Dave Weldon

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. The bill requires that all managed care entities set up a grievance committee, and it should be, it can be made up of people, doctors that are in the plan, administrators that are in the plan, but it also calls for patients to be enrolled or patients in the grievance committee and, as well, people who are outside the plan. And you know, I have an aunt and uncle up in New York who have been in a managed care plan all their adult life. They love it, they think it is wonderful. It is a well-run plan, the best that I can determine. So when you say there are good managed care plans, there are. But I will tell you that some of the good managed care plans are being squeezed by the unscrupulous managed care plans who will frequently come into a community, low-ball prices, sign people up, put pressure on those good plans to reduce their prices or they will go out of business. And how do they do that? Well, how do those unscrupulous plans do that? Well, they deny services, is typically what they do. They deny access to specialists. And might I also add, I am a primary care provider. I still see patients about once a month, and I used to refer. When I was practicing medicine, I used to refer probably, maybe 10 times a day I would refer somebody do a specialist. But I saw 30 to 40 people a day, and I prided myself in taking care of my patients and not referring them all out to specialists. This piece of legislation is not to protect specialists, but when I needed to, I referred those patients to specialists for one and only one reason: because it was in the best interests of those patients, because they had a problem, they had a condition that I as a general internist could not handle. What is wrong is when we provide financial incentives, which is what some of these plans are doing, to doctors to not refer because that compromises the doctor-patient relationship. The patient comes in to see the doctor; there should only be one thing on that doctor's mind: What is best for that patient? And if there is a financial incentive for him not to refer, then that is wrong, and we correct that in this legislation. And might I also add, when I used to make those referrals, the best thing for those patients, and I was happy to do that even though in many cases, you know, in particular the cancer cases, I will say, I frequently did not see much of them anymore. They would go to the cancer specialist, they would get their chemotherapy, and in terms of, you know, income off of that, it was not for me. They were off to see a specialist. But you know, I was very comfortable with that. I felt nothing was more important than making sure that the patients got to see the specialist they needed to see. It was part of the Hippocratic oath, as far as I was concerned, that I took when I graduated from medical school. We have seen a corruption of those basic fundamental principles in the health care marketplace. I think this legislation is something that you would want to support. I encourage you to look at it, and I would encourage you to sign on.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Well, in the legislation, we have a provision that requires that before they enroll, they have to be counseled regarding any limitations on access to specialists, any out-of-pocket expenses that are associated with going outside the plan. There is a whole list of requirements. This is basically informed consent, as far as I am concerned. I was not a surgeon. I was a general internist, so I did not do a lot of procedures, but I did a few. I would take some skin lesions off, and I do do some other procedures. Whenever I would do anything like that, I would always say to somebody, like if they had a skin lesion on their face and I had to remove it, I would explain to them, you might have a scar. We call that informed consent. You inform them. What my bill requires is basically that sort of thing when the health care plan enrolls the person in the HMO; that if you are going to be restricted, that you can only see certain primary care providers, they need to be counseled on that. If there are restrictions on specialists they can see, they need to be made aware of that. A perfect example of how people are not aware of these sorts of things, in my community, I had an oral surgeon complain to me. This is a typical scenario that he has occur to him. Somebody comes to his office at 5 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, with a big infected tooth that requires surgery and antibiotics. He gets them all ready to be admitted to the hospital. He gets them all ready to be admitted to the hospital. He gets them prepped and everything, and they discover the managed care plan that that person signed onto requires that they travel to another city 60 miles away to see another doctor who they have never seen before. What my bill says, they can still do that. The managed care plan can do that. They just have to inform the enrollees. I call them patients, but in insurance language, you call them enrollees. Inform the enrollees that those are the prohibitions, the restrictions on them in this plan so that they know. I think that will be better, actually, for the managed care plans. I think that they will get fewer complaints. I think they will have enrollees who are better understanding of the plan and hopefully better satisfied. I think my bill is not only good for patients, it is good for the managed care industry as well. It is going to place good, reasonable restrictions. It is going to help the managed care industry to clean up its act. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding me the time.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, is it fair to let some of our fastest growing competitors like China, Mexico and India have an advantage? That is what the U.N. Climate Treaty will do. The President still vows to sign it. This flawed treaty will force the U.S. to commit to emissions reductions that will put Americans on a strict energy diet, a more than 30 percent cutback in our energy use, while allowing our international competitors to increase their emissions. The administration says, a U.N.-run pie-in- the-sky trading scheme will somehow soften the pain. It sounds like rationing to me. What about the jobs that will move to more than 130 countries overseas that are not committed to these emission reductions? That will harm our families, it will destroy our economy, and it will still do nothing for the world's environment. It is not global, it is not fair, and it will not work. I encourage a rejection of this treaty.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor for me to rise today and speak out in support of the men and women at NASA and at Spaceport Florida who are responsible for the recent very successful Lunar Prospector mission. And actually, this is an ongoing mission. The probe is still orbiting the Moon. First of all, let me talk about Spaceport Florida. Spaceport Florida is a new entity. Some people may ask, ``What is a spaceport?'' Traditionally, most of the launches that have been done at Cape Canaveral have been done by the Federal Government, either the Air Force or NASA. Years ago, the State of Florida realized that, with the emerging commercial launch industry, that it would be very helpful to have a State agency that would actually launch rockets. To my left on this easel is the first mission, the Lunar Prospector mission; and what we have here shown is the Lockheed Martin Athena II launch vehicle, which is this rocket right here. There are several State-sponsored spaceports, as we call them. They are like an airport or seaport, a place where you take off to another place. Instead of in an airplane, it is a rocket that is taking off. Florida has the first successful launch of a rocket from its State- sponsored spaceport. And one of the big advantages of this is that it saves money. By having a spaceport handle it, we can cut back on a lot of bureaucracy and costs and be able to do things more efficiently. This whole mission, this Lunar Prospector mission, is part of what they call the faster, better, cheaper mode of doing things. The reason this mission went off was because several years ago there was another mission. It was called Clementine. That was sponsored by both the Department of Defense and by NASA, which showed a suggestion that there might actually be ice on the Moon. Now, on top of this rocket here, up there, was this probe called the Lunar Prospector, which is shown on this other visual that I have here. And the Prospector's mission was to map the surface of the Moon's crust and to search for conclusive evidence of water, or hydrogen. Water is made up of two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. And the mission here was to look for that evidence of hydrogen on the surface of the Moon, which would be a sign that water is in the crust in a frozen form. This was done through Prospector's neutron spectrometer, which can sense the hydrogen down to a depth of half a meter, and it measures the emanations of neutrons from the surface, which are considered by scientists to be the signature, the indicator that ice exists within the frozen soil on the poles of the Moon. Well, lo and behold, what was discovered was very strong evidence. It is suspected that water exists on the lunar poles, possibly as much as one million tons of water, which is 30 billion gallons. It is enough water to equal a lake approximately 4 miles long, 4 miles wide, and one meter deep. How did they get there? Well, nobody really knows. It may have been deposited there by comets. Now, what is the significance of this? Well, the significance of this is huge. Number one, it means that if we were to try to establish a colony on the Moon, that water would not have to be brought to the Moon. So we would have a ready source of water there for humans should they ever colonize the Moon to form, say, an observatory to study the universe on the surface of the Moon, the people would have access to water. Importantly, though, they would also have access to oxygen. Because we can use the sun's solar rays to generate electricity to split water to form oxygen and hydrogen. Water, again, is H2O, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. So we could generate the oxygen needed for the people to breathe and we could create an atmosphere. Another very important thing is we can take that oxygen and hydrogen and use it as rocket fuel. Indeed, hydrogen and oxygen is the primary fuel used on our Nation's Space Shuttle when it rockets off into space. So this is a tremendous breakthrough. And I applaud the team at Ames Research Center and Allen Bender and all of the researchers who were involved, especially the people at Spaceport Florida, in getting this probe into orbit.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, what is happening right now to Judge Kenneth Starr is absolutely disgraceful. The amazing thing about it is that the smear campaign directed at Judge Starr is happening right before our eyes. Attorney General Janet Reno, the Attorney General of the United States, not some right-wing partisan, appointed Judge Starr to investigate the allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice. Judge Starr was appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno because he had a track record of distinguished and honorable service and because he had a record of integrity, honesty and fairness. If Judge Starr has acted improperly in any manner, Attorney General Janet Reno should remove him immediately as Independent Counsel. If Judge Starr has shown himself to be conducting his investigation in an unfair, partisan manner, the Attorney General must act immediately to replace him. But if Judge Starr has done nothing wrong or improper, Attorney General Janet Reno should make a statement demanding that friends of the White House stop interfering with his investigation and stop the campaign to destroy him. All Federal prosecutors must be free of outside interference.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Budget Office, known in Washington as the CBO, announced yesterday that the Federal budget is expected to have a surplus of $8 billion this year. That will be the first time in Washington there has been a balanced budget since 1969, 29 years ago. Now, of course the liberals will be happy to have a surplus because they want to take that money and spend it on new programs and bigger social programs from Washington, D.C. Conservatives will be happy because they want to pass more tax cuts so that the middle class can keep more of their money. Demagogues will be happiest of all, because they can tell more lies about protecting Social Security, knowing full well that Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system with the money going out as fast as it comes in. They are counting on the fact that most people will have no idea exactly how a pay-as-you-go system works. But American taxpayers should be the happiest of all, because a balanced budget means lower interest rates, which means people can buy houses more easily, and cars. It is a good day for the American people.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, Americans who take an increasingly cynical view of politics and politicians often claim that ``politicians are all the same,'' and those who do not vote justify their passivity saying ``it does not matter.'' I respectfully disagree. Consider the proposals to reform the IRS. The Democratic Party controlled Congress for a period of 40 years, ending in 1995. They had countless opportunities to do something about a government agency that clearly had major problems, problems which offended the American ideals of due process, of innocence until proven guilty, and basic fairness before the law. When we have a country in which honest citizens fear a tax audit as much as tax cheats do, that is a situation that demands action. However, when one party seeks to expand the size and power of Washington and the IRS is the source of its power to do so, well, it is not surprising that nothing was done in 40 years to improve the situation. Our party intends to reduce the size and power of Washington, so it is only natural that our party seeks to reform the IRS, and that makes all the difference.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding, and I rise in support of this resolution. Let us review some facts about child-care options available to today's parents and what they are choosing. Fifty percent of parents choose to have one parent stay at home to raise their children, most often the mom. Twelve percent of parents tag-team by staggering their jobs so one parent is always at home. Thirteen percent of parents have grandparents, aunts, or uncles care for their children. Eleven percent pay neighbors, nannies, and informal day-care providers. Only 16 percent of parents choose formal day-care centers. Washington must not discriminate against the 50 percent of parents who sacrifice a second income so one parent can stay home to raise their children. These parents are making financial sacrifices. Two- parent families, where one parent stays home to care for the children, have an income that is $20,000 per year below their two-earner counterparts. But those families choose to pay that price because they know it is important to their children. Clearly, most parents prefer informal day care or staying at home with their kids. I am troubled by the President's proposal. It discriminates against stay-at-home parents. A December 12th, 1997, New York Times article discusses new trends in the 1990s that we must take into account. The article states, ``While the story of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s was married women stampeding into the labor market, the demographic sea of change is now in the process of reversing.'' There are still twice as many two-income marriages as one-earner families, but the gap is narrowing and ``it is a long-term trend.'' Richard F. Hokenson, chief economist at the brokerage firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, believes that growth already has been substantial enough to explain some otherwise puzzling business developments. After the last fall in mortgage rates, in his view, families used the savings to allow one earner, usually the wife, to work part-time or leave the job market altogether. Let us give parents what they want. Let us reduce the tax burden so parents can care for their children as they see fit. If the child tax deduction had kept pace with inflation over the past 30 years, it would be worth more than $7,500 per child today instead of $2,400. Let us pass this resolution.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time. I rise in support of naming the airport after Ronald Reagan. I was a medical student in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I remember 20 percent inflation rates, I remember no job creation, I remember my wife and I wondering what kind of future we were going to have. Then I remember Ronald Reagan getting elected and things really beginning to turn around, and I also remember the defense bill that he wanted to pursue which ultimately led to the end of the Cold War, and every step of the way there was opposition, opposition, how his policies were wrong. He created prosperity in this country, and in my opinion, he is one of the greatest Presidents that this country has ever seen. It is fitting and proper for us to name this airport after him, and considering all of the opposition he got during his career, it is not surprising to me at all that this simple act is indeed opposed as well. It is because the people who oppose it will never recognize the fact that his policies were good for this country and the people loved him, and we are living today in the prosperity and the benefits still, created by Ronald Reagan.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2358, the Political Freedom in China Act of 1997. This legislation puts the U.S. Congress firmly on record as supporting the spread of democracy throughout the world. This bill contains language authored by Representative Linda Smith which expresses the sense of Congress that the Chinese Government should be condemned for its practice of executing prisoners and selling their organs for transplants. As a cosponsor of Representative Smith's House Concurrent Resolution 180, I am glad this language was included in this bill. Any Chinese official directly involved in these executions and operations should be barred from entering the United States. The language also urges American law enforcement officials to prosecute those who are illegally marketing and selling these organs in the United States. Mr. Speaker, as a physician I am outraged that people have reportedly paid as much as $30,000 for the kidneys of executed prisoners at People's Liberation Army medical facilities. Chinese prisoners are being killed for profit and this outrage must stop. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, due to the recent death of my father and my attendance at his funeral services, I was unable to cast votes on many issues considered during the week of October 27, 1997. Had I been present for the votes, I would have voted as follows: Tuesday, October 28, 1997: Rollcall 532, ``No''; rollcall 533, ``Yes''; rollcall 534, ``Yes''. Wednesday, October 29, 1997: Rollcall 535, ``No''; rollcall 536, ``Yes''; rollcall 537, ``Yes''; rollcall 538, ``Yes''; rollcall 539, ``Yes''; rollcall 540, ``Yes''; rollcall 541, ``Yes''; rollcall 542, ``Yes''; rollcall 543, ``Yes''; rollcall 544, ``Yes''. Thursday, October 30, 1997: Rollcall 545, ``Yes''; rollcall 546, ``No''; rollcall 547, ``No''; rollcall 548, ``No''; rollcall 549, ``Yes''; rollcall 550, ``No''; rollcall 551, ``No''; rollcall 552, ``No''; rollcall 553, ``No''; rollcall 554, ``No''; rollcall 555, ``Yes''; rollcall 556, ``No''; rollcall 558, ``Yes''; rollcall 559, ``Yes''; rollcall 560, ``Yes''; rollcall 561, ``Yes''; rollcall 562, ``Yes''; rollcall 563, ``Yes''; rollcall 564, ``Yes''; rollcall 565, ``Yes''. Friday, October 31, 1997: Rollcall 566, ``Yes''; rollcall 567, ``Yes''.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2676, the Internal Revenue Restructuring and Reform Act. This legislation is a positive first step toward fundamental tax reform. It shifts the responsibility of proving one's case in a tax liability dispute from an individual to the IRS. For too long, the burden of proof in such cases has rested upon the American taxpayer. H.R. 2676 will ensure that the taxpayer is innocent until proven guilty. Now, the excessive powers of the runaway IRS are brought under control. This bill contains several important provisions that will help Americans deal with the giant IRS bureaucracy. It extends confidentiality privileges, like those afforded to an attorney-client relationship, to non-lawyers who assist taxpayers with tax advice. It helps guarantee that powerful government officials cannot pressure the IRS to target particular taxpayers. H.R. 2676 is a vote for the American people and against the abuses of the IRS. I am proud to support this important legislation, but it is only a first step in the critical process of tax reform. We in the Congress must not rest until the tax code is made fairer, flatter, and simpler for the American taxpayer. Americans pay too much in taxes, and are forced to spend too much of their time filing out their returns. A flat tax would both reduce the tax burden on working Americans and make the process of paying taxes much simpler. The surest way to bring the IRS under control is to make it less important. A flat tax will help us reach this important goal. I urge my colleagues to support the bill and to continue the quest for fundamental tax reform.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me this time. I just want to respond a little bit further to the gentlewoman from New Jersey [Mrs. Roukema]. There has been a lot of talk about hurting public schools and that our agenda should be helping public schools. I think our agenda really should be helping kids get a good education, and saving and protecting public schools sometimes is involved in that, but sometimes these public schools are so bad that they should be closed down, and I am really pleased to see this bill come to the floor. I worked with the gentleman from California last session on trying to get a school choice bill to the floor. One of the reasons why I am so interested in this issue is one of the things I noticed when I got out of the Army and I went into private practice is that people with money send their kids to the schools of their choice, but poor people and people who are disadvantaged cannot do that. They are locked in a system, frequently a system that is failing. Some of our public schools are great, but some of them are failing miserably, and every time we try to talk about school choice, the same group of people get up and say, no, no, no, we cannot have school choice. All we have here is a modest bill to try it. Let me tell my colleagues something. The American people support this, they want to see this. Look at this chart here. All Americans, 82 percent; black Americans, 84 percent; whites, 83 percent; Democrats, 81 percent; Republicans, 86 percent; Independents, 81 percent. But every time we try to do this much school choice in this body, the same naysayers get up and say it is going to destroy public education. My desire is not to protect public education, but to provide kids in America better education, particularly those kids who are locked into failing schools, schools that are frequently riddled with drugs, where they are not getting an education, where they are coming out with a diploma and they cannot read. We are just trying to give some of those parents the ability to send their kids to a decent school, the ability that rich people have had for years.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. If the gentleman will continue to yield, the gentleman just hit on a really critical issue. The issue is the kids; it is not the schools, not the bricks and the mortar, but it is the kids, what is best for the kids.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority leader for yielding, and thank him for his kind words. I would also like to commend him in his initiative for many, many years on behalf of the importance of improving education in the United States, and in particular, in the area of school choice and its value in improving education. I am extremely pleased to see so many members of the Republican Conference here, particularly the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], and many of the subcommittee chairmen: the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs], the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra], and so many others who have joined us tonight on behalf of school choice and the importance of school choice. Mr. Speaker, I will make my comments brief, because I know that many of the gentlemen here are indeed authorities on this issue. I have been very interested in school choice for a lot of reasons. Probably one of the biggest reasons is my mother was an educator. She was a schoolteacher. She always instilled in me the importance and value of education. We clearly have a problem in our Nation today in that many of our schools are failing. Many of our public schools are not getting the job done. Educational performance has declined in the United States over the past 30 years. The approach of the past has always been to throw more money at the problem. It has been very, very clearly demonstrated that that is not the solution. One of the more innovative solutions is to give parents more control over where they send their kids. I was very pleased to be part of the initiative today to pass the A- Plus legislation, which would allow parents to set aside some of their money in a tax-free account, to use that money towards not only college education, which is currently allowed under the law, but as well, for K through 12. The opponents of this have insisted that this is going to destroy public education in the United States. Let me just say that I think that is absolutely wrong. For them to even say that suggests to me that they recognize that public education in many areas of our country is in trouble. They must be so paranoid that people will stampede away from those bad public schools that they are doing everything in their power to protect them. We do not want to protect a failing system. My own personal opinion is that those failing schools, in an environment where there is school choice, will do better. They will not do worse, they will do better, because they will be able to compete. I have a higher opinion of those teachers in those public schools, that they will be able to compete in a real marketplace. The real issue here, in my opinion, is are we going to give school choice to everybody. Because right now rich people have school choice. Before I came to this House, I was a doctor. I practiced medicine back home. I made a good salary. I had a lot of doctor friends. All my doctor friends could send their kids to the schools of their choice. The people who are locked into those failed public schools, and by the way, there are a lot of good public schools in this country, most of them are great, it is the middle-class families, it is the working- class families, it is poor families, they have no choice. But we have a lot of initiatives here that give choice to the working class, choice to the poor people. We are trying to get them through this House. We need to get the minority on board on these initiatives. We need to get the President on board on these initiatives. I am very, very happy to be here tonight and speaking out in support of school choice.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Madam Speaker, we know that the President and other politicians talk an awful lot about education reform but, unfortunately, that is about as far as it gets. Because for all the talk about improving our Nation's schools, when it comes to concrete action, real reforms that will force bad schools to improve or shut down, there is no action. It is a case once again, as they say in Texas, of ``big hat, no cattle.'' Take for example A+ Accounts. A+ Accounts are education savings accounts which let parents save in a tax-free account so that they can send their kids to a better school if the public schools in their neighborhood are bad. But the President and his special interest allies oppose the idea of A+ Accounts. They would rather force kids to stay in crummy schools than to take on the special interests that are incapable of reforming bad schools. But, of course, this will not stop them from talking about education reform and reforming bad schools. ``Big hat, no cattle.''

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise in support of this rule and the bill. Mr. Speaker, Republicans want to improve education for America's kids and they want to improve education for the largest number of kids. There has been a lot of talk, and I am sure there is going to be a continued amount of talk, about how this bill is going to destroy public education. The question I would pose to the opponents of this bill is: Is public education so bad that so many people are going to leave in droves, that public education is going to be destroyed by this legislation? Mr. Speaker, we have a child care tax credit and we do not make parents of those little kids who use the child care tax credit go to a public day care center. In the GI bill, we do not make veterans go to public colleges. They can go to a private college or a public college. As I understand it prior to the GI bill, prior to its enactment in 1942, 50 percent of people went to private colleges and 50 percent went to public institutions, and under the GI bill now, today, 70 percent go to public colleges and 30 percent go to private institutions. So to say that this is going to destroy public education to me is a very, very fallacious argument. In my opinion, this legislation will help public education, and will help public education immensely, because when public educators know that there is really a marketplace out there and that parents might actually choose other institutions, it is going to force them to be more competitive and more innovative, and I think the quality of public education in America is going to improve under the A-plus Act, as more parents have the ability to choose in a marketplace of education where they send their kids, whether it be public or whether they choose to take their money and put it into private education, and after all it is their money. Right? They earned the money. It is the money that they earned on the job that we are letting them keep a little more of. It is not like it is our money and we are somehow in control of it. We are letting them keep a little bit more of their money by not taxing it, so they can apply it to their child's education. What is wrong with that? Mr. Speaker, I will tell Members what the result of this bill will be. More middle-class families and the working class families will be able to afford what the rich people in America already can do, which is to send their kids to private schools and, in so doing, it is going to help their kids and, in so doing, it is going to improve public education all across America. So to say this is going to destroy public education, that argument has no merit in my opinion.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, yesterday in Florida we had a special election in Florida State House District 58. The incumbent Democrat, Elvin Martinez, had retired to take a judgeship. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Republican Deborah Tamargo, the new State Representative from District 58. This now moves the Republican majority in the State House of Florida to 65 versus 55. Mr. Speaker, as most people know, 1996 was the year for the first time since Reconstruction that the Republican Party had taken the State House in Florida, and now the State House majority is 65. My congratulations go out to Deborah and to all the Republicans who got involved in that race. Mr. Speaker, I would like to read a quote from Tom Slade where he said, ``Perhaps a key moment came in the endorsement of Martinez,'' the Democrat, ``by one of the local editorial boards.'' The endorsement favored the Democrat in the race because of her willingness to raise taxes. Mr. Speaker, Deborah Tamargo won on Republican principles of less taxes and less government.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, I just want to add that what the gentleman says is critical. The future of our children's education, it is not just about them and their lives, it is about our whole Nation. We have learned, we have discovered, that the future lies not only in our ability today to be innovative, but in the ability of our children tomorrow to compete, to be inventive. We need to be doing what we can to make sure we are making education better in America. This is an ill- advised scheme, in my opinion, that the President should shelve. I again commend the gentleman for his initiative.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Well, you know, you touch on a real fundamental issue of this city, in my opinion. Before I came here I practiced medicine in Melbourne, Florida, for eight years. Prior to that, I practiced medicine in the Army. I was an Army doctor. I was not really used to all the crazy stuff that goes on in this city. But one of the things I have learned very quickly is if you, if the President or some of his colleagues here in the House or Senate have an idea, and they all think it is a great idea, everybody thinks their kids are beautiful and their ideas are brilliant, so they come up with an idea and they think it is a great idea, they are going to improve education in America by establishing this national test. So, because you oppose it, then, oh, you must be anti-education. We were trying to fix Medicare last year, trying to preserve it so it would be there for senior citizens, seniors like my dad. They did not like our plan, so, therefore, we suddenly hated seniors and we hated Medicare, and they ran around misquoting Newt Gingrich saying he said Medicare was going to wither on the vine. He was talking about the bureaucracy here in Washington that screwed things up. Anyway, to get back to the issue, that is the theme always, always the attack. You do not like their agenda; therefore, you do not like education.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I want to commend him for rising this evening to speak out on this issue. I share his concerns about the President's plan to institute a national test. I want to just commend the gentleman for his actions here tonight and indeed I also want to commend him for his work in the whole area of education. I have had the opportunity to work with him on the Republican Policy Committee and he has exemplified the level of concern that I think many of the people who got elected with us in 1994 share about education in America and about the terrible decline in educational standards in America and the decline in academic performance. You cannot speak to any college professor in the United States without them lamenting the fact that over the past 30 years, the quality of math and verbal skills of incoming freshmen has deteriorated dramatically and many, most of our colleges now have to have rudimentary courses particularly in English skills, in writing skills. I am a product of the public education system in the United States. My mother was a public school teacher. Not only did I go through the public school system K through 12, I also went to a public college and then I went to a public medical school. I am a medical doctor. My mother was a public educator. I understand the value and importance of public education. I think the debate that we should be having in this city today, and the gentleman is touching right on it, is what can we really do to help education in the United States. Certainly I think one of the most important things we can do is we can make it more affordable for parents to send their kids to school and we are doing that with our tax relief package. We also can help parents to have more choice, and this is critically important in our inner city schools where so many of those parents in those poor neighborhoods have no choice. Unlike wealthy people who can select the best academic environment for their kids, people like Bill and Hillary Clinton, they were able to send their child to a very prestigious private school, many poor Americans living in our inner cities have no choice and they are locked into some of the worst and most failing schools. Also, one of the issues that we are debating in this city today, and the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg] is bringing it up, is should we have national testing. Let me just say, I have a 10-year-old daughter, we have chosen to home-school my daughter so that my wife and daughter can spend part of their time up here with me and part of their time in Florida when we are on recess and we consider testing extremely important. We test my daughter every year to make sure that she is meeting national standards or accepted standards. Actually our goal is that she exceeds standards and that is why we test her every year. I am very thankful to have my wife who bears the primary responsibility for educating my daughter and who makes sure that she gets the testing scheduled every year. The question is, is it an appropriate role of the Federal Government to be instituting a national test? Just to point to Sweden, a country of 7 million people or some other little foreign country that has national testing and say they do it, therefore, we should do it is ludicrous in my opinion. This is a country of 260 million people, 50 different States, people of all kinds of diverse ethnic backgrounds. There is no way that a one-size-fits-all concept could be put on the United States. This is just a different country. But the most important issue that the gentleman has brought up today and the biggest reason why I oppose national testing is because I do not have confidence in the Federal Government to do it correctly. This report that has come out clearly spells that out for every voter to see with their own eyes. They are going to give a math test and they are going to give the kids a calculator. Mr. Speaker, as far as I am concerned, I am not a lawyer, I am a doctor, but I know there is an expression in the legal profession, it says I think it is res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself. In other words, if you have got video footage of the perpetrator coming through the window with a TV in his hands, res ipsa loquitur. ``I rest my case, your honor. We don't need to debate this in front of the jury. The man is guilty. We've got him on tape.'' Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Speaker, they want to give a math test and they want to give the kids a calculator. Do we think that the Federal Government can run a math test and run it properly? I say, no. I say it is fraught with hazard. I say it is destined to fail. I say it is inappropriate. I agree with you that it is unconstitutional. What we need to be doing are the things that I spoke of earlier. We need to give parents choice, and the most crucial thing is we need to give poor, working- class families real choice. Rich people in America today have choice. Doctors and lawyers have choice, wealthy businessmen have choice. The hard-working people in our poorest communities, they do not have choice. Do you want to improve educational performance in the United States today? Give those people choice and get money to the classroom. Get money out of the hands of bureaucrats. To say somehow by having this national test it is going to help educational performance, I think, is ludicrous. I, again, commend the gentleman for his speaking up, for coming to the floor tonight to talk about this issue. It is a critically important issue.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I just want to comment on that, and maybe the chairman of the education subcommittee can add to this, but that is one of the very important issues that I think we need to get into tonight. We all know that testing is extremely valuable. It gives parents an idea how their kids are doing. It gives parents an idea how good the school is doing. But when you have the Federal Government in charge of testing, that is a whole different situation. When a school decides they want to use Iowa basic or want to use SAT, that is one issue. But when you have the Federal Government promulgating a test that has all kinds of very complex political and economic ramifications associated with it, and I am sure the gentleman from Michigan can comment on this issue, that is one of the other reasons why I am extremely concerned about this. The point you are alluding to, that suddenly you can have a scenario where everybody's academic program is tailored to meet the requirements in the Federal test, I am not sure that is a good thing for the United States of America. I am not sure it would be the best thing for the people of the State of Florida to adopt standards that would allow them to do well on the Bill Clinton, Federal-promoted test. I am not sure that is good for our economy in Florida. I have some very serious concerns. I think the President is definitely moving much too hastily on this issue, and it really needs to be debated within this body, and the Committee on Education and the Workforce needs to take this issue up. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. If the gentleman will continue to yield for a question, Mr. Speaker, as I understand it, one of the additional concerns of this test is that this will take time away from teachers and their students in terms of basic education, learning, that they will have to devote a week, they are proposing, or several days out of a week, to sitting down and taking a test, when they could be educating those children in crucial issues that are important for them to learn.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the recent Cassini mission to Saturn. This was a successful launch on a Titan launch vehicle that left Cape Canaveral a week ago tomorrow morning. Actually, it was 4 a.m. on Wednesday. It was a mission that garnered a lot of publicity, primarily because the probe, this deep space probe that was going to one of the moons of Saturn, it is a moon called Titan, it had a plutonium power source on it. The source of electricity to run all the computers and the sensors on this satellite, this probe, was plutonium, and as everybody knows, plutonium is radioactive and it is dangerous. Mr. Speaker, as soon as I heard about this mission 6 months ago or so and I knew it was going to be going off, I immediately had some of the leaders of the Cassini program from NASA come into my office and brief me, because I live in that area and I remember very well the controversy surrounding the Galileo mission. I am sure many Americans remember the Galileo mission, which was a mission to Jupiter, and we had a probe that went into the Jupiter atmosphere. It was a very successful mission and got a lot of publicity. So 5 years ago when that mission was taking off, at that time there was a lot of controversy as well about the plutonium power source. I was also concerned because I live in the area, my wife and daughter live in the area, my father lives in the area, all of my friends live in the area. So I wanted to find out the facts on this issue, and I was actually very disappointed to see, they never really came out in any of the press coverage on the Cassini mission. The plutonium that they use to power these vehicles is plutonium that has been solidified in a ceramic. It is encased in metal and it has essentially been tested and tested and tested so that it can withstand a disaster. And indeed I discovered on my research on this issue that actually at one point there was a mission that failed on the launch pad and the rocket blew up with the plutonium on board. It was out in California at Vandenberg Air Force Base. And not only did the plutonium power source, they call it an RTG power source, not only did it not break up and spill plutonium into the atmosphere, they were actually able to clean the thing up and put it on another satellite, it was constructed so well to withstand the blast. The other issue that there has been some concern about is that this thing could reenter the atmosphere and in the process of burning up, that it would release all of this plutonium into the atmosphere. And they have also designed the plutonium power source so that if it does reenter the atmosphere, it has a casing around it and the casing absorbs the heat and it never actually burns up. Indeed, I found out that plutonium RTG's were actually on the Apollo mission, and Apollo 13, when it reentered the atmosphere, there were plutonium RTG's on the Apollo 13, and they survived the reentry and there was no release of plutonium into the atmosphere. The bottom line is here that the engineers, the men and women who designed this power source, and it has been used 26 times safely on various missions, and as well they use the same technology in Russia and they have used it on many missions. It is designed to withstand an explosion on the launch pad without releasing any plutonium into the atmosphere, and it is designed to reenter if there were an accident and it were to fall back to Earth and not burn up and not release any plutonium into the atmosphere. So, Mr. Speaker, the point is basically this. They have designed it so that it is safe and there is no way, if one talks to these scientists there is no way that we could send probes out to Jupiter, out to Saturn, to those outer planets, without this power source. People will say, well we can use solar. The solar rays are so weak when probes get that far out from the sun that we would have to have a solar array as big as the State of New Jersey to drive this probe. It is impossible to do that. Well, it turned out the mission went off successfully. It was a successful launch. Cassini is on its way to Titan and it is going to yield valuable scientific information. The news media did a disservice and the scare tactics did not work, and I congratulate NASA.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this school choice experiment for the District of Columbia. Twenty percent of Americans have school choice. They are the wealthy, they are the upper middle class. The people who do not are the poor and needy. I believe we have a responsibility to try to do something to try to make a change. It has been demonstrated that just pouring more money into the system is not working. By looking at this and studying this, we can see firsthand if it is going to work. Frankly, I think it is irrational for anybody to be opposed to such a small school choice study right here in the capital city of the United States. For the life of me, I do not understand why anybody would oppose something this small, just to see if it works. If it fails, they will have their day. They can all rise up and say, ``It has been a disaster.'' But if it works, we have set a new model, a new standard for communities all over the country.