Frank Pallone

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman's comments. I think she is making the point that money is the key. The gentlewoman is on the Committee on Appropriations. She pointed out that in many cases the whole emphasis in this 104th Congress was on cutting money for environmental programs, for example, for education programs. Again we started out this evening by saying that, if you do not have the money to hire the investigators to do the enforcement, to upgrade the sewage treatment plants, for example, then what is the use of having the environmental laws on the books? That is what we saw. We saw, I think, initially an effort to try to cut back on some of the substantive environmental programs. And then when the Republicans could not accomplish that, they went to the Committee on Appropriations, and they tried to cut back on the money for enforcement, the money for investigation and then also put those legislative riders. Remember that we had, I think there were 17 legislative riders that were put into the appropriations bill that my colleague and other Democrats on the Committee on Appropriations fought so hard to try to get eliminated, and eventually all the riders were eliminated. But it was a hard-fought battle. The public has to remember what this battle was all about. It continues. The budget that is out there now would again cut back significantly on all these environmental programs.

Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to follow up also with what the gentlewoman was saying about this whole idea of empowering the local people or citizen groups to get involved. One of the things that the President mentioned also as an environmental initiative for the next 4 years was expanding right to know. When you talk to your local citizen groups that had been involved in Superfund or clean water, whatever it happens to be, they all say the same thing: We are playing a major role in finding out what the pollution problems are, in investigating, going to outfall pipes or looking at the Superfund sites. A lot of the remedy selection, if you will, for the Superfund sites in my districts were actually put together by local citizen groups that got a grant from the Federal Government or from the State, and actually had input to put together what the remedy should be to clean up the Superfund site. So when you talk about citizen rights, expanding citizens' ability to sue, right to know, the kinds of things the President was talking about, these are the kinds of tools to empower them that people want to use. They see Government as this partnership to empower them to take on more responsibility and to work locally with the Federal dollars and with the State government to accomplish the goal.

Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. PALLONE. The gentlewoman could not be more on point, believe me. That is exactly what I was hearing, as I said, for the 3 weeks before the Democratic Convention when we went to Chicago. I had forums, town meetings every night and a lot of times during the day, and that is what I kept hearing over and over again, that people want the Government to be involved in positive ways, to help them with educational programs, for example. I mean I had a forum in Piscataway, which is one of the towns that includes Rutgers University or different parts of Rutgers University in my district, and people would come up and say, look, we cannot afford higher education. We like the fact that the President has expanded now a national direct student loan program, we like the fact that AmeriCorps is in place and you can work and get a student loan and pay it back through working while you are in college or afterward. Expand the opportunities, use the Tax Code, if you will, as you suggested and as the President suggested and mentioned at the Democratic Convention, use the Tax Code to give the deduction, that we can deduct tuition or that we can get the tax credit for the first 2 years of college, as the President suggested, the HOPE scholarship for example. I love the term ``hope'' because it is so positive, and it is his hometown in Arkansas, and you know that is the kind of thing that appeals, not to cut back on these programs, not to cut back on student loans, not to say we are not going to have a direct student loan program any more, not to eliminate AmeriCorps, which is exactly what the budget that was passed in this House does. And if I can just say that I remember during the convention when, I think it was, the Vice President spoke and said, ``I was there and I remember,'' and I think that is exactly it. I mean we were here on the floor, we have seen that they have proposed, and they cannot hide behind it now and act as if they never proposed it. They not only proposed it, they still have it out there as the budget they are trying to work with the terms of what appropriation bills they move here. So the reality is that they are still trying to cut back on these higher education programs and other things that are so important to the average American.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the Democrats can declare victory again today, once the minimum wage bill is brought up on the House floor, but I just wanted to point out two things: First, to remind my colleagues that the Republicans fought against this minimum wage bill tooth and nail over the last 2 years; and, second, to point out that this affects real people. Too many times on the other side of the aisle, particularly last Monday when the House Republican leader, the gentleman from Texas, Dick Armey, once again blasted the minimum wage and said that it was not important to real people, it was somehow an inside-the-beltway issue. Well, that is simply not true. There are probably about 10 million Americans that are affected by a minimum wage increase, and they are people that have to go out every day and work to bring home the bread, to raise families, to pay for their mortgages, to pay for heat, to pay for their rent, whatever it happens to be. By delaying this minimum wage increase over 18 months, the Republican leadership has made it very difficult for those real people. I am pleased today that it is finally being brought up. It is a victory not only for the Democrats but it is a victory for the real people in this country who only earn a minimum wage.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, once again I want to point out that the Democrats can truly declare victory this morning with this minimum wage bill finally being brought to the floor. But two points need to be made. One is that the Republicans consistently over the last 2 years have opposed this minimum wage increase and, second, that this really does impact a lot of real people. It is not something that is pie in the sky that we are just talking about here that does not mean anything to the average Americans. Democrats have been trying to pass this minimum wage increase since February 1995, when President Clinton first proposed the bill and Democratic leader Gephardt introduced it into the House. But it took over a year to force the Republicans into acting. The Republican leadership remained strongly opposed to the minimum wage bill, and Republicans marched in lockstep behind them voting five separate times to kill Democratic efforts to bring it up. Many of us were here many times trying to bring this up but we were opposed by the Republican leadership. Even when the moderate Republicans finally started to cave in, faced with polls showing that over 80 percent of the Americans supported this bill, Republican leaders continued to try to kill the bill. They offered amendments that would have gutted the bill in a failed attempt to appease the business lobby and blunt the Democratic initiative. Mr. Speaker, let me just say we are talking about real people, over 10 million Americans that are going to be positively impacted by this legislation. Most minimum wage earners are not teenage children of the affluent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of current minimum wage earners, two-thirds are adults, with over 50 percent being 26 or older, while 62 percent are women. These workers have to work almost twice as many hours just to live near the poverty level for a family of four. They work hard, they provide what they can for their family and they deserve the opportunity to earn a livable wage. Mr. Speaker, yesterday and this past week both parties have been talking about welfare reform. We passed a good welfare bill. But reform is useless if we do not do something to improve wages. We need to reward hard work and make it less enticing to collect welfare. This bill will accomplish that. I urge support for the conference report.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, in June we had a very good bipartisan bill passed out of the Committee on Commerce, but unfortunately the Republican leadership could not leave well enough alone. They had to take it into their back rooms and load it up with political pork. This is the same Republican leadership that claims to be for reform and for cutting unnecessary spending. The House passed the bill on June 25, yet once again the Republican leadership still could not get it right. They delayed and they delayed. It took an astounding 3 weeks for the leadership to appoint conferees. Now, it is August 2 and we have lost $725 million in fiscal year 1996 funds. In my own State alone we have lost nearly $15.5 million in grants funds. On top of that the Republican leadership has earmarked for their vulnerable Members on a political basis $175 million of what is left. Mr. Speaker, this is simply an outrage. They have taken legislation that was supported by the industry and environmentalists, by Democrats and Republicans, by the right and the left, and they have basically made it almost unsupportable at this point. It is a real shame. It is a tragedy. This could have been a bill that everyone would have supported and that we could have used as an example of good legislation that this House could pass this session, and instead we have this bill, loaded up with pork that is practically unsupportable at this time.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, it is a testimony to President Clinton and to the Democrats in Congress that the Kennedy health insurance reform bill will finally be brought to the floor in the House of Representatives today. It was not until President Clinton this year, in his State of the Union address, said that he wanted to see health care reform and that people could take their health insurance with them when they changed jobs or lost jobs, or that they would not be barred from health insurance because of preexisting medical conditions, it was not until the President came forward and said he wanted that bill, a clean bill passed, that finally we were able to, grudgingly, get the Republican leadership to move this health insurance reform bill. Even so, the Republican leadership constantly tried to kill and destroy the bill by throwing in the poison pill of medical savings accounts. Finally, the bill that comes to the floor today is essentially a clean bill. There is some provision for MSA's but it is a very small provision. It was the recognition of the fact that only a clean bill, as promulgated and as preached by President Clinton, could pass this House and pass the Senate, it was only when the Republican leadership understood that, that it was possible to bring this bill to the floor today.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I consider this legislation basically an insult to the English language and also un-American because basically it violates free speech and also discourages diversity, which I think is a hallmark of our American tradition. The legislation has nothing to do with protecting the English language. English is a wonderful language that has survived for years in various places. To think that the language of Shakespeare has to have government help to survive. How ironic that our Republican friends on the other side want to use government involvement to preserve the English language, which is why I think it is an insult to the language. I consider it un-American because the legislation only has two purposes: first, to make it difficult for government to communicate with its citizens; and, second, to discourage the use of other languages. Contrary to whatever my colleagues might say on the other side, that is the real purpose of this bill. Mr. Chairman, when I say making it difficult for government ot communicate with citizens, why is it that in my office that I cannot hand out a brochure on this bill in another language? I have people that come into my office that speak Spanish, Italian, various Indian dialects, a whole panoply, really, of people that speak various languages. I should be able to speak to them, write to them, communicate with them however I please, in any language that helps them if they are citizens, which they are. It does not make sense, it is against free speech. Second, Mr. Chairman, this bill discourages the use of other languages in public and private places. Do not get the idea that the opposite is true. Let me give Members an idea. I never learned Italian, in part because my grandparents did not want me to, but it would be a great asset to me and to my children to know Italian. But if you put out this notion, this symbol, if you will, that people should only speak English, which is what this is about, it discourages diversity, it discourages people form learning other languages and using them. We should be doing the opposite. This is a global economy. People should use languages as an asset. In this country with so many different traditions, we should be encouraging diversity, not discouraging it.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the Democrats must declare victory today. The Democrats can take credit for the health insurance reform legislation that we will be shortly voting on. Thanks to President Clinton's leadership, Senator Kennedy's perseverance and a democratic commitment to health insurance reform, millions of Americans will no longer have to worry about losing their health care in between jobs. In addition to other much needed reforms, many of the poison pill special interest provisions that the Republican leadership insisted on for the last several months were finally dropped. I believe that President Clinton deserves much credit here. He brought health insurance to the forefront once again with his January State of the Union address and pushed Republican leaders from inaction to moving health insurance legislation forwards. In April, many of us remember the Senate passed Senator Kennedy's legislation overwhelmingly, 100 to 0. Unfortunately, Speaker Gingrich and the Republican leaders in the House were more interested in placating the special interests than passing meaningful reform. Day after day on this floor we heard about medical savings accounts, a special interest provision that I believe would increase premiums for many Americans and make health insurance unaffordable. As a result, health insurance reform, for a while, appeared doomed. After increasing Democrat pressure and Presidential leadership, the Republicans finally caved in to our demands and largely removed all the controversial provisions. MSA's, as the Speaker, knows, will be limited to a pilot program that I hope will not have a negative impact. Mr. Speaker, I have to say the Democrats have long been advocates of health care for all Americans, and this legislation moves us one step closer to that reality. I realize that it is only a small step that we are taking today and, as the gentleman from California, [Mr. Waxman] said, we have to point that out. But in a year when Republicans have tried to slash Medicare and repeal Medicaid, I am pleased that they have come to their senses on at least one health care initiative that may benefit as many as 25 million Americans, and I think that in itself is a major victory for the Democrats today.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I do not plan to use all of the time. But I did want to take to the floor tonight to talk about the health insurance reform legislation that was passed today on a bipartisan basis and certainly start off by saying that I am pleased that the bill did pass, that we have agreement between the House and the Senate, and that this legislation will go to the President and that the President has indicated, obviously, that he will sign it, because at least we will be able to say that this year there has been some progress, albeit small progress, but some progress toward expanding health insurance opportunities for Americans. I have been very concerned over the last 2 years that we would not get this legislation passed because of inaction, which I put the blame on the Republican leadership here in the House. One of the things that Democrats, that we as Democrats did at the beginning of this session of Congress, was to establish a health care task force whose goal primarily was to try to expand health insurance opportunities for the many Americans who either do not have health insurance or who have problems obtaining health insurance even if they can afford to pay for it. I think this is one of the major issues that we must address not only in this Congress, but also in future Congresses. The bottom line is that more and more people every day in this country do not have health insurance. The estimates now are that it may be as many as 40 million Americans. I think it is unconscionable that that number continues to grow, and I think that government, and the Federal Government in particular, must do whatever it can to try to increase opportunities for health insurance and ultimately to bring down the number of Americans who do not have health insurance, who are not covered by health insurance. Let me just point out today why I think that the bill that was approved, which I call the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, for the two Senators who initially sponsored it in this session of Congress. What it does essentially, it does a lot of things but I would just like to highlight four things that I think are most important. One is, and most importantly, it deals with the whole issue of what we call portability, where an individual or a family, the head of the household I should say, loses their job or has to change jobs. Increasingly, that becomes a difficult problem for that individual or that head of the household or the family as a whole to find health insurance when they change a job or when they lose their job. In addition, we have a lot of Americans who in that circumstance or in other circumstances cannot find health insurance because they have a preexisting medical condition. The bill that we passed today addresses those problems in significant ways. First, it provide health insurance portability for workers and protection against exclusion from group insurance coverage in a new job because of preexisting condition. A group health plan cannot exclude you for more than a year from the coverage it gives others because of a preexisting condition. If you had a year or more of coverage and switched jobs and then have less than a 63-day, 2-month break in service between the jobs, the new plan cannot exclude you because of preexisting conditions. Of course, that sounds a little legalese, but it is a significant breakthrough for people who have been denied health insurance because of preexisting conditions. The bill also guarantees renewability of insurance regardless of health record or the size of the group. It also provided opportunity to go from group to individual insurance. If you have exhausted your group insurance possibilities and have been covered under a group plan for 1 year for 1 year or more, you have the right to buy a type of individual policy without preexisting condition exclusions. Finally, there is also a gradual increase in tax deduction for the self-employed to 80 percent by 2006. There are other things in the bill, but those are the ones I want to highlight. From the beginning of this debate, which is really almost 2 years now in this Congress, I have said that if we can, if we can at least improve the situation in terms of portability job to job or making sure that people are able to get insurance for preexisting conditions, if that is all we do in this year and with this legislation, we have accomplished a lot. And all the other things that were added and all the other special interest provisions which I am going to go into a little bit now, I think, were basically not important, should have been excluded from the beginning, and unfortunately were not, but today we finally came to a conclusion and we have a relatively clean bill and deals with those preexisting conditions and portability provisions of the original Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. Let me talk a little bit about what I consider the politics of this, because I have to say that I believe that as Democrats, as a Democrat and as a party, we have really taken the leadership to try to get this legislation passed this year in this Congress. More than anyone else, the President has taken a leadership role. He announced in his State of the Union address this year that if he was sent this bill with the preexisting condition provisions and with the portability provisions as a clean bill that he would sign it. Basically, President Clinton deserves most of the credit for the fact that this legislation finally passed tonight, and he is going to sign it. However, what I hear from my Republican colleagues on the other side and what I am sure I am going to be hearing for the next month or so is this effort, I guess part of a massive election-year campaign, to try to convince the American voters that the Republican Party, or the Republican leadership, is responsible for improving access to health insurance through the legislation that we passed today. The truth is that it has been the Democrats who have led the charge to expand access to health care for all Americans. Over the last 40 years, Democrats have promoted and succeeded in enacting legislation to improve the health care system, most importantly through the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid health programs in the 1960's and Democratic have consistently fought for the health reform provisions that were in the bill that we passed today. The Democratic lead on these reforms started in this Congress when Senator Kennedy first introduced his bill in July of last year. The Democratic advocacy of these health insurance reforms dates back even further. I have to say, because I have been to the well, I have been here on the floor many times to point out how the Republican leadership refused to take any action on the legislation until President Clinton finally put pressure on them by calling for passage of the bill in his State of the Union address last January, gradually the Republican leadership started moving on the Kennedy bill, by very slowly, In fact, the House and the Senate did not even vote on the bill until the end of March. I think that what essentially happened here is that the Republican leadership and Speaker Gingrich realized more and more as the year went on that their Contract With America provisions, that their extreme agenda was not working, and they started to reach out with this bill as a vehicle to show that they are moderate and they were actually trying to do something for the average American. Even though that was true and even though the political pressure was on them to try to do that and hopefully to move this bill, we still had a holdup because the leadership, Speaker Gingrich, the Republican leadership, insisted on including the medical savings accounts as a provision in this legislation. I have stated over and over again that the medical savings accounts were the poison pill, essentially the delay, and the fact that this bill did not come to the floor in this form until today was largely due to the Speaker's insistence and the Republican leadership's insistence that medical savings accounts be included in the legislation. I have pointed out and I will point out again, I believe the major reason for that push was because they received so much money, the Republican Party did, from the Golden Rule Insurance Co., which is the main company that sells these kind of policies. Let me just say briefly why, and I have said it before, but I want to say it again briefly, why medical saving accounts are not a positive provision in this legislation. Fortunately, again due to Senator Kennedy's insistence primarily and other Democrats, the medical savings accounts provision in this bill that came to the floor today were whittled down, so it is now only a pilot program that does not impact a lot of people. And so I am hopeful that whatever negative aspects exist for MSA's have been whittled down and will not have a terribly negative impact on this bill. But it is still in the bill, and I do think that we should be worried about the impact of MSA's. What MSA's do basically is to break the insurance pool. You have wealthy people, you have poor people in the insurance pool. You have healthy people, you have unhealthy people in the insurance pool. The idea of the insurance pool is you put all these people together and you basically have a balance, and you do not charge a great deal because everybody pays an average premium. What MSA's do basically is to separate the health insurance risk pool and actually result in premium increases for many Americans because the people that opt out and go for the umbrella or the catastrophic policy, if you will, that exists with the MSA's are mainly healthy and wealthy people, people that can afford to pay out of pocket if necessary, people who do not think that they are going to have to have that many occasions when they visit a doctor or go to a hospital. And so what happens is the healthy and wealthy people opt for the medical savings accounts and the insurance pool is left with poorer people and people who are largely unhealthy, and premium rates go up. The reason that I think that is such a terrible thing is because the whole purpose of health insurance reform is to try to expand opportunities for health insurance coverage for people that do not have it. If premium rates go up, then fewer people can afford health insurance. Fewer people are able to afford health insurance and more and more people go without health insurance. Why did they try to incorporate these accounts, these MSA's in the bill? Because the Republican leadership was getting a lot of special interest money from the Golden Rule Insurance Co., which was the main company that was trying to sell these policies. The Republican leadership went so far that they even tried to put MSA's in their medical proposal even though the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan organization, scored the MSA's as draining Medicare by over $3 billion. So we had this MSA problem not only with this bill, but also with Medicare. At one point, we had the Republican leadership in the Senate saying that they would not even allow the minimum wage increase legislation to be considered until they had their way with the health insurance reform bill that included the MSA's. Fortunately, they dropped that. Tomorow we are going to be considering the minimum wage bill. Once again, it is because of Democratic persistence in saying, ``No, we're not going to link these two, we're not going to include the provisions on the medical savings accounts the way you want it. We want to pass a clean health insurance reform bill to address portability and preexisting conditions, and we want to pass a clean minimum wage bill.'' I have to say, once again, that I believe very strongly that the reason that this bill came to the floor today is because of the insistence of the Democrats that it come before us in its clean form and in the way that would actually be helpful to the average American. Now, let me stress, and I guess I am basically going to conclude with this, that while this legislation that is before us today and that we voted on is not the end-all in health insurance reform, it is an important first step down the road to helping Americans maintain their health care security. However, I think a lot more work needs to be done. Some of the Democrats who spoke on the floor today stressed the fact that this is only a small step and that we need to do a lot more in order to achieve that goal of bringing all Americans under some kind of health insurance coverage. That is certainly true. This is only a beginning, an important beginning, but nonetheless a beginning. Only a beginning. What are we proposing then as Democrats? Well, the next step, the next incremental step, I believe, and probably the most important one, is a proposal that the Democrats have put forward as part of their family first agenda to create kids only health insurance policies, ensuring that every American child has health insurance. We have obviously dealt in an important way now with the portability and the preexisting condition problems, but one of the biggest gaping holes in the lack of health insurance, so to speak, is the fact that so many children now do not have health insurance. So as part of our agenda we want to make sure that there are ways in which people who can afford to buy health insurance, but maybe have problems because they have difficulty buying it for their children or difficulty buying it for their whole family, at least have the option that they can buy it for their children. If their children are covered, obviously that is important to them and it gives them some sense of security about their ability to provide and take care of their children. At the same time, Democrats remain committed to protecting Medicare and Medicaid from Republican raids on those programs primarily to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy. Over the last year and a half, Republicans have made several attempts at cutting Medicare and Medicaid, and I have again talked about those a great deal on the House floor. If we make these severe cuts in Medicare and Medicaid that had been proposed by the Republican leadership, the net effect would increase the number of uninsured and underinsured. That is the opposite of what the goals should be of this Congress. Not only the Democratic goal, but the bipartisan goal of this Congress and of this Federal Government is to get more people health insurance. We are not going to accomplish that if we cut Medicare and Medicaid. Ultimately, it is going to mean that fewer people have health insurance and the quality of service and the level of service goes down. Mr. Speaker, I just want to conclude, because I know there is not much time left and I do not want to use all the time, but I just feel very strongly that what we have witnessed in this Congress, when we talk about Medicare, when we talk about Medicaid, or even when we talk about this health care reform bill which we finally passed today, is that the Republican policy has essentially been the opposite of what the Democratic principles are about. Democrats have said that they want to increase the number of people that have health insurance. What we have been seeing from the Republican leadership basically is the opposite: Cut health care programs, repeal health care programs and, finally, be dragged sort of fighting and kicking to pass a health care reform bill that addresses one problem, or at least one small problem affecting millions of Americans. I suppose, ending on an optimistic note, I have to say that maybe they have been dragged kicking to the point where they had to bring up the bill today, but at least the bill was brought up, and there are millions of Americans who will be positively impacted by this health insurance reform legislation that was passed today on a bipartisan basis. If it took all the kicking and screaming and complaining by Democrats to get us to that point, that is fine. We have accomplished something and it is certainly a victory for all Americans. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this Friday Congress is scheduled to go into recess, but I do not think we should be recessing unless we address or until we address the issue of terrorism. I have to tell you that right now my constituents in the phone calls to my office are overwhelming that people are concerned and want the Congress and the President to get together on a bipartisan basis to address the issue. It is not something that is just in other countries now. Clearly, because of the TWA crash, because of the explosion in Atlanta at the Olympics, people feel, and I think rightly so, that they cannot be safe and that we need to address the issue of terrorism. Basically, the President this week convened a bipartisan leadership meeting to discuss the steps that are necessary to fight against terrorism. As was mentioned by some of the previous speakers, we do have certain tools at hand which we really have not used and we can use on the Federal basis to try to get at the problem. Mentioned was the expanding the power to use wire tapping, also certain tracers or taggants, as they are called in explosives. These things need to be addressed, and we have to do them before we recess.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Studds]. Consumers have a right to know that ``dolphin safe'' means that dolphins were not harassed or killed. That is what the label has meant for the last 6 years. Under the Studds amendment, tuna can be sold in the United States regardless of whether it was caught using safe techniques, but it could not be labeled ``dolphin safe'' unless it meets the standard that every American consumer has relied upon and should be able to continue to rely upon. It is hard to believe that chasing dolphins by speedboats and helicopters until they are too exhausted to escape and then encircled in a purse-seine net can be considered safe. At worst, the netted dolphins face the risk of crushed bones, loss of fins, or suffocation in the nylon nets. At the very least, mortal injuries may ensue from separation of mothers from their calves or the severe stress caused by this harassment which may have detrimental effects. One study suggests that there may be immediate effects of stress on these animals or long-term effects on the population as a whole, as indicated by the reduced pregnancy rates from heavily fished areas. There are signs that netting dolphins may have adverse effects, with the stress being one possible cause. All of which may not necessarily go observed as the dolphins also sink or survive the experience only to die later. Meaning that the change to the ``dolphin safe'' label would render it worthless as now observed, and I quote, ``observed,'' mortalities occurred during the netting. The bottom line is that the only true safe method to fish for tuna is to remove dolphins from the equation. The public knows this and so do over 80 environmental groups that support this amendment. That is why I voted for the current definition of dolphin safe in 1990 under the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act. At Mexico's request in 1991, a GATT panel found that trade embargoes on tuna imports under the authority of the Marine Mammal Protection Act did not meet with trade obligations. But the dolphin-safe label was not an issue before the GATT dispute panel; only the embargo itself. There is no legitimate trade conflict with the dolphin-safe label. The Studds amendment will continue to preserve the dolphin-safe label, which is an integral part of dolphin protection. Mr. Chairman, I include the following ``Dear Colleague'' letter for the Record. Save the ``Dolphin Safe'' Label Dear Colleague: H.R. 2823, ``The International Dolphin Conservation Program Act'' will change U.S. law and allow tuna caught by methods that injure and terrorize dolphins to be labeled ``Dolphin Safe.'' The bill's proponents admit that under H.R. 2823, the number of dolphins that will be killed could rise. In fact, H.R. 2823 specifically permits a 25% increase in the number of dead dolphins. This legislation would perpetuate a fraud on American consumers. Consumers have a right to know that ``Dolphin Safe'' means that dolphins were not harassed or killed. That is what the label has meant for the past 6 years. Under the Studds amendment, tuna can be sold in the United States regardless of whether it was caught using safe techniques. But it could not be labelled ``Dolphin Safe'' unless it meets the standard that every American consumer has relied upon and should be able to continue to rely on.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, in an effort to make concessions to foreign fishing interests, the Clinton administration and other proponents of H.R. 2823 are tampering with the standards set under the authority of one of our most fundamental and successful environmental laws, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. This bill permits the number of dolphin deaths to actually increase up to 5,000 annually and has no provisions, in my opinion, to enforce this limit or specify how this number should decrease over time. I believe it leaves a gaping loophole, with no limitations on injuring or harassing dolphins so long as there are no observed mortalities. I think also the American people have the right to know that this bill, in my opinion, has not been subject to proper debate and consideration. I know that my colleague from New Jersey talked about the action that took place in the Committee on Resources, but the bill was not referred to the Committee on Commerce which has in the past considered numerous bills relating to the labeling of tuna. Also, I am skeptical that adequate observer coverage can occur on a set by set basis as proposed by this bill, much less that a single observer could monitor nets that are up to a mile long and a hundred feet deep for potential dolphin fatalities. Proponents are suggesting that bycatch is an important consideration, and I strongly support the need to address bycatch issues for tuna fishing, but by means other than a shifting of fishing effort to practices which place dolphins at risk. This bill provides no alternative to dolphin sets with a failure to ensure that bycatch mitigation research is done. Setting on logs and debris under which tuna aggregate will continue as two other major commercial tuna species, the skipjack and bigeye tunas are traditionally caught under logs and debris and are not typically found with dolphins. Setting on dolphins is not a real solution to the bycatch issue, and H.R. 2823 does address this. This bill is yet another rollback of environmentalist legislation, and the threat this bill poses to dolphins is very real in my opinion.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. I know that we are running out of time here tonight, but I just wanted to thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] for joining me and again all we are trying to point out on this 31st anniversary of Medicare is how important the program is and how the Republican efforts basically to cut Medicare to pay for these tax breaks for the wealthy and the changes that they are proposing in the Medicare program will essentially do what the Republicans have said they wanted to do from the beginning, either eliminate Medicare or change it so much that it really does not provide the quality of health care services and the level of health care services that senior citizens should have, and I just want to thank both of you for fighting this battle now. You pointed out to me, Congresswoman DeLauro, that it is actually 20 months now; I am losing track of time. It is not 18 months, it is 20 months that we have been fighting this battle, and, of course, so far we have been winning, but we do not want people to forget that the Republicans are still out there trying to essentially destroy Medicare as we know it.

Mr. PALLONE. I am really pleased that you brought this up because a lot of times when I talk to senior groups they will say to me, why do the Republicans want to make these changes. People generally feel that elected representatives that come down here want to help them. They do not assume the opposite. And I say, well, on the one hand it is the tax breaks for the wealthy. But on the other hand it is the special interests. There are changes in this legislation that the Republicans proposed, changes in the Medicare program that are strictly special interest oriented for their friends. And one of them you mentioned is with regard to fraud. One of the things you remember in the Committee on Commerce, one of the things that most upset us last year in 1995 was the weakening of these antifraud and abuse provisions. Instead of using the opportunity to strengthen them, because we know there is a lot of fraud, the Republican leadership proposal actually weakened the antifruad and abuse provisions. Briefly, and then I will yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut, there was the example that I could just cite where the GOP bill relieved hospitals and doctors of the legal duty to use reasonable diligence for ensuring that the claims they submit to Medicare are true and accurate. That sounds like a lot of legalese but it is very important, because if you weaken that standard, then it is much easier for doctors or hospitals to abuse the system. That was actually in the bill. We fought very hard to point that out and to stop it from becoming law.

Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown].

Mr. PALLONE. I think you are making a good point. The bottom line is we know if you see these cuts in Medicare that the Republican leadership is proposing, it is going to have a negative impact on the health care system in general. In my district, and I am sure in the gentlewoman's, I have so many hospitals that are over 50 percent, some over 60 percent, Medicare- and Medicaid-dependent. If you make these cuts you are going to hurt the health care system in general.

Mr. PALLONE. You know, it is sort of ironic because when we started our health care task force, which all three of us are part of, our Democratic health care tax force last year, we established two basic principles. One was that we wanted to get more people insured, and the other was that we wanted to improve the quality of care, and it is unfortunate that that is not what the debate has been about. That is what we would like to see, but that is not what the debate has been about.

Mr. PALLONE. I do not have the exact number, but I know that the Congressional Budget Office actually estimated that the medical savings accounts would cost the Medicare system billions, billions and billions, in extra dollars. So here we have a Republican plan that supposedly is cutting Medicare to save money for whatever reason we know as tax breaks for the wealthy, and the CBO is telling us it is actually going to cost more because of the special interests and the save provision.

Mr. PALLONE. Sure.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, it is not my intention to necessarily use all of our 60 minutes that is allocated tonight, but I do think it is important and I know that the gentlewoman from Connecticut stressed some of these points, but I think that it is very important for us as Democrats to point out that right now in 1996, on July 30, 1996, the Republicans still have a plan out there to cut Medicare and to make the drastic changes in the Medicare Program that effectively would destroy Medicare as we know it. I am afraid that not only our colleagues but certainly a lot of the American people do not really understand that at this time. There has not been that much discussion about Medicare on the Republican side in the last few weeks or months, but the fact of the matter is that there is a new plan out there to cut Medicare and to change it drastically. And I wondered if I could reiterate some of these things that are on the table right now because I think it is important to stress it. The gentlewoman mentioned that although in 1995 we had this Republican proposal that would have cut $270 billion from Medicare primarily to pay for tax breaks for wealthy people in 1996, the budget that we are now operating on that was passed here in the House by the Republicans, without Democratic support for the most parts, calls for essentially the same kind of Medicare overhaul plan that they put forward in 1995. I think the gentlewoman mentioned that the budget contains $168 billion in cuts in the Medicare Program over 6 years in order to pay for $176 billion in tax cuts, again targeted primarily on the wealthy. So I mean it really is not any different. I want to stress that because I think it is important to make it known.

Mr. PALLONE. The other thing, too, that I want to stress is that these cuts are not needed to save the program. Again, we are not hearing much from the other side about Medicare anymore, so we do not hear much about their effort to save the program anymore either. But we know that this level of cuts is not necessary to save the program. Again, it is being used primarily to pay for tax breaks, and those tax breaks are primarily for wealthy Americans. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare cuts, and again not to stress it, but there was a level of cuts much less that was proposed by the Clinton administration. And they would in fact have extended the life of the Medicare trust fund for virtually as long as the GOP Medicare plan. So, if we simply adopted the suggestions that the Clinton administration made, which would not have made those deep cuts to finance these tax breaks for wealthy people, we would have extended the life of the Medicaid trust fund and eliminated all the questions that have been raised about potential insolvency of Medicare. Those could be brought to the floor today if the other side was willing to accommodate and go along with what the President has said. They do not want to do it because they want to keep out there those tax breaks.

Mr. PALLONE. Again, we sort of touched on this again, but I just think it is important to stress that once again the Republicans are talking, leadership is talking right now this year about proposals for Medicare that would cost seniors a lot more out of pocket. I think a lot of people believe that because they have not heard about the increase in the Medicare part B premium. Last year that was the crying call because so many seniors knew that the Republicans had proposed these big increases in part B premiums that they would have to pay per month. This year with the balanced billing provisions and with the level of cuts in Medicare, we will end up paying a lot more out of pocket. I think the figure right now is that under current law the physician can only charge patients up to 15 percent above what the fees are that Medicare sets. But if you stay in a traditional Medicare, under the current Republican plan that is on the floor now, that figure is unlimited. In addition, I know that the gentlewoman has pointed out previous times on the floor that with the cuts in the level of services that would come from this level of cuts in Medicare, we are going to see tremendous increases in Medigap insurance because Medigap is going to have to cover more because of the lack of funding available for Medicare. So seniors would be faced with these overcharges by the physicians, higher Medigap premiums, and the list goes on.