the floor many times over the last few months to point out that I believe, and I think the evidence shows, that the Republican leadership of this House was very much determined not to bring a true HMO or managed care reform to the floor and essentially was very much under the influence of the insurance industry which still today does not want to see any real HMO reform. And so I was sort of, not shocked I would say but I was sort of displeased to see that in the waning hours of this Congress that the Republicans who put together the HMO bill that passed this House were actually trying, I think effectively, to defend their actions, because they know that the American public is clamoring for HMO reform. And so I will say two things tonight: One is the fact that the HMO reform bill was not even taken up in the other body, in the Senate, is a strong indication of the fact that from the beginning, the Republican leadership in both houses of Congress had no intention of really dealing with the issue of HMO reform. In addition to that, the Republican leadership over here bypassed all the committees, never allowed hearings, never allowed a markup of the HMO reform bill and at the 11th hour when it appeared that there was overwhelming support for the Democrats' patients' bill of rights, which was really sort of a bipartisan bill because we had some Republicans, also, that supported us, but when the patients' bill of rights, the real HMO reform bill, was gathering incredible strength and the Republican leadership felt it was necessary to address the issue in some form, they quickly brought up their HMO bill, brought it to the House floor, without hearings, without committee markup, and passed it very narrowly, I think by about five votes, and sent it over to the Senate where it was never heard from again. Let me just point out some of the reasons why this Republican bill was not real HMO reform. I really am using as a source some of the criticisms that were made by one of the Republicans that I most admire, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske), a Republican Member who was initially part of the Republican health care task force but became very much opposed to the Republican bill because he felt that the patients' bill of rights, the true HMO reform bill, was far superior and that what the Republicans were bringing to the floor in terms of HMO reform was not real and actually set us back. I just want to give some of the examples, some of the criticisms, if you will, that the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) made. First, on the issue of medical necessity. The Democratic patients' bill of rights guarantees a review on the merits by outside experts as to whether a service or treatment is medically necessary. Under the Republican bill that was talked about tonight, the outside review is limited to determining whether the plan followed its own definition of medical necessity. The biggest problem that we face today with HMOs is that people are denied care, an operation, length of stay in a hospital, whatever it happens to be, because the insurance company determines that that procedure or extra day in the hospital is not medically necessary. Well, under the Republican bill, the insurance company gets to define what is medically necessary. All the review that my colleagues on the other side were talking about tonight, external, internal review, extends exclusively to the issue of whether or not the plan correctly defined by its own terms what was medically necessary. So basically the insurance company can still say, this is not medically necessary, this procedure, this operation was not medically necessary, and there is no change in the current law. Emergency room coverage. The Republican bill has only a watered-down version of the prudent layperson rule which means that managed care companies still have ways to get out of paying for their patients' emergency room visits. What we say in the Democratic bill is if the average person would think that the pain that they have necessitates their going to the emergency room, then the insurance company has to cover it. That is not true in the Republican bill. If, for example, you have severe pain and the insurance company decides that severe pain does not qualify for emergency room care in a given circumstance, then the insurance company will not pay for your emergency room bill. Again, there is really no progress, if you will. Everything is pretty much the same. It is like the status quo. Protecting doctors and nurses from HMO bureaucrats. The GOP bill does not help doctors and nurses to serve as advocates for their patients because it gives medical professionals no protection from the health care plan when they speak up for their patients. In other words, under the Republican bill, they can be penalized because they speak up for their patients, the health care professionals. Access to specialists. The Republican bill does not provide for ongoing access to specialists for chronic conditions such as multiple sclerosis and arthritis. Under the GOP bill, patients with chronic conditions cannot get standing referrals to specialists or designate specialists as their primary care providers. This is very important. One of the major points of the Democrats' patients' bill of rights is that you have access to a specialist. Many senior citizens say to me that that is the main reason that they are concerned about their HMOs, because they cannot get referrals to their specialist. Well, there is no guarantee of that under the Republican bill. Financial incentives to withhold health care. The Democratic patients' bill of rights ensures that health plans not place inappropriate financial incentives on providers to withhold care. On the other hand, the Republican bill is silent on that point. So, in other words, a big problem now under the current system is that the HMO gives a bonus, if you will, to physicians who essentially limit care. Well, that is not changed under the Republican bill. That is still possible under the Republican bill in most circumstances. The Democratic bill basically prevents that and corrects it and says you cannot have those financial incentives to the physicians. Special legal protections for HMOs. This is most important. Because of a Federal law known as ERISA, patients injured because their HMO delayed or denied treatment have very limited remedies. The patients' bill of rights, the Democratic bill, would permit States to set their own rules for such actions. The Republican bill passed by the House tinkers with but does not really fix this problem. I just wanted to mention that because my colleagues on the other side spent a lot of time tonight explaining that you would not have the right to sue under the Republican bill but they are going to establish some very exotic and bureaucratic process whereby you would have some kind of review with some sort of penalty to the HMO. It took them almost 15, 20 minutes to describe it. Well, the bottom line is that if I am denied care and I am seriously injured because I cannot get that care, I have no access to that care, I should be able to sue the HMO. I can sue the doctor. Why can I not sue the HMO if they are the ones who are making the decision about denial of care? I know my colleagues on the other side are saying, well, we do not need any more lawsuits. That may be true in general, we do not need as many lawsuits as perhaps we have, but do not tell the person who has been denied the care and suffered severe damages that they cannot sue and recover for the damages. All the machinations that were made tonight about how we are going to deal with this without having you have the right to sue to me were just essentially a bunch of garbage. It had to be explained in such detail that it almost sounded like another legal case to explain the process as opposed to having the right to sue. My point is again, there was never any attempt by this Republican leadership to come up with true HMO reform. We knew that from the beginning, when they delayed and delayed and delayed and finally when they brought a bill to the floor, they brought a bill to the floor that actually makes the situation worse for patients in managed care, in HMOs. In addition to that, and I do not know if they mentioned it tonight on the other side, there were a number of poison pills placed in that Republican HMO bill. I say poison pills because they were so controversial and unrelated to the issue of HMOs that they made it impossible for that bill to ever move forward. They knew that this was a bill that was not going to move forward and ultimately it did not move forward in the Senate. Those are things that are not necessarily bad. Some people like them and some do not. The issue of medical malpractice was placed in the bill to reduce the cap on damages. We have controversy in the House back and forth over whether or not that is a good thing. But it is so controversial that it guarantees, or essentially it is a poison pill to make sure that the bill never sees the light of day. Now many of us on the Democratic side went over to the Senate last week, and we tried to get HMO reform brought up in the other body, and we were essentially gaveled down. There was a vote, and the Republicans made it impossible to bring this up. So we know that this issue is dead this year because the Republicans have refused to let it proceed. All their efforts tonight to try to suggest that somehow they really meant it and they were really trying to achieve some kind of HMO reform to me is simply not true because, if there was a real effort to do that, then they would have allowed the process to proceed, and this bill would not have been killed in the other body. Let me also say that for the those who think that somehow there is not some cynical aspect to all this, and I mentioned before that the insurance companies basically wanted to kill HMO reform, we have a document in here that talks about the Business Round Table that is basically financed by the health insurance industry that is beginning now a $2 million ad campaign thanking the Republicans in key House districts for their opposition to HMO reform. Now basically these are the companies that spend millions of dollars successfully lobbying to kill any major health insurance reform a few years ago when the President put forward his plan. Well, now they are spending another $2 million to make sure that people, that Republicans are returned to Congress who will continue to oppose HMO reform. There is just some information here about how they are going about it, but this is a coalition and its member organizations from the health benefits coalition, and they are the ones that are essentially out there to make sure that Members are elected who are friendly to the health insurance industry and who will not be supportive of HMO reform. But I want to say this: This issue may be dead for this Congress, but it is not dead for the American people. This is the number one issue that Americans care about. It is the number one issue that is brought to my attention by my constituents, and I know that next year, when the new Congress begins, this issue is not going to go away, it is going to be out there as a significant issue once again. The public will be clamoring for reform because the problem is not going away. There is going to be more and more pressure, if you will, built up to do something about HMOs and to have these kind of patient protections. So let us just rest assured we are going to be here again to deal with this, and even if Members of Congress are elected on some sort of platform because of what they owe to the insurance industry, that, you know, they cannot support this, I guarantee that the public is going to clamor for these patient protections and we are going to be back once again fighting for the patients bill of rights to make sure that it is passed in the next Congress.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I listened to my Republican colleague who just spoke and I have to say that he essentially is not indicating what has happened here in the last 2 years with the Republican effort to slash funding for public education, with the suggestion that we abolish the Department of Education and with the opposition to the two Democratic initiatives that we insist be included in this budget before we go home. That is, 100,000 new teachers across the country and money to modernize and upgrade our schools. Democrats and President Clinton want the local school boards to make the decisions about who to hire and how to fix their buildings and how to go out to bond, but we also know that those school districts do not have the money, they do not have the local property taxes to pay for those new initiatives. They cannot hire extra teachers, they cannot renovate the school buildings because they do not have the dollars. Democrats are pushing this Republican leadership kicking and screaming to the point over the next few days where hopefully we will have the funding available for those local school districts. Those local school districts will decide how the money is spent, but right now they do not have the money because this Republican leadership wants to slash education funding.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. I just want to thank the gentlewoman again for bringing up the environmental issue and basically saying that what we have been doing in the last 2 years is essentially playing defense here. There has not been any effort on the Republican side to do anything progressive with regard to the environment. We have simply had to defend and prevent them from making things worse with these terrible environmental riders. There has never been a suggestion of reauthorizing the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act or the Endangered Species Act in a way that would be more protective of the earth or the environment. The same is true with respect to education. Now we are insisting that there be some progress on education initiatives like modernizing our schools, but we basically have been playing defense against this effort to tear down public education with vouchers and other efforts to slash funding for education. I want to thank the gentlewoman for bringing that up.

Mr. PALLONE. I just wanted to ask the gentleman one thing, though, because he is so knowledgeable on the subject. First, let me say that it is amazing to me, and I am glad the gentleman brought up this whole ideology that somehow the Federal Government is not supposed to get involved in public education, I do not know how our colleagues on the other side, the Republican leadership on the other side, can say on the one hand that they do not want to fund public education but then say it is okay philosophically to pay through vouchers for private education. To me, it is even more extreme, if you will, to say on the one hand that you do not think we should get involved with the public sphere, but it is okay to get in the private sphere with public dollars. Ideologically that makes no sense to me. I also wanted to mention, and maybe you could just develop this a little bit, the gentleman talked about the need for the funds for school modernization. I think we need to point out, as the gentleman said, we are really only talking about a small amount of dollars here. Essentially what this does, from the way I understand it, is it gives Federal tax credits to pay the interest on the bonds. And the problem you have in a lot of the public schools, including in my own district these days, is that they cannot afford to put out these bonds to build additions or renovate the schools because the costs of the interest rate is too high. If you could give us an example, if you would briefly, about how that would help in North Carolina.

Mr. PALLONE. I thank the gentleman, and I want to yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut who has taken the leadership on this.

Mr. PALLONE. I just wanted to thank the gentlewoman, and before I yield to the next member, I was glad that you brought up the point about the COPS grant, because this is very much, this hiring of the additional 100,000 teachers, is very much modeled on the COPS grant. We had someone, I think it was the Republican whip or one of the Republican leaders the other night, was suggesting that somehow the COPS grant program had not been successful. And I cannot think of any program that has been more successful. I know in my hometown, we have had the opportunity to hire a lot of additional policemen. The crime rate has gone way down. These are community police officers. They have to be out on the street. They also suggested that somehow there was a lot of strings attached by the Federal Government. It has not been that way at all. Basically the only requirement is that there be some local match to pay for the police officers, and that the police officers, you know, have certain benefits and that they serve in the community policing capacity. In other words, they cannot stay in the headquarters. They have to be out on the street, I think maybe in police cars or on the sidewalk, but out there with the community. And it has been fantastic, the number of people that have been hired around the country and the impact on the crime rate. It has gone down significantly. And all the Federal Government really does is to provide the funding, and the communities are clamoring for this. So the notion that somehow that was not successful and we should not model it on the COPS grant, that is absurd. That is a perfect model. I yield to the gentlewoman from Michigan.

Mr. PALLONE. I know that the gentlewoman has been a leader in pointing out the need to upgrade, if you will, schools so that they have computers and high-tech equipment and that type of thing. Just give us a little information on how important that is and how this modernization program could be used for that, because I think most people just think we are talking about bricks and mortar. It is not just that.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman. I think it is very important that we point out that this modernization money can be used for that type of purpose. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel).

Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina, who really is an expert on education issues.