Responding to State of The Union Message

Responding to State of The Union Message -- (House of Representatives - January 21, 2004)

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Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the President's State of the Union address last night. From where I was sitting, my perspective, I am from Michigan, from the northern half, and I was really surprised that the President never mentioned the urban areas of this country. About 60 percent of the people in this country live in cities. He did not articulate any type of a plan or approach to help those areas that are dealing with many, many problems. Especially since the National Conference of Mayors is in town this week, I thought at least there would be some mention about urban areas: what can we do to help them with their urban sprawl, with infrastructure needs, green space, or even just helping them cope with these homeland securities which cost these cities millions of dollars. When we get elevated from yellow to orange or orange to red, whatever system they are using now, it costs them a lot of money. The cities, like the States right now, are financially strapped for cash. How do they pay for this? If it is a requirement of the Federal Government, should we not just help them out? I was surprised that he did not touch on the cities.

I was also very, very surprised, and maybe it is the record of this administration, that he did not even mention veterans. Why would he not mention veterans? We are creating veterans every day in this country with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he never even mentioned them. Probably because we saw proposed $20 billion cuts in veterans health over the next 10 years; that is what his budget proposal shows. It would really eliminate and cap the number of veterans who can access the VA system. We have a cap on it right now because there is not enough money in the system. So maybe the President did not want to talk about veterans because his record in that area has not been very good.

So I would hope that we in this upcoming Congress can put a little more attention on the veterans issues. The Democratic Party and the Democrats in their response, and others, I saw coming up with bold new ideas on how to move this country forward. As the gentleman from New Jersey was saying, some of the stuff we have heard over the last 3 years was just warmed over and put in the State of the Union; but we have different ideas, bold ideas, new ideas that I think are important. It would be my hope that in this session of Congress, Democrats and Republicans can work together to move forward some of these initiatives.

Some of the initiatives that the President did bring up did tweak my interest, let us say, like the health insurance. The gentleman and I both sit on the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and we have both spent a lot of time on that. Homeland security, I thought we would hear more about that, like fully equipping the first responders, the police, the fire, the emergency medical people.

Increased protection on the border. I come from northern Michigan, right there at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, crossing back and forth to Canada. Before September 11, most of our stations were not manned 24 hours a day. We have made some increases. We have more immigration officers, more Customs officials, more border patrols, they are all now under Homeland Security. But what happened was we put money out there to increase the number of people there; but last Labor Day, the first part of September, they were laying people off. They were supposed to be protecting our borders.

So I wish the President would have spent a little more time saying, look, there are some things we should do in homeland security, especially those of us who have a northern or southern border. It is critically important to us. We know all the cargo ships and containers that come into this country by ship or plane or trucks, we are only inspecting 2 to 3 percent of that cargo. We can do better than that with all of the modern technology and equipment we have. It does not cost that much.

There is no reason why we cannot implement a program. We have the technology. We sat through those hearings where they have shown us the technology to look for biological, radiological weapons and environmental weapons that may be in these containers. Why are we not doing it? If we want to talk about really being safe, that is one area we could improve. I mean, a 2 to 3 percent inspection, that means 97 to 98 are going through uninspected, really makes us susceptible to any kind of an attack, bioterrorist, chemical, or nuclear in this country.

So the Democrats have also put forth a proposal to do this, to increase that. That is not asking that much. We even know the cost of these machines, like big x-ray machines that can scan cargo holds and cargo containers. Why are we not talking about that if we want to really be secure here at home?

Taking a look at the economy and jobs, with all due respect to the President, more tax cuts is not going to solve this problem. In the last 3 years, if we take a look at the total package of the tax cuts that have been passed by this Congress, it is about $2 trillion. And if they really created jobs, our economy would not be in the slump we have.

Take my State of Michigan, we are a manufacturing State, and we have been hit terribly under these Bush economic policies. Since the President took office, and I am going back now to August of last year when they claimed we had this big increase in the third quarter of last year, well, in my State of Michigan we lost over 130 manufacturing jobs. They are not coming back. Those jobs like Electrolux in Greenville, Michigan, they are going south. They are going south of us. They are taking their tax cuts, and they are going to Mexico and other areas; and it is going to take out about 2,700 jobs in the little town of Greenville, Michigan. Throughout my district, there has been a number of them who have lost jobs. They go south. We have lost 130 manufacturing jobs. Let us face it, they are not coming back.

The President said, well, this tax increase would create these jobs. If we take a look at it, going back to my State of Michigan, 46 percent of the people received less than $100 with the last Bush tax cut. How does that help anyone, and how does that create new jobs?

Mr. Speaker, we have so many needs in this country, and the Democrats have come up with a proposal to stimulate this economy, to get jobs moving. We actually put forth a proposal, never were we allowed to bring it to the floor for a vote, because the Democratic proposal was a good one. We supported targeted tax cuts. There should be some for middle class and working families, you bet you. We are there and willing to do it. But our economic and tax cut plan would have created 1 million jobs immediately. How were we going to do that? Invest back in our infrastructure, our port security that I spoke of; and we would have done this by taking money out of the trust funds and not add one penny to the deficit, not one penny to the deficit, but create a million jobs, invest here at home, invest in our airports, our water ports, to protect them from terrorism; and we could create jobs doing that; and, again, we would not have added anything to this deficit which is exploding out of sight.

Democrats do have a better way.

There are a number of things that we can and should be doing. We are willing to work with the President, but they also have to be willing to work with us. By that I mean the gentleman from New Jersey spoke a lot about the Medicare bill with the prescription drug plan. We notice when we had those hearings and we had, they call it the conference committee, no Democrats were ever invited to it; we were not even told when they were. So it was not like we got together; we were not even invited to the table to discuss it. In the House here, the person who probably knows more about Medicare and prescription drugs is the gentleman from my home State of Michigan (Mr. Dingell). He has been here and been involved in every Medicare bill since Medicare was created in 1965; he was not even included in the discussions or even asked his ideas.

So these proposals, we are willing to work with them, but they have to include us. The tax cut bills, we were not included on that. The Medicare bill, the energy bill which failed in the Senate, we were not included on that. We need better understanding, and we need a better working relationship with this White House and with the majority party in this Congress.

The gentleman from New Jersey mentioned prescription drugs and the Medicare plan. Just getting access to prescription drugs is a battle for many of us. If we take a look at it, our plan, the Democrat plan basically said, use the purchasing power of the Federal Government to help lower these costs; in fact, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mr. Thompson, negotiate a lower drug price for us so we can pass it on to the 40 million recipients in Medicare so it does not cost them so much. The bill passed by Republicans expressly prohibited it. The bill also expressly prohibits the Secretary or average Americans from going to Canada or Europe to get lower cost prescription drugs.

One are forbidden from doing it. If one are really interested in lowering the cost for the American people and for our seniors, these two common sense approaches, why is not that part of the Medicare bill to keep the cost down?

And I bring up this Medicare and prescription drugs because the President said last night he will give tax incentives to help people to afford health insurance. Well, that is wonderful, but we need some incentives to keep those costs down. If he did not allow us to come together to lower the cost, negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs, is he really going to allow in the bill the associated health plans to allow businesses to come together to negotiate lower prices down? If we look at the track record, the answer is no. If we are not going to do it on prescription drugs, why would we suddenly want to do it on these associated health plans.

If one really takes a look at the associated health plans, why are they somewhat popular? Well, because underneath the associated health plans, there are two major problems. They do not necessarily come and band together. Each small business in that plan is its own entity and can lead it or drop it whenever they want. So we cannot guarantee that unity, the cohesiveness would stay there.

The second big problem with these associated health plans that the President brought up is that small employers, besides cut and run for a better deal, they do not have to follow state mandates. Every State says, look, if you offer health insurance in our State, here are some basic rules you have to follow, basic things we want you to do: Prenatal coverage, mental health coverage, immunization coverage, emergency room access, things like that.

These associated health plans that the President brought up last night they do not have to do that. They work outside the State requirements. So they can pick and choose in this State we do not want to offer this or maybe we do not want to do a prenatal care. Maybe we do not want the mental health part of it.

So one is paying a lot of money for half a plan as dictated by the insurance industry and not the needs of the people in that State in which one is selling that insurance.

I like the ideas that the President brought up. If they are willing to work with us, I am sure we can work out some ideas. Democrats believe that a health care coverage plan should include all Americans. We believe the health care coverage should be continuous, that one is not wondering from year to year am I going to have the coverage, but there should be a continuation of coverage.

We believe health care coverage has to be affordable for families and individuals. We believe that health insurance should also be something as a society we all can afford.

And last, but not least, we should also make sure that health insurance actually promotes health and well-being like prevention programs, prenatal care, and access to high quality care that is effective, efficient, safe, timely, and patient-centered and is equitable, people are getting a reasonable return for the money they are spending on health insurance. I do not think that is asking too much.

These are some old ideas that are Democrats are willing to put forth: Accessible health insurance, affordable health insurance, make sure it is adequate to meet the needs of the society one is trying to serve and will always be there in the future so someone is not cut as soon as they have a claim.

So, again, we are willing to work with the President, but he has to reach out to include us.

It was interesting, we talked some more about it when the President was talking about the energy bill and how we should do this. And I think he said, if I quote him right, he said something like "I urge you to pass legislation to promote conservation." I notice he did not say, "I urge you to pass an energy bill that is also concerned about our environment." That was left out. I did not find the environment anywhere in the President's nine pages, this little book that we received with his remarks in there. Probably because in the last couple years, we have been fighting on the floor to keep a strong Clean Air Act, keep a Clean Water Act, protect our national forests and oppose drilling in ANWR and some of these other areas, and fully fund Superfund, which cleans up and reinstates the polluter-pay principle, one of the things we all believe in.

But that Superfund, unfortunately, we used to get a royalty off the oil and gas drilling in this country and a percentage of that would go and fund Superfund. Well, since the new party took over, the majority took over in 1995, we have not put any money in the Superfund. And there are many Superfund sites in the Great Lake State of Michigan. We have many Superfund sites around the State, around our Great Lakes that should be cleaned up.

So if one is going to talk about energy policy, let us restore enough money for that energy policy. At least fund the Superfund to clean up Superfund sites and reinstate the polluter-pay principle. I think that is something we should all be able to agree with at least in principle.

I was disappointed also when the President said the No Child Left Behind Act is opening doors to opportunity to all of America's children. But as we know too often, and ask any school administrator, the Federal Government with the Leave No Child Behind did not fully fund it. For instance, Title I has a shortfall of billions of dollars.

If one takes a look at this last budget, to meet the requirements of this new testing that the President spoke of and all these other requirements that Leave No Child Behind Act, we should fund these programs. We are putting regulations on these schools. They are expected to perform, but yet they are not receiving Federal money to do this. While he may have increased funding for education, it has not kept pace with requirements that the Leave No Child Behind Act is requiring our schools to do. So we would like to see it fully funded.

And I also believe the other thing we should do if we are going to fully fund education from K through 12 is IDEA, Individual Disabilities Education Act. IDEA, the Federal Government passed that before this President was in office, and it was also a promise the Federal Government would fund it at 40 percent. At best, we are funding it at 18 to 19 percent. We are not even funding half of what we promised to fund when it came to K through 12 education. So, again, I think the ideas are there, but one has to put the funding there.

If one is going to do education, if we don't want to leave a child behind, if we want to test them to see if they are meeting the skills, give the schools the resources to adequately do it and not short change them. Unfortunately, that is what has happened in the last few years. In the last fiscal year we are short $8 billion nationwide to fund education.

I do not disagree with what the President says but let us fully fund the education. So I really think that the President put forth some ideas. I think they fall short in some areas. We are willing to work with him, the Republican party, the majority party in this

House, but they have to include us in some of these programs.

Democrats do have a better way. We do want to see a number of things happen. We want to see, like, homeland security. We talked a little bit about that. But let us fully fund our first response people. Let us improve our domestic nuclear security and protect our communities against a terrorist attack. We can do this by doing inspection of cargo. It is something so simple that we could do, the technology is there. We even know the cost.

We have sat on the Committee on Energy and Commerce and we have laid out the cost and how much every one of these machines are, how many port of entries we have. We have close to 400 in this country where cargo comes in through ships from other countries. We know where. We know what the cargo is. Let us detect and make sure there is nothing coming in here. I think that is of even greater importance now as we have increased activity around this world in terrorism. And it is something we should be able to do. There is no reason why we cannot.

There are so many other things we could do. Like I said, I was really surprised that the President did not even mention them in the State of the Union address. Democrats we believe that we should ensure full payment of both retirement and a disability compensation to a half a million disabled American veteran retirees. We should do that immediately. Right now the way the law is if one has a military disability pension and a retirement from them, they deduct dollar for dollar if one is receiving disability from their retirement pay. They have earned both of them. They should be fully funded. Why could not we do that for them?

We should fully fund the veterans health care. We should permit an increase in bonuses for soldiers in combat. This is interesting. We had the motion on the Floor here during our debate on the $87 billion for Iraq to provide a $1,500 bonus for every man and woman who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. $1,500 out of $87 billion. That tied 213-213 and the amendment did not pass. I could not believe it.

And here we are talking about the great job our men and women in the armed services are doing for us. And they do. But give them a little bonus. Most, and I should say a large number of people in Iraq are from the Reserves and the National Guard, they left their good paying civilian jobs when their country called upon them to go fight in Iraq. So we want to give them a $1,500 bonus to help ease that financial concern at home. And it ended up in a tie in the U.S. House of Representatives. I cannot believe it. That was basically a party line vote. The President and the

administration and Republican party will not support us so it ended up in a tie.

There are so many more things we could do. Democrats do have bold new ideas. We would like to be part of the process. We urge the majority party and the President to work with us. We have a new year here, a new session just starting. We look forward to working with them. But as I said earlier, when we have these conferences and these ideas coming through Congress, all we ask is for an opportunity to have our amendments put forth before this floor, put together a substitute that we would be allowed to vote on. But, unfortunately, as we have seen on these major issues like Medicare, energy bill, the appropriations bills, we are just completely excluded.

That is almost unheard of in a country of this stature which is a true democracy that the minority party, in this case Democrats, representing 49 percent of the country, are not even allowed to put forth the proposals or amendments on the House floor. I know that upsets a lot of people and certainly upsets all of us.

Even if we do not have the votes to pass it, at least let our new ideas come forth on this Floor and be argued and debated and let the American people make up their mind on this legislation.

So I pleased to come down here and join my colleague. I look forward to doing that throughout the year as we have in the past working on this. There are other issues, and I look forward to working with him on them.

We have an opportunity, and I hope the President and his party will work with us, so we can move this country forward because the economy is not where we want it to be. We are struggling. As I said, Michigan alone lost the most manufacturing jobs of any State. We are hurting back in Michigan. We need some help.

There are some things we can do, but another tax cut is not going to jump-start our economy in Michigan. It may be good for Wall Street, but it is not very good for Main Street where we do create the jobs. We have heard it so many times in the media that this is a jobless recovery. Well, the economy seems to be looking good on Wall Street. And IRAs and even 401(k)s and other things may look a little better, but for folks back home they are not employed, they are not working, it is not helping them.

In Michigan, at the last tax cut we got less than $100. 46 percent of the people in Michigan got less than a $100 in the last Bush tax cut. It is not going to help us out. Let us put some people back to work immediately. Adopt the Democratic plan which says we can put a million people back to work immediately by working in infrastructure, roads, bridges, port security, airport security, without adding to the deficit. We can do it by taking money out of the trust funds.

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