Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 23, 2005)

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Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Madam Chairman, I rise to congratulate the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and the subcommittee for doing a remarkable job in funding our Nation's education, health and workforce priorities in a time of intense fiscal restraint.

This legislation includes in education: increased funding for special funding, for No Child Left Behind, and for Head Start. It has a tremendous increase in the Pell grant area which will help our young people go to college, get the education they need to succeed and contribute. It holds firm on TRIO and GEAR UP, so important to kids who are the first in their family to go to college. So in education, while it does not do everything, it does some important things for our children, and I thank the gentleman. I hope in conference we will find a little more additional money for title I, but this is a good start.

In health, it also has some very important accomplishments. By increasing Community Health Center funding, it decidedly reaches out to additional uninsured people. It provides the support vitally needed for the important initiative to implant information technology in our health care sector, which is our best hope of both improving quality and reducing long-term costs, and it provides the money needed for the government to educate our seniors about the important, generous prescription drug program that will go into effect January 1. I thank the gentleman for those very important education dollars.

There are, of course, as always, areas of concern. I hope that in conference there will be more money for the Community Services Block Grant because that is the critical, flexible money that cities, particularly, use to fill the holes in the safety net programs, to provide day-care for women returning to work, and so on.

In HCAP, I hope we will restore the funding and thoughtfully review some of the other problems in the bill. But this is a fine job done, and I commend the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula).

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Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment offered by Mrs. Johnson of Connecticut:

Page 25, line 16, after the dollar amount insert ``(increased by $11,200,000)''.

Page 29, line 1, after the dollar amount insert ``(reduced by $11,200,000)''.

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Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I offer this amendment because one of the things that has concerned the Members of this body is the plight of the uninsured in America. The community health centers reach out to help the uninsured, and they are very effective and very important to that health care system, available to those who are either underinsured or uninsured.

But the HCAP grants are becoming equally important because they enable the community health centers to create a whole network in neighborhoods and urban communities that can reach out to the uninsured and the underinsured and bring them into the system and provide them with a patient home and the kind of support that they need.

Many of these people have chronic illnesses. Many of these people are a very high cost to the system because they do not get care until they land in the emergency room or the hospital.

This amendment to provide some funds for the HCAP program is modest. It merely moves money from the CDC budget, from the VERB program, which is funding for an anti-obesity media campaign that is now duplicative of Federal and private sector programs. Even the Bush administration's OMB says, ``There is no longer a need for this Federal program.''

I would maintain that now that every school board is conscious of the problem of obesity and so many groups, including McDonald's, have taken on this cause, that it is not necessary to spend the Federal money on the obesity campaign; but it is absolutely crucial that we put some placeholder dollars in the budget for the HCAP program.

This program is in 45 States across the country and has already provided access to care for 6.2 million uninsured and vulnerable Americans and has placed about the same number of children and parents, children and adults, into either Medicaid or CHIP.

In Waterbury, Connecticut, the biggest city in my district, the HCAP program started only a year and a half ago. It has already provided 750 low-income city residents with case managers who help them coordinate complex care regimens, make sure they have access to low-cost medications and track their progress. This same program has enrolled 450 patients, HIV/AIDS patients and diabetes patients in the appropriate kind of management program to monitor their conditions and keep them healthy and out of the hospital, better quality of life to the patient, savings to society.

Eighty physicians because of HCAP, 80 physicians from Waterbury have signed up to provide their fair share of specialty care to this uninsured population, and the hospitals have donated lab services.

Ultimately, this HCAP grant is going to electronically provide electronic health records for 120,000 patients in the greater Waterbury area through every hospital and doctor's office so that this kind of patient coming into the system with no insurance but complex needs can immediately have their medical record accessed by their physician; their medication protocol accessed by their physician; the history of their care accessed by their physician. Therefore, the physician is able to provide to these uninsured and very ill people timely, fast, high-quality care.

So the HCAP program has been extremely helpful to building beyond the community health centers out into the community a system to provide access to medical care for uninsured people, and that is why I am so interested in the passage of my amendment that just would move a little money from a program that is at the end of its useful life into this critical area so there would be a placeholder on which we could build in conference.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me say to the gentlewoman, I am very empathetic to the question that she is raising. I must say that at this moment the committee is quite anxious to see us go forward with the funding in the VERB program, to measure further its effectiveness.

We are very empathetic to that which the gentlewoman is discussing, and we do intend to raise this question with the Senate. It is not an issue that will go undiscussed, and I am very hopeful as we will go forward that we will be able to be responsive to the gentlewoman's request.

Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LEWIS of California. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman feel confident even without any placeholder, should, say, the Senate fail to provide a placeholder, as they have in the past, that we will be able to address this in conference?

Mr. LEWIS of California. I have every reason to believe that we will be able to address it in conference.

Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I appreciate the good work the Committee on Appropriations and the subcommittee has done.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

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