THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON RULES -- (House of Representatives - October 02, 2007)
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Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I appreciate your getting this time. I appreciate my colleagues that are going to speak later.
Mr. Speaker, this issue is about promises, because we live in the greatest country in the world where people make their decisions on who will govern them by the promises that they made. I would really like to emphasize the point that has been made several times by the distinguished ranking member and the gentleman from Florida, that process has consequences, because ultimately process turns into substance, it turns into laws, and, of course, that is what governs us.
Mr. DREIER. If I could point out, let me just point to the statement that was made by the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, since my friend mentioned the word ``promise.'' I will point to this one first. It says: ``We promise the American people that we would have the most honest and open government and we will.'' I am happy to further yield to my friend.
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I appreciate the gentleman saying that. I note that that statement was made after the election. Presumably, there was a decision made that the campaign was about change, and so this statement was made after the election.
The statement that I have up here by the distinguished chairman now of the Rules Committee, LOUISE SLAUGHTER, was also made after the election. It says: ``It is our goal to use rules responsibly, opening up the workings of the House and using it to usher in the most honest and ethical Congress in history. An open process will mean that more commonsense legislation written in the national interest will get to the House floor and be voted on.''
Mr. DREIER. If I could just interject, I would like to make this point one more time. ``An open process will mean that more commonsense legislation written in the national interest will get to the House floor and be voted on,'' and here we are with twice the number of closed rules, shutting out any opportunity for amendment, limiting debate, preventing Members from having an opportunity to even submit their amendments to the Rules Committee, and that is what we were promised?
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. We were promised this after the election, I remind my friend from California, this was after the election.
The reason for this is very obvious. The role of the Rules Committee is to funnel legislation so that every Member could have a possibility to be heard. We have 19 standing committees. Because we have two vacancies, there are 433 Members of the House today. We simply couldn't control this unless we had the standing committees doing their work.
Yet, Mr. Speaker, the Rules Committee this year is on track to rewrite more bills in the Rules Committee than we ever did during the 12 years that we were in control of Congress. They have done it with troops in Iraq. They did it with lobby reform. They did it with the farm bill legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a bit about the farm bill. I come from rural America. I was very much involved in that process as we are going forward. I recall very, very specifically that when the farm bill came out of committee, it came out of committee with strong bipartisan support. Yet, when we went to the Rules Committee the next day to report out a rule, there was a massive tax increase that was put on that farm bill.
I remember the distinguished ranking member, last year's chairman, of the Agriculture Committee, BOB GOODLATTE from Virginia, came to the Rules Committee and testified. He said, I felt betrayed by what went on, because he was not a part of that process. I know, I can speak to the bipartisan nature of how this farm bill was put together as it relates to the farm because there was a hearing in my district. There were four Republicans and four Democrats that showed up to this hearing last June, so this was a process in the making. Yet, at the last minute, all that process was thrown aside, and it was a broken deal.
It is bad because of what is happening. The policies that we have in place have potential detrimental effects to the farmers. The farm bill, I might add, expired at the end of September.
We put a 2-week extension on that. I suspect we will probably have to have another 2-week extension on that. It is not right, in a body of this size, to rewrite bills in the Rules Committee.
I want to follow up on my friend from Florida who talked about the SCHIP bill. That bill was enacted on a bipartisan basis in 1997. I supported that. It was part of a larger bill. That was probably the most egregious rewrite. We met at 1:00 in the morning, only had about an hour to look at what was in the bill, and there was a lot of rumors going around, but we met at 1:00 in the morning, a 500-page bill.
I got a heads-up from a clinic in my district that is physician owned that they would be out of business if this bill were signed into law.
Mr. DREIER. If the gentleman would yield, they said they would be out of business if this were to pass?
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. They said they would be out of a business because of a provision that related to the Medicare part that they added to the SCHIP bill as related to physician-owned facilities. This facility was put in place in 1940, 67 years ago, and yet the provision within this bill said that you could not have physician-owned hospitals.
I might add, Mr. Speaker, that this clinic in Wenatchee, Washington, covers an area the size of the State of Maryland. Now, if the idea is to expand health care, why would you potentially shut down a facility that covers the geographic size of the State of Maryland?
We went around and around with those that were testifying in favor of this particular bill, and they first started out and said no, you're mistaken, that is not in the bill. But after discussions going on with my friend from Texas (Mr. Sessions) and me going back and forth, they admitted at nearly 3:00 in the morning that yes, that provision was in there, and it was intended to be in there.
Mr. DREIER. If I can reclaim my time, they said, and I do remember this very well, but I think it's important for my colleague to repeat this, they said that they intended it to be here because they didn't want any physicians to have even the slightest interest in hospitals, so for that reason they were going to deny the opportunity for a health facility for a quarter of a million people in an area that is geographically the size of the entire State of Maryland in eastern Washington?
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. That is exactly right. It was done purposely. They first said we must be mistaken. But after probing and asking questions, they were essentially saying that you could not get any Medicare reimbursement if you were a physician-owned facility.
Now, I just don't understand what the motivation is behind that. But the point is, and we are obviously working on this because we don't want this to happen, but this is what happens when the process gets all messed up and you start rewriting bills in the middle of the night.
Mr. Speaker, I wanted to point out those two examples. I think it's contrary to the promises that were made by the new majority and what they have carried out. I think that is something that needs to be talked about.
I want to thank the ranking member for putting this Special Order together so we can discuss these issues in an open manner.
Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for his dedication, his hard work, and thank God President Bush is going to veto that SCHIP bill tomorrow, because if we end up with that legislation potentially jeopardizing a quarter of a million Washingtonians' access to health care at that health facility, it is something that we all would find frightening, and clearly no one wants to see that happen. And yet they said, I mean none of us want to see it happen, but they said they intended to close down this facility.
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. They said they intended to. And let's look at this from a little different perspective. This facility has been in business for 67 years. Clearly, clearly they have a following in that community, or they wouldn't have survived in that competitive atmosphere unless there were people that wanted to go to that facility.
Mr. DREIER. Is that in Pasco?
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. It's in Wenatchee, Washington, the Wenatchee Valley Health Clinic. So it's an egregious abuse of the rules, in my view. I don't want to take all the time. I yield back to my friend.
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