Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. We will do more on this same subject at another time. In the closing minutes, let me talk about the hostility that we find against business in this country. Behre Dolbear publishes an annual survey entitled ``Ranking Countries For Mineral Investments.'' This survey ranks the 25 countries with the largest mining industries and/or the most significant mining industry potential. To establish the annual rankings, the survey considers seven criteria that influence investments by the mining industry in each of those 25 countries. These criteria include economic systems, political systems, social issues, permit issues, corruption, currency stability, and tax regimes. A review of each country relative to each of the above criteria is performed, using the general assumption that a technically viable mining operation is being considered in that country. The countries are then given a ranking from 1 to 10 in each category, with 10 being the most favorable. Recently in 2004 the USA scored well in economic systems and currency stability, et cetera; but it had a dismal ranking in the category of permit issues. This ranking is based on the time and expense required to get permits, not on stringency of regulations. In 2004, the U.S. had a numerical score of 4. That score puts the U.S. 19th out of 25 countries. The U.S. ranks below Peru, Ghana, Colombia, South Africa, Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Namibia and Bolivia. Only seven countries rank below the U.S. Keep in mind that this is an improvement, that the Bush administration has made progress because previously under President Clinton, we had a 2 ranking. The U.S. was tied for 24th out of 25 countries with Indonesia. Just why does the U.S. have to have such a low rank in permit issues? Mr. Speaker, we have covered tonight the many, many reasons that jobs are moving offshore in America while our industries are being decimated, why manufacturing is being sent overseas and our friends, while talking about it, continue to be a part of the problem. I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for allowing me to participate in this Special Order.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I think my friend from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez) is like I am, a business owner. He understands that you just do not create jobs out of thin air, and you do not do it without good thoughts and good resources. The gentleman from Illinois adequately pointed out that it is hypocritical of our friends on the other side of the aisle to talk night after night about the failure to pass an energy policy when it is the other side of the aisle that is blocking that energy bill from being passed. The environmental extremists who stop production of oil and natural gas are the ones who are responsible. The process for drilling a natural gas well on public land is to file an application for permit to drill, an APD, and that process simply goes in for review, and when it is reviewed, the application is either given or denied. What happens is that the extremists will file a lawsuit, and many times that application simply dies right there without ever even a hearing, and by the way, they have limited access. The extremists have limited access to over a trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Rocky Mountain regions. Now, then, sometimes the cooperation between the extremists and the government groups has gotten just a little bit too close and friendly. In a recent case that the media has not done a very good job of covering, three BLM employees in Wisconsin were convicted of racketeering, conspiring to keep people from drilling on public property. It is going to be very interesting to see how other employees in the Federal Government begin to respond to that conviction, understanding that their actions sometimes are simply extortion. I have constituents of mine who report that Federal employees will tell them no, no, you really do not have a problem, but your case would go much easier if you would contribute to, say, this archaeological study that our office is doing. If you gave a check of $25,000, maybe things will go easier. When I was out flying over the Salt River project, one group held hostage that project for a $25 million contribution into this extremist environmental fund. Mr. Speaker, those are the things that are driving jobs offshore, that hostility to business and the development of energy. The most heartbreaking story, Mr. Speaker, that I have seen here in Congress occurred in the Committee on Resources about a month ago. Members of the union came in, the union that deals with workers who cut timber and who create the pulp wood and paper. Those union employees were talking about the loss of their jobs in that industry and were heartbroken by the fact that they were going to lose the wages that their families depended on, and they are good, good living-wage jobs. The Members on the other side of the aisle said, oh, but you do not understand, you can get a job in the hospitality business. I am sorry, but the unions and Republicans do not often match up. The unions and the other side of the aisle do the most, and it was their friends telling them you could lose these high-paying jobs in the timber industry and you can get a job working at the hotels. The union representatives literally spit back at them across the table the words, We do not want your hospitality jobs; we want our jobs in the timber industry. What a heartbreaking thing. I began to do research on that, and I am pleased to show a chart tonight. I am not pleased to show the chart tonight. I am horrified to show the chart tonight that describes the loss of pulp and paper mills and plants throughout this country. The dots on this chart represent the mill closures and employee layoffs from 1989 through 2003. The blue dots with Xs are mills that have been closed, and the red dots list the number of employees that have been laid off during the past 16 years. The small blue dots represent the remaining operating U.S. mills and plants. Since 1997, the forest products industry has lost more than 120,000 family-wage jobs and closed more than 220 plants. While there are many factors that contribute to these mill closures and the loss of family- wage jobs, several issues stand out. Number one is the lack of access to timber resources on the Federal lands that have been brought about through the Endangered Species Act, the roadless rule, and the lawsuits filed by the anti-development environmental extremists. Access to timber resources results in lack of raw materials needed by the mills to produce their products. High natural gas prices, and we have discussed why we have high natural gas prices, are also driven by misguided environmental policies. During the 1990s, the U.S. environmental policy encouraged the use of natural gas for the generation of electricity as a clean alternative to the coal-fired plants. However, during this same time and continuing through the present, area prospectives for oil and gas production have been put off limits to exploration and development. This includes almost all of the outer continental shelf offshore gas production, portions of the gulf, and a significant part of the Rocky Mountain natural gas resources. America gets more than 85 percent of the natural gas we use from domestic production. These conflicting policies have driven natural gas prices to historic highs, above $5.50 per thousand cubic feet, the highest natural gas prices of all the industrialized nations. This makes the United States less competitive and is outsourcing our manufacturing industries, including the production of forest products. Our misguided environmental policies are directly responsible for the loss of the majority of family-wage jobs in the forest products industry. In 1990, almost 12 billion board feet of timber were harvested from the Federal estate. That is 12 billion in 1990. Today, we harvest 2 billion board feet of timber from the Federal estate. Our national forest resources are allowed to lie fallow, to build up excessive fuels. They are subject to overgrowth, they are subject to disease, and they are subject to fire. We are finding that the wildfires are going to destroy our forests before we ever cut them. When the fire races across the top of our forests, killing these mature trees, it only makes sense to go in and harvest the charred timber. But, instead, the extremists will file injunctions, they will file lawsuits to slow the process down. Recently, in my district, we had a large forest fire. Before the timber could be cut, the value of the timber had lost 60 percent of its value because of delays created by the extremists who said it is better not to ever touch one tree than to cut these charred stumps that were left and had valuable timber in them. Mr. Speaker, our watersheds are completely dependent on the quality and the character of our healthy forests, but also an entire industry is dependent on the way that we manage those resources. In this landscape, my constituents are asked to forego a development project that would provide family-wage employment so that a passerby's view is not spoiled. The same passerby expects my constituents to live with the charred remains of timber that could have provided feedstock for a local mill, that could be made into 2-by-4s for a neighbor's home, that could be paper used by a local school or business, a lovely piece of furniture to be passed into the next generation, or it could be used to make a young woman's high school prom dress. If we as a Nation choose not to access our own natural resources, with our high standards for compliance and with our environmental laws and regulations, we deliberately reduce our economic security and reduce the opportunities for continued leadership in resource development, manufacturing, and technology. We deny our Federal citizens the opportunity for high-paying, family-wage jobs with good benefits. We also risk our national security. Mr. Speaker, on the second chart, and I would show it briefly, it has a picture of a mill that is being closed; and much like the Vietnam wall, the names of the casualties are listed down below in black. Those names go on and on, 220 of those that have closed. I have got the closings here in a document that is 25 pages, with 35 mill closures on each page. There are mills that have been closed in Alabama. Over 300 jobs lost at another plant in Alabama, at Cusa Pines. Here is one where 450 jobs were lost in Mobile, Alabama. Another 500 jobs lost in Mobile, Alabama. Camden, Arkansas, lost 600 jobs to these policies. We go page after page after page, California, Florida. St. Mary's, Georgia, lost 800 jobs in one mill closing. Page after page. Illinois lost many, many jobs to mill closings because of the misguided attempts of environmentalists to block every single tree from being cut. We have Louisiana with mill closings, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, and Michigan. State after State, 25 pages, 35 mills per page. When we get to Oregon, we have page after page after page of mill closings in Oregon, 100, 180 jobs. This information is readily available to those in this body who would want to access it, but the disappointing thing is that our friends do not want reality in the debate about where jobs are lost and why they are lost. They simply are looking for their agenda to be carried out at all cost. My friend from Illinois adequately characterized it as hypocritical. The job loss, the pain in the States and the rural areas of this country are borne by individuals who have to live with the policies that are implemented in our courts and in our regulations that face our businesses as they try to make a profit in the hostile environment that is created in this country. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez) for organizing this, and if I have an opportunity, I will have further comments to make. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. (Mr. PEARCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman brought up a personality trait of the President. When he inherited a bad problem, the President did not whine about it, did not take it to the American public, did not point fingers. He just set to work to solve the problem. There are many things that the President could have talked about that existed in the military at the point that he took over. Raises had been ignored for the 8 years under President Clinton; the inventory of our weapons were depleted seriously through many actions taken under President Clinton. Spare parts for vehicles and tanks were depleted, and the maintenance readiness status of our equipment was sadly lacking; but the President has not said one word about that during this war. He simply went to work, asked for the money to take care of the problems, and began to take care of the problems. Today, I heard a speaker who described leadership as seeing a need, then taking a personal responsibility to take care of that need. As I look back on the President's performance since 9/11 in a situation that was tremendously challenging for any person, I see a person who saw a need and took a personal responsibility to begin to address the problems. He has addressed them well. If we look at the changes since 9/11, we see the dramatic changes in the situation in the world today. He talked to our friends in Saudi Arabia and said there were networks financing terrorism there, and that has changed. He compelled them to make a change in that. Today Saddam Hussein is not in power, but instead is in prison. Who can forget the image of that leader who had killed a half a million people, his own people, and here was that leader, that vicious, violent leader crawling out of a hole in the ground where he had been hiding, whipped and beaten by the steadfast determination of American forces to rid the world of that evil and to keep him from doing more destruction, either in the world or to his own people. Afghanistan this summer has already had elections. They are looking at a Constitution that is offering new freedoms in that country. Iraq has approved the temporary Constitution, the one that for the first time gives women rights in that Middle Eastern country, one that recognizes private property rights. Children are back in school in Iraq today because of the President's actions. As my colleague has mentioned, Libya has given up their chemical and nuclear weapons. Iran is acknowledging their participation in this dramatic build up of weapons of mass destruction. The Pakistani President has vowed to fight terrorism in his country with his troops and is doing a dramatic job of that. These are significant changes in the history of the world. And make no mistake about it, if the changes were not made to the better, toward the more stable governments, the changes will be made in the world to more unstable governments. That is the choice in the world today, stability versus instability. It is not so much a question of those countries that are democrat or not democrat. The question is stability and the protection of humans and human rights in those countries. So the President inherited a military that was depleted, one that seemed to be on its heels. I would point out that when I went to Iraq in October and early November, I talked with many of the soldiers there. For 3 days we had lunch and dinner with American soldiers, both men and women fighting the fight. Every day I would walk through the large dining halls of 800 or 900 people, and I had a chance to visit with a lot of young men and women. In unison and one by one they said please tell the President we love him. That was prior to when the President went there on Thanksgiving morning. When I saw him about to come around that curtain, I realized what the American troops would say to him because they had said the same thing to me a month earlier.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. He is bringing up a very compelling story that occurred when I was in Iraq. We went to Kirkuk. At that town, we visited the police station. I am understanding that it is the same police station that was bombed several weeks ago in Iraq causing great damage. But when we were there the police captain began to address this concept of liberty. He likened it to growing a garden. He said in his words that for the roses to grow in Iraq, the roses would have to be watered with Iraqi blood. He said, We're willing to do that. We're willing to shed Iraqi blood for Iraqi freedom. When I heard those words, I knew that Iraq, no matter what the trials, no matter what the troubles, would be in good shape as long as we are there to help, as long as we are there to help until they get their strength. The only thing that can cause Iraq to suffer worse is for America to lose its resolve, because the Iraqi police at that station in Kirkuk said two things, Don't leave Iraq too early and do not leave Saddam Hussein loose. That was before we captured Saddam Hussein. We have taken care of the second piece but America cannot lose its resolve. Otherwise, the Iraqi people will pay dearly for the terrorists and the extremists who would go in and punish anyone who has cooperated with the United States or with the Coalition forces. Again, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I would note that even when President Clinton was making the allegations about the strength of the effort in Iraq and about the threat that Iraq posed to the world, he was systematically dismantling the information- gathering network that the United States had in place. He began to pull the operatives out of our spy networks so that we had no information on the ground. The Clinton administration was saying that we will gather that information electronically, we will use satellites and we will use monitoring of phones. The truth is you cannot know actions until you understand the heart of the individuals who are planning actions, until you can assess the threat by listening to the rhetoric; but President Clinton dismantled that at the same time he was acknowledging the threat, and President Bush was faced with a situation in the world where we did not have information and we were struck without warning, without provocation. I think that before we consider all the ramifications, if we are to listen to the left, talk to America today, about retreating away from the war, about coming back home, about the mistakes they are claiming that we made, we have to understand the risk of retreat. We have now Pakistan who is engaged with us, but it would guarantee instability and overwhelm the President of Pakistan if we were to retreat. The fundamentalists, the extremists in Iraq would overwhelm the growing government process there. Our friends who have helped us get there, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, would face certain instability if we were not there to offer the moral support and the troop strength which we are offering today. It was well-known through the 1990s the threat that Iraq and many of the terrorist states, the risks that they posed to the United States; but in treating these not as acts of war but as a crime, like my colleague has said, we have to understand that the person who perpetrated the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was actually in prison. He was only a criminal. It was his uncle who conducted and led the 2001 attacks with the certainty that they had communicated frequently. The failed policies of appeasement simply are not going to work in this war on terror; and if we understand that the instability of the world is the goal of the terrorists, that through the instability they represent a very small percent of the population but they will gain tremendous power in instability, we begin to understand why they are doing what they are doing.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg) for bringing this important subject up because I have asked the President because many people asked me, Why does the President not fight back? Why does he not explain? And his simple answer to me was he cannot take the Presidency down into those baseless claims of people that are coming from everywhere. He stays focused on the job of fighting the war on terror. He has made tremendous accomplishments in the war on terror as we look across the history of the changes in just the last 3 years and even the recent incident along the Pakistani- Afghanistan border where U.S. troops are on the Afghanistan side and Pakistani troops were pinching in together al Qaeda troops in the middle. I think that indicates some of the most dramatic changes going on in the region, and this President, in spurning a policy of appeasement but choosing instead to respond in strength and remaining dignified and not dipping the Presidency into the baseless accusations that have been hurled from every direction during the last 8 or 9 months, indicates a steadfastness, a commitment to duty that this President brings that makes me proud. I thank both of the gentlemen for bringing these conversations in front of the American people. I think this is the right place to refute the lies that are being thrown about. I thank both gentlemen for allowing me to participate this evening.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman was talking about the soldiers in the streets, there were three young men from New Mexico, and they brought me a picture from their patrol that morning. These young men were in their early 20s. They graduated from New Mexico high schools. I had watched one play in the State championship ball game. We talked about that game, but their greatest pride came from the recognition that was given to them by the Iraqis in the streets over a period of time. They said when they got there, people were peeking out of the curtains. They were unsure because they had been told for 35 years that the Americans had only one intent, and that was to kill when they came. Yet through the weeks families became familiar with them being in the same streets and in the same alleyways, and protecting and guarding, and gradually they began to open their doors. On that morning, the morning they took the picture in the street, they brought it to me to put into my office here. One of the families brought out their young kids and held them up to see them eye to eye. He said it brought tears to his eyes to see the changes in the Iraqi people in just a few short weeks. The greatest question that our solders ask us is, why don't Americans hear this in the American press? Why don't my mom and dad hear about the good things that we're doing on the streets? I could not give them an answer but when I was there in my 3 days I took 5\1/2\ hours of video. I have consolidated that onto a CD that I take into the schools in my districts and I talk over and over and over about the good things that American soldiers are doing there in the reconstruction, not only in the reconstruction of the facilities in Iraq, but in the reconstruction of the hope and the dreams and the human spirit that we see taking place right now. Our young men and women are recognizing the very valuable thing they are creating in the human spirit in Iraqis, and both the young men and women got tears in their eyes when they were telling me about it. I thank the gentleman for yielding for that brief story.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, the images of 9-11 are very vivid in my mind. That unsolicited, unprovoked attack on the American population is one of the most heinous things that this generation will see. Mr. Speaker, we are given two choices when we are struck like that. We can choose appeasement. That was the policy of the preceding 10 years. Appeasement where we do not respond or we can respond to try to stop the threat. Under President Bush we have responded. President Clinton chose appeasement. If you watch the graduation of the attacks under the appeasement policy of President Clinton, you will see that the attacks began to escalate. The severity of the attacks began to take a greater toll. The terrorists have one thing in mind when they attack innocent civilians and countries that have not provoked them. They desire to create instability, understanding that if they create economic instability, they will create political instability. That was the mode of operation for the terrorists as they graduated through the 1990s. We recall that the World Trade Center was struck previous to 9/11. It was struck 10 years previous. On 9/11 we lost over 2,000 lives and it cost our economy $2 trillion, and it is still costing today as businesses face increased insurance premiums to cover the losses of that 1 day. When I hear critics talk about the war and the cost on the war, and it is an expensive war, make no doubt about it, the costs are up around $200 billion now. $200 billion though is not yet 10 percent of the cost of that 1-day strike. The President has boldly fought back. Dramatic things have been done since 9/11. The President has caused Saudi Arabia to dismantle the funding mechanism for the terrorists, the funding network that was established in Saudi Arabia, a worldwide network marketing nuclear components for nuclear weapons that was created by A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani. That network in a marketed nuclear armament has been dismantled. We are now in the process of collecting back the things, Mr. Speaker, that he sold to nations. In Afghanistan the Taliban has been uprooted. They are out. Al Qaeda is on the run. That training camp where they trained 20,000 terrorists during the 1990s no longer exists, Mr. Speaker. And it is because of the bold action under this President. Libya has admitted to their participation in the weapons of mass destruction and they voluntarily have given up their weapons after the President took his bold action in Iraq. Mr. Speaker, Iran is acknowledging their problems and their willingness to create weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan now is helping us fight the war on terror and just days ago was involved in a tremendous fire fight along the Afghanistan-Pakistani border. Mr. Speaker, those are the responses of strength. And I will tell you that we are going to fight the war on terror; 9/11 declared it to be that way. If we are going to fight the war on terror, I choose to fight it in their country rather than in this country. I traveled to Iraq at the end of October and the first of November. I visited our troops there, wanting to express my appreciation for what they were doing. As a soldier in Vietnam, I never received one communication from my Congressman, but I did want to communicate to these young men and women how much I valued what they do because they are changing the tide of world history. If we were to sit and always choose appeasement, if we were to sit and not respond, I would guarantee you that our economy would not survive another 9/11. On 9/11 I was in Paris, France, on a vacation. We were delayed 10 days in getting home. When we arrived, we arrived at Dallas-Ft. Worth Regional Airport, an airport that today when I travel through it has thousands of people every day. That airport was essentially shut down. There were no taxis. The hotels were empty. We will see our economy completely collapse if we continue to let strikes like 9/11 happen without response. The President has given bold response. Our soldiers are acting responsibly. They understand the value of what they are doing. They tell me they have pride in their accomplishments. I see the reconstruction is having dramatic effects. The Iraqis themselves believe they can create liberty. Mr. Speaker, the President's responses of strength are a tribute to the great leadership that he is bringing to this time of great stress; and I would like to support him in that.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding me time. When I go to the district, I get the very reasoned question, why would we give tax cuts in a time of deficit? I think there are important reasons to understand. First of all, the governor of New Mexico said it best, tax cuts create jobs. He said that to the Democrat legislature last year just before they passed the tax cuts in New Mexico that had been sought for over 8 years under the Republican governor. They passed those tax cuts. We passed the tax cuts here nationally and jobs began to create. In July, New Mexico was number two in the Nation in job growth because tax cuts do create jobs. One of the ways they do it is small business. The tax cuts we gave, the small business expensing created tremendous jobs in our local district. Good friends of mine at Watson Truck & Supply reported to me just before we gave the tax cuts that they were out of back orders. There were no more units to be built. They have a manufacturing facility that builds equipment for the oil fields. They were out of back orders, no more orders for their equipment. The day after we passed the tax cuts, they got more orders than they had had in their entire history. They have 2 years of back orders now. People were hired, jobs were created, and for each new piece of equipment they put out, four to five new jobs were created additionally. The accelerated depreciation as one of the most dramatic things that we did for small business in the tax cuts last year. Small businesses began to buy equipment. My wife is the chairman of our board. She called me the day we passed the tax cuts, especially the one with accelerated depreciation and said, we should buy new equipment. So we ordered a large new pump that we had been waiting on to order. That is the way that tax cuts create jobs. If we want to stop the outflow of jobs in America, we will continue to cut the taxes for American business, but also, Mr. Chairman, we will have a continued action on the part of the other house to pass the tort reform that we passed out of this House. Frivolous lawsuits will drive all major corporations out of America if we do not do something about them. We have heard a lot about what we should do as far as the deficits. My friend from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) said it best, we do not have a problem with the amount of money that Washington collects from its people. We tax enough. The problem that we have is that we spend too much. Much has been made out of the deficits that we are facing right now, but very little response is made that actually tells the beginning of those deficits. If we think back to the end of 1999 and 2000, in the last years of President Clinton's term, we remember that the dot-com industry collapsed. We were seeing tremendous capital gains from that industry where stocks escalated to a tremendous height without any product, without any revenue, without any net profit. Those stocks were emotionally driven to a high rate. They were not driven by practicality. It was a necessity that the dot-com boom would collapse to a certain extent, and when it did, it took all of the capital gains and thrust that surplus that extended as far as the eye could see into a nonsurplus. It was an imaginary ramp up in the economy that could not and would not be sustained. That was the beginning of a recession that was followed on by 9/11, shocking the economy into a deeper recession and followed still by Global Crossing, Enron, WorldCom and others who drove investor confidence to new lows. Our economy has had several deep shocks to it. We felt that the tax cuts would create a rate of growth that should create new tax revenues from a higher economy. Those expectations were met in the third quarter of last year with an 8.2 percent rate of growth and 4 percent in the fourth quarter. That is exactly what the tax cuts were intended to do, and I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart).

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss even a broader concept in health care costs. One of the most urgent questions that I get when I am in my district, people wonder how are we going to afford health care costs. How can we afford health insurance? What are the components of that? All of us, myself included, would look for easy solutions. We would want a bill that we could pass that would just limit the cost of care. Maybe it is by fixing prices in the pharmaceutical industry or maybe fixing prices that the doctors are able to charge. Some people want to go in and limit the capability of insurance companies to raise their prices to pay for the costs that they have. Mr. Speaker, anything that we attempt is going to be simplistic and will be, without doubt, ineffective. The reasons that our health care is so expensive, is, frankly because we are demanding it. We have more demand than there is supply. When that is the case, you can either increase the supply, which is the number of doctors and the number of hospitals, or you can begin to affect demand. I would say, Mr. Speaker, that it is imperative, as long as we are going to try to solve the problem, we may address the supply, we may address the numbers of doctors, we may address the numbers of hospitals, but that does not completely deal with the problem that I see, that is, on the demand side. I think that the first step for us all is to begin to live healthier life-styles. There is one study which reports that if we lost nationwide 10 pounds per person that the incidence of diabetes could be cut by 25 percent nationwide. Nationwide diabetes is an exploding phenomenon that is going to affect the health care costs for every single one of us, even though we are not all affected by it. If we look at our young population, we are finding that exercise and healthy choices are so bad that youth diabetes is exploding in the country, also. I will tell the Speaker and this assembled group that these health problems into the future raise such tremendous concerns on costs for budgets, quality of life, that we need to begin to make healthier choices. We need to make healthier choices in our life regarding smoking, regarding physical exercise, regarding illegal substances that we place into our bodies. All of those are things which affect the demand, the demand which causes health care costs to increase daily. I think one of the things that we need to be smarter about in this country and which would also begin to lower that demand curve for the medical services and begin to affect the cost shifts upward each year is in regard to preventive medicines. We all need to be doing careful screenings, cholesterol checks. We should be doing the cancer screenings. I heard statistics today about the way that breast cancer is really spreading in this country. Breast cancer is a curable problem and one that is affecting, I think, 1 out of every 3 or 4 women. Mr. Speaker, if we will begin to do the screenings and the preventive medicines, we will find that long-term our costs will begin to deflate also. The health savings accounts, we have already discussed how that can affect long term the cost of our medical care and the cost of associated insurance. One of the things that we are wanting to institute in this particular bill is more competition. If we look at a couple of examples right now in the medical community of competition, I think Lasik eye surgery is one of the examples, also reconstructive surgery, the plastic surgery. Both of those elements have had competition introduced into their sphere in the last couple of years; and we have seen, I think, 30 percent decreases in the cost of those particular services. Competition is one of the important aspects of not only the American way of life but also in any free market enterprise, and we should see that always competition is never forbidden but encouraged, and it should be that way in our medical field. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) mentioned that one of the most important things we can do to begin to lower costs of medical treatment rather than to see the constantly inflating and increasing cost of medical treatment is medical liability. Many physicians in my district talk about the escalating medical liability costs. Each year we face the prospect that more and more doctors are going to just stop practicing medicine. So instead of increasing the supply, we are actually decreasing the supply, which is going to give more incentive for prices to go up higher even. Medical liability is one of the most serious problems in day-to-day costs of health care and needs to be addressed. This House has addressed it. We feel like it is a thing that should be pushed on through the full Congress and sent to the President for signature. I think, finally, the good doctor mentioned several times, and in good components, the cost of defensive medicine. Defensive medicine is not just in fear of lawsuits. Defensive medicine is when our doctors begin to prescribe more tests than should actually be done because they are afraid that they will be sued if they do not prescribe every single test that is available. Defensive medicine is when doctors begin to order more rather than exactly which tests they believe are the right ones, which procedures they believe to be right. It is in that defensive medicine, that overprescribing, that overtreating that we find, as the good doctor says, $50 billion worth of cost in this country alone and that one single step of changing that parameter in our health care costs could pay for, for instance, this Medicare prescription drug bill. Mr. Speaker, we are going to make choices in this Nation that are expensive. In this particular case, this particular bill, it was the right thing because we have seniors who are having to choose between food and medicine. There is an immediate impact in this Medicare prescription drug bill which will give to our low-income seniors right now this year a $600 card that is good for any purchase of prescription drugs throughout the rest of the year. Next year the same thing is going to happen. Those people at lower incomes, $18,000 and below for a couple, will receive another $600 card next year, which will be good to help them defray the cost of the prescription drugs. As we look at the plan itself, we have a lot of critics who are describing the gap and being very critical of the gap in the pharmaceutical coverage. I will tell those people that are assembled here today that the single most important reason we did that was to be able to afford the bill. We did not want to break the next generations because we paid for full coverage for every single person in this Nation. I have often explained that my mom is one of the people who experienced the gap. Her income and her assets are high enough that she will be faced with seeing that coverage up to a point and then a gap and then the protection for catastrophic coverage. I asked her what she felt about it. She explained to me that she understood why we were doing it. She explained that she had felt blessed in her life, that she would gladly pay more in order to make it where it is affordable for the next generations. Mr. Speaker, those people who are being so critical of this particular aspect of the bill I think are being disingenuous. They talk about the cost of the bill on the one hand, while complaining about the gap on the other. I am sorry. They simply have to choose one or the other. They have to choose full coverage and the high price above $1 trillion versus the $400 to $500 billion that we are facing in this bill as it stands. Either they choose full coverage and the higher price, or they give the gap in the lower price. We in this House and in the Senate and in the bill that was passed and signed by the President chose to allow those people to pay more who could pay more in order to make this bill more affordable for the next generations. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the President's calm and patient leadership on this matter. The President never wavered in his commitment to provide coverage for those seniors who are not able to provide coverage for themselves. And I think that this House chose rightly in passing that bill, and I think that the seniors are finding that it is going to be one of the tremendous changes in the way that we present medical coverage through the Medicare program in this country. I appreciate, also, the President's leadership in many other issues. We have taken on serious issues in this House, and we have passed them. Not all have made it to the President, but many have made it to the President. We took bold steps to reinvigorate the economy. The economy, as we understand, had suffered from three deep shocks: the collapse of the dot-com industry back in the ending years of President Clinton's term; 9-11 was the second big shock. The third big shock were the corporations that were acting improperly. Global Crossing is a good example. Enron is also an example that has been used. When those companies began to act improperly, people began to suck their money out of the stock market and put it into interest-bearing accounts at the bank. Those three shocks to our economy were ones that were very difficult, and many economies could not have sustained them. The President has patiently built our economy back with a series of tax decreases to the American public. Many of those tax decreases fall on businesses which are able to maintain profitability, increase their employment, grow their capacity, increase the capability of competing with those firms overseas. I will tell the Speaker that we have done magnificent work in many areas; and I appreciate, myself, the calm and principled leadership of the President, who has decided to fight this war on terror, to fix Medicare as he saw the Medicare problems to be, to deal with the forests that were burning up throughout the West, to pass the Partial Birth Abortion bill and sign that, to pass the AMBER alert bill and to get that signed. Mr. Speaker, we have done magnificent work in this House. The President has signed much of it into law. But one of the most dramatic things we have done is to pass this prescription drug Medicare reform bill, which I think is going to make sure that Medicare is available throughout the rest of this generation and on into the future for my children and my grandchildren.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, if I could request how much time is remaining.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding me this time. This subject of exactly why we did take up the Medicare and prescription drug bill comes up frequently, and it is a question that people really do concern themselves with. For me as a business owner, when I came to this body and looked at the budget and realized that almost all economists agreed that within 4 to 10 years Medicare would put such deep stress on the budget, we may not have solutions to it. As a business owner, if I see that kind of problem 5 to 10 years down the road, I know I must do something today to begin to defuse the demand, defuse the problem well before it arrives. As we began to develop the program, the Medicare prescription drug bill, I began to ask questions and to make requests of my own. One of the things that several Members did was sign a letter saying if you do not give equal reimbursement to the rural areas, we will not vote for any bill. Mr. Speaker, I campaigned saying we should treat the rural areas of America fairly, that they needed to be compensated the same way because that is not the case in the past. We got 100 percent equality for rural hospitals in this bill, and it is one thing that affects my district tremendously. It was not just affordability of care that was at stake in my district; it was the access to care, even having hospitals that would operate and be in the district, and so this one component of equalizing the reimbursement rate in our rural hospitals was key. Another element that caused me to think there were good elements of the bill and it deserved support was the way border hospitals are treated. Border hospitals have a mandate by the immigration service that if an immigrant comes to a hospital with a medical problem, that hospital at its own expense or the expense of the county in which it is located, will transfer the person to the nearest facility where treatment can be given. Hospitals in my district are severely burdened. My district is on the border of Mexico, and the hospitals complain about the unfunded mandates to transport and to treat many medical conditions. Then the immigrants are taken back to the border and deposited there to return to their homes. Mr. Speaker, that was another element that I campaigned on saying that we should get reimbursement for those costs mandated by the Federal Government. In this bill there is $1 billion to begin to help border hospitals pay for the costs that they face through an unfunded mandate by the Federal Government in the immigration department. Those two things really began to convince me that for rural New Mexico, the Medicare bill had a good beginning, but it did not stop there. The disproportionate share hospitals also received an increase in funding level. Again, that affects most of the hospitals in my district. We also dealt with the reimbursement for rural physicians in this bill. Again, a win for New Mexico. So it began to look to me like we had the elements to build a successful bill on, that we had some long-term cures that were a long time in coming, and I was proud to be a part of those. As we got into the philosophy of the bill, I think that is where we really began to see the need for change, the need for systemic change. One example of how we do things upside down in Medicare and in providing government coverage for Medicare is that we cause incentives to go to the most high-priced objective. We all know that for a small copay you can get any pharmaceutical that you would like to have. Once you reach the copay, you might as well get the expensive as the generic because there is no difference. If we turned the incentive upside down and were to provide coverage for the generic, and if you want then the expensive version of the same drug, you would have to provide the difference, that was a compelling way to me that we could change behavior and change buying patterns throughout the country. One of the things that we did in this bill was we began to limit the powers of the drug companies. I appreciate what the pharmaceutical companies have done in this country. They have created pharmaceuticals that are extending lives beyond belief. The fastest population group in America is over 100 years old. The second fastest growing age group is 85 to 100. These extensions of life and the quality of life that is experienced is because of the good work that the pharmaceutical companies do; but the pharmaceutical companies are just like the rest of us. They will take advantage when advantage given. There was a practice of extending patents indefinitely. At the end of the patent period, they would change a few words and change the patent again. It was legal, but it was something which many felt was not right. In this bill, we limited the extensions to one. You get your original patent period, and then one extension. That will bring generic drugs to the market sooner. Just to make sure that the generic drugs come to the market sooner and we get competition sooner, we went ahead and put provisions in that would encourage the generics to be brought to market sooner. We just wanted the drug companies to know that we appreciate what they do, but we also wanted to give them a small wake-up call that there were practices that we felt like were not in the best interest of all Americans. And so those changes were made here. Again, a very positive component that I felt began to justify this particular bill to be voted for. Another thing that we did were health savings accounts. My colleagues have talked about that tonight, but I will give my brief summary. Health savings accounts are really medical IRAs. Americans can put in money tax free at any age, and at any age you can take money out tax free. That makes the health dollar worth 30 to 40 percent more, depending where you are in the income spectrum. So you have a medical IRA that you put money into tax free at any age, about $5,000 a year, and you can take money out at any age if you use it to pay for medical benefits. You can pay for your premiums out of this health savings account; you can pay for your deductibles out of the health savings accounts, as well as prescription drugs or any other medical expense. The nice thing about health savings accounts are they are a part of your estate. If you do not use it for your medical needs, you are able to pass it on to the next generation and to the next generation so that your children and grandchildren have a head start on paying for their medical needs. I will tell Members, as a small business owner, the way that I would have dealt with this, and my wife and I sold our business in October of last year so I no longer have employees that would qualify for this, but the way I would deal with this particular situation is I would begin to give pay and bonuses into that account. So instead of giving pay increases, I would pay the increase into the health savings account. I would try to put $5,000 a year for every employee into the account, where the money was worth 30 to 40 percent more, and also where they could begin to use it to pay out of an account that has been put into their name, and they can pay out of that account to pay for premiums and deductibles. I think as we build the size of the account, we can all see that we can begin to shop for higher deductible insurance. Right now most of the time when I shopped for health insurance, it was either a $500 or $1,000 deductible. But if a small business has helped pay in $5,000 to $20,000 into a health savings account, and knows that no one is going to be disadvantaged, then we begin to shop for maybe $5,000 deductibles. It is at that point the health insurance costs begin to collapse tremendously and we put the health care, the health insurance costs back within the reach of the average wage earner. Ten percent of my employees had insurance costs of more than $1,000 a month. With 20 and 30 percent increases, you could look at 3 years from now having $2,000 a month. There is a point, Mr. Speaker, at which no one can afford health insurance. The health savings account, this medical IRA, begins to change the way that we think about health insurance. It begins to change buying patterns so that long term we begin to affect the price of medical services themselves. One of the most important things that we did in this bill is began to understand that if we will catch problems at the front, at their initiation, they are far easier and cheaper to take care of. One of the reasons that Medicare has been so expensive, one of the reasons it stands to break the budget of the United States, is that we have no preventive medicine. At least we did not until we passed this bill. In other words, we would not do screenings but Medicare would pay for the full cost of operations, heart surgeries, cancer treatments after they were full-blown. In this bill with screenings, physical exams and preventive medicines guaranteed, I think that we are going to begin to collapse the cost of this Medicare bill overall down below what it has been, rather than the astronomical increases that we are seeing projected; because I think, as the good doctor has pointed out, that there are applications in this bill which will save us money, not cost us money. The gentleman from Texas explained adequately that the benefit programs were one of the main questions that he faces in his district. Benefit programs are a concern to all of us. Many companies have employees who have retired and are using that company benefit for their health insurance. I have experienced the same concerns in my district that the gentleman from Texas has experienced, of people wondering, well, if you put this in place, then my company is going to drop it, they are going to drop the coverage that I currently have. That disappointed them. It concerned them. I will tell you that we did something in this bill that to me made sense. We have our opponents, those people who want to criticize the bill, saying that we are giving corporate welfare. Mr. Speaker, what they are talking about is that we are giving an incentive, we are helping these companies that pay retirees' health benefits, we are giving those companies incentives to keep the benefits in place. We are saying that if the Federal Government can pay 20 or 25 percent and cause them to keep that health benefit in place for the retirees, that that is going to be far preferable to having the company drop the coverage and having Medicare pick up 100 percent of the coverage. And so those opponents of this bill who claim that it is corporate welfare can do so; but when they do so, they have to not be telling the full truth that we did it in order to encourage companies to keep those benefit plans open for retirees who really think they have got good plans. One of the most important parts of this bill, Mr. Speaker, was the concept of choice, the ability to choose whether you like the current plan you are under, the traditional Medicare, or whether you want to opt out and move into the new plans that will be offered as competing plans for this program. Mr. Speaker, I do not see anyone complaining about the right to choose. I see a lot of people complaining about the potential of being mandated to move into a complete private sector but not one person has said, don't give me a choice. I will tell you that the right to choose is one of the most fundamental parts of our American society and I am proud that in this bill we have given our seniors the right to stay where they are, to use Medicare completely as it is without any changes, but we have also given them a right to choose a different kind of coverage that meets their needs more. Mr. Speaker, there are many reasons that I voted for this bill but the main ones were I believe that systemically it began to address the long-term changes that are necessary to make Medicare viable for the rest of this generation, for the next generation and the generations beyond. Access to affordable health care in rural parts of the country just cemented my belief that we have done very good work in this particular bill. Mr. Speaker, I have more things to say but I would like to yield back to the gentleman from Texas and let him continue and I will wait for the next coverage that he gives to me.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns on Friday, March 12, 2004, it adjourn to meet at 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 16, 2004, for morning hour debates.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Speaker, right now we have National Guard members in Iraq who are defending not only the freedom of this Nation in fighting back in the war on terror that began on 9/11 in this country, Mr. Speaker, but those National Guard troops are serving and putting their lives on the line. And that is not new. Our National Guard has been doing that throughout our history. In World War II at Omaha Beach, some of the greatest casualties occurred in the Virginia National Guard. Members of my own New Mexico National Guard in World War II were in the Pacific. They made a thing called the Bataan Death March. I have known about that event throughout my entire life because I had next-door neighbors who were on the Bataan Death March. It was not until I went to the New Mexico House of Representatives that I began to understand why we had so many of those, and that is because the New Mexico National Guard was activated, sent there, they did their duty and many of them died. It is with this backdrop that I was profoundly disappointed several weeks ago when Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said President Bush served in the National Guard, but never served in our military and our country. I will tell you, those comments are so demeaning to the people who served in our National Guard that I was offended and asked for an apology. I am now asking that the chairman of that committee would resign over his comments that detract from the service of all of our National Guard Members. I came to the floor of this House several weeks ago to talk about the rhetoric that was starting in the campaign, and just earlier today we saw a report from the leading Democrat contender for President where he referred to the ``crooks and liars on the other side.'' I will tell you as a Republican, I will say that his comments were unfounded, they were extremist and they have no basis in fact. He has already turned down a demand for an apology. I do not think he will do that, because I do not think he is a large enough person to do it. But I am profoundly disappointed by the comments from the Democrat candidate for the office of President. I yield to the gentleman from Texas for the next segment. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As I look at that picture, I wonder about the person that is taking the picture. That is a stunning shot from high up in the mountains there, taken at the moment of impact, and it just expresses in detail the fine job that our troops are doing. At the end of October of last year, October 31, November 1 and 2, I was in Iraq. I visited with our troops to find out what their attitudes were. I can tell you that every single troop I visited with, both from New Mexico and from outside New Mexico, they all believed in what they were doing, they were highly motivated, well trained and doing great work. Their one comment was, ``Why do the people in America not find out the good things we are doing?'' I cannot tell them why the news will not cover the good things that are going on in Iraq, the very positive rebuilding efforts, the winning over of the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, but I can tell you that those soldiers know about it. They see firsthand that people in the neighborhoods who have been told their entire lives, for 35 years under Saddam Hussein, that Americans are evil and will be coming there to hurt them, and as the Iraqis find that not to be true, they bring their kids out in the streets and hold them up to see the Americans eyeball-to-eyeball, and that is touching the lives of the young men and women from New Mexico serving there. I compliment our troops for the fine job that they are doing. But our reconstruction efforts are going well. We have about 75 percent of Iraq is fairly stable. About 25 percent is unstable. But I visited also with General Odierno. That was before we captured Saddam Hussein. He told me, ``My troops have stepped on his tail a couple of times and we missed him.'' He said, ``It is going to be my people to capture him,'' and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) pointed out it was the troops under General Odierno that captured Saddam Hussein. I will tell you that when I look back on the short time that we have been engaged in the war on terror, we have the Taliban completely uprooted and out of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is on the run. The funds raising mechanism in Saudi Arabia that was funding the war on terror has been eliminated. Under A.Q. Khan, nuclear armament components were being sold on the world market, and that completely marketing network of nuclear armament has been taken down and disassembled. We have gone back and repossessed some of the nuclear things that were sold to countries. Pakistan now is energized and willing to help us in the war on terror. Iran is admitting publicly that they had nuclear weapons and nuclear capability. Syria is beginning to change their attitude. Libya has changed theirs. We have come so far in this war on terror. It disturbs me when I hear the national campaign from the Democrats saying we should back up, we should bring our troops home, we should rethink it. I will tell you that the worst thing we could do is to stop the war on terror, because that is one of the events that destabilized our country. People wonder why we are doing the tax cuts. I will tell you, our economy has suffered three deep shocks. The first, of course, was the dot.com collapse. That occurred in the last years of the President Clinton term. We had stocks that were valued at way over their actual dollar value. That occurred because people were euphoric. Some of these companies had no products, they had no net income, they had no sales. They just had a name and a concept, and people were bidding the stock up from nothing to $200 and $300 per share. That euphoria in a market cannot be sustained. What we found is that the dot.com collapse came, as well it should have. It brought a correction into the market to bring reality into the market, but it also set our economy back on its heels. We were just about out from underneath that recession when the 9-11 attack occurred. That was approximately a $2 trillion shock to our economy and over 2,000 lives in one day. When people worry about the cost of the war, I would just remind them, yes, it is extremely expensive. War is never inexpensive. It is at almost $200 billion right now. But I will tell my colleagues that $2 trillion in one day is over 10 times the total cost up to now of the war. Mr. Speaker, 9-11 set our economy back yet a second time into a little bit different and deeper recession. Finally, we are just about to come out of that when the Enron, Global Crossing, the WorldCom collapses began to occur and people started taking their money out of the stock market. That was a deeper shock still to the economy, causing an interruption in the confidence of the American people in our system. During those three events, we found that our economy was so resilient that it never got plunged as deeply as it could have into recession, but it was always lingering in the last phases of it. We gave the tax cut in this institution, we voted for the tax cut because tax cuts create jobs. We had hoped when we offered the tax cut that we could get a 3.5 percent rate of growth in our economy. We were stunned in the third quarter to find out that the rate of growth was actually 8.2 percent instead of the 3.5 percent that we had hoped for. The rate of growth has settled down to a more modest 4 percent, but Alan Greenspan says that he expects that number to remain constant; and I will tell my colleagues, if we can remain at the 4 percent growth level, that this economy is going to be in good, good shape. There are many reasons that the tax cuts were given, but one of the most important things that occurred is that 75 percent of the people in the higher income brackets that got tax cuts are small business owners. When we give small business owners a tax break, we are affecting over half of the employees of the United States. Small business is one of the most vibrant forms of employment in this country; and the tax breaks, the expensing for small businesses, the accelerated depreciation were two of the most dynamic parts of the equation. They are the things that caused our orders of manufactured goods to increase, the orders of vehicles, of large equipment, of new capability; and it is that expansion that brings on new jobs into this economy. When our opponents talk about the number of jobs lost, they simply refuse to talk about the number of jobs that are sent overseas by hard policies and too invasive regulation. I was in committee the other day, Mr. Speaker, and the Committee on Resources was talking to the people who cut timber and who process timber into lumber. Those fine union members of that group declared to us that 3 million jobs in that one industry had been sent overseas by policies that refuse to let people cut timber anymore. The Democrats on that committee said, you will be okay, you will be fine. You will have jobs in tourism. The members of those unions in that meeting told the Democrats, we do not want jobs in hotels; we want our good, high-paying jobs in the timber industry back. Many times we fail to account for the jobs that are sent overseas by the regulations that we impose as a government. I think that it is an important consideration in the job loss for this country, because I know that our companies would rather stay here and compete as long as they can. Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) before I go into my next discussion. I would ask him to let me know when we would like to yield back the floor.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for yielding. As he talked about the Medicare bill I began to remember my own discussions in our offices and also with my family about this. The discussions right now that are critical of this Medicare bill that has been passed and signed into law was that there is this donut hole. I called my mom before we voted on it the first time, I asked her, I said, ``Mom, you are going to fall in the category that they are describing as the gap in coverage or the donut hole.'' She said, ``Why would that be?'' I said, ``Because your assets are high enough and your yearly income is up. We are targeting the poor and we are targeting the people with catastrophic health care, prescription drugs cost.'' She said, ``Son, we have been very blessed. I do not mind paying more if I can pay more.'' And I feel like that that is the way most Americans are going to approach this, that they do not mind paying more if they can pay more. Again, I told my mom that. She said, ``Exactly why are you doing that?'' And I said, ``It is so we do not break the country, so we do not tag the next generation with more cost than they could ever pay. So the gap in coverage is there because you are able to do it and we do not want to pass those costs on to the next generation.'' My colleague has adequately pointed out the great work that was done, and I want to commend the gentleman as one of the physicians in this freshman class, I think he was very instrumental in driving many of the components of this bill, and I congratulate him for that. The health savings account is a thing that I talked from the floor of this House last night. Basically it is a medical IRA. You can put the money in tax free, you can take the money out tax free. The difference between this medical IRA the health savings account and other IRAs is that you can take the money out at any age if you pay for medical expenses. You can pay for your premiums, you can pay for deductibles, you can pay for prescription drugs, or you can pay for your doctor visit, dental, whatever. Now, the nice thing about this account is that not only is it yours, and it is yours to dispose of the way that you would, but it is the part of your estate and it goes to the next generation, to your sons and your daughters to help them pay for their medical costs if you do not use it. I think that it is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we passed this year. It is in law. It is a part of the prescription drug Medicare bill and has been signed by the President of the United States and is actually in law at this time. We recently sent a mailer out to my district talking about Medicare in general, but the health savings account particularly got calls back to the office wondering where can we buy them right now. One of the most significant things that I found there New Mexico that we did in this Medicare bill is that we began to offer certain reforms. To me it is never made sense why Medicare could not do some of the screening so it would catch the diseases up front, so that we catch them before they get to catastrophic stages. That is one thing that happened in this Medicare bill is we allow preventative care and screening. We allow physical exams for the first time so that we understand if people have a cholesterol problem or have an impending heart problem because the blood pressure is too high, that we take care of it before it becomes catastrophic. And we all know if you take care of medical problems before they are catastrophic, they are much cheaper to take care of. I think that those components make this bill a very good bill. But in New Mexico in my rural district, it is a 9-hour drive across my district at 75 miles an hour, we have got almost 60,000 square miles, it is a very large district, and we have not too much access to health care, but the access that we do have was reimbursed at a different rate. As a physician, you understand that the urban areas were given far greater reimbursement for the same treatment that would be received by a rural hospital. I campaigned saying that this inequity needed to be fixed. Much to my surprise, we fixed it in this bill. Rural hospitals receive 100 percent of the reimbursement that the urban hospitals receive because of the actions that we took in this bill. Another thing that I campaigned about, Mr. Speaker, was that our border hospitals are tagged with an expense to take care of the medical cost of immigrants who come to the border. Our immigration law says if they present themselves at the border with a medical problem, that the local hospital or the local county will take care of the problem. I am on the Mexico border. My district borders the Mexico border. And yet my rural hospitals tell me they have carried people in an ambulance to Denver, Colorado, had heart surgery for them, and when they were recovered, they had to go up in an ambulance, pick them up and take them back to the border. I will tell you that our country was not reimbursing at all the expenses that our border hospitals were having to be faced with. And this bill adds $1 billion into a pool of money to be shared by those hospitals which are currently being faced with those expenses. So for those two reasons, for rural areas and especially for my district, it was a good bill. But there are good things beyond that. One of the greatest complaints that I hear among my constituents is they do not like the prescription drug manufacturers. I think that they are just mostly upset with them. I think that they would do more than what we should. But we did ring the bell here in this bill for a prescription drug manufacturers. We did not want to choke all of the profits out from the drug manufacturers because the research and development is creating miracle drugs that are causing the fastest growing population group to be the over-100 population. The second fastest group that we have, the second fastest growing group is 85 to 100. These changes are brought about by prescription drug makers who make great products, but they were doing some things that we felt like we ought to ring the bell on, maybe bring them back. So we are in the Medicare bill bringing generics to the market much sooner. We also stopped the process of extending patents almost indefinitely to where now we give them patent protection for one period and we extend it for one period, but not the continual extensions that were being gotten before. Both of these actions serve to lower in the long run the cost of medications that we find in the country. And, of course, we know that that starting right now, everyone that is 150 percent the rate of poverty and below has access to the two drug cards this year and next year, which provides immediate cash relief. Mr. Speaker, this Medicare bill combined a lot of elements of reform, it combined elements of change for rural areas, it brought in the health savings account, it brought prescription drug coverage to those who most desperately need it who are having to choose between food and medicine. And I am telling this Chamber that this bill is good for people in this New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess.)

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to talk about education and an exciting thing that is occurring in my district. I would also address some of the economic factors that this Nation has faced and will continue to face. We have important things about Medicare that we need to communicate to the American people, and I will do that this afternoon also. If we get a chance, we will talk about the concurrent receipts issue, an issue of fairness for our veterans that this Congress, under Republican control, took care of. It had been a problem since 1892 when the bill was passed that disallowed concurrent receipts. The Democrats continue to say that we have not taken care of our veterans, and yet we took care of that concurrent receipts issue, which was a problem during the entire time of the 40 years of uninterrupted power that the Democrats held in this Congress and they refused to take care of it. They refused to hear the bill, refused to get it out of committee, and now they are claiming that we did not do that. The facts speak differently. Mr. Speaker, returning to my education issue first, Roswell High School, New Mexico, is in my district. They recently have been named as one of 12 breakthrough high schools in the Nation by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the NASSP. The breakthrough high schools project identifies and showcases exemplary high schools which have met the challenges of low-income, high-minority student populations, which describes my district. It describes some of the most desperately needy high schools in the Nation. That is the reason No Child Left Behind was put into place. It causes our school systems to acknowledge the difficulties of teaching the low-income, high-minority student populations because they are the ones that are being left behind. Roswell High School's success is one of the best examples of school turnaround that I personally have seen. No Child Left Behind gives schools the resources, the flexibility and local control to make great changes. I am both excited and proud to talk about Roswell High School and its principal, Mike Kakuska from the floor of this House. Mike Kakuska is my hero. He is the one who deals with young people on a day- to-day basis, encourages them to do better, convincing them that they can do better, all of the while making progress in his school. His comment is that we have a credo here: dinosaurs disappeared because they did not change. If something does not work, we change it. The education system in America has not been working. We were leaving too many children behind, and simply the title of the bill says it best. Let us stop leaving kids behind because it is the poorer and disenfranchised who never will have an opportunity to go to a different school. No Child Left Behind has channeled tremendously increased resources at education. When President Bush came to office, the expenditure from a Federal level was about $27 billion on education. That number is over $50 billion now and increasing. Yet we are told by the Democrats that we are underfunding education when they know, when they are talking about the fact that we have increased over double what they funded education at during their tenure. The most egregious example of Democrats misusing facts is when they send our constituents in to say we are not funding IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; and yet the facts tell us that traditionally from the very onset of IDEA, the funding was around $1 billion. Finally after about 30 years, under President Clinton the funding increased from $1 billion to $2 billion; yet in the time that President Bush has been in office, funding has increased from $2 billion to over $11 billion. Mr. Speaker, I think that we need to tell the American people the truth. The greatest thing that I see No Child Left Behind doing is that it allows local flexibility and local control. Local school districts are given four different income streams where they can move money back and forth between programs. They are given the flexibility to direct money where it belongs. If a school is failing, increased resources are sent to that school for mentorship, 101 training, or whatever it takes to get each individual student up to par. One of the most important aspects of No Child Left Behind is right now there are over 150 school districts nationwide who have 100 percent control over the education dollars that go to their school from the Federal Government. We think that if the local school board will make decisions, if the local school board is responsible for the education of their children, if we take education out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats, if we take Washington out of the hands of the State bureaucrats that local school boards and local administrators and teachers will solve the problem. The No Child Left Behind Act begins that process of giving local autonomy and local control. I think that Michael Kakuska and Roswell High School are the best examples in my district of what No Child Left Behind can do, and I commend them for that. Mr. Speaker, I will speak later on about taxes, Medicare, and a few other issues.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding one last time. Again, I want to talk in one sense if possible to say thanks to those people who work in our education establishment, those who are out there on the front lines of the education war, especially those success stories like Roswell High School in New Mexico. That is one of the 12 break-through high schools in the Nation. I think that this kind of outcome is exactly what we had hoped for when No Child Left Behind was passed. If the administration in any school is dedicated to the changes that are allowed under No Child Left Behind, I believe that the program will be the success that each of our parents wants throughout the Nation. So thanks again to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for yielding time to me today.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the business in order under the Calendar Wednesday rule be dispensed with on Wednesday next.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at noon tomorrow.