Date: 1999-11-04
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker. I have supported the previous three continuing resolutions that we have previously approved to try and give time for the Committee on Appropriations to end their negotiations. Unfortunately. I do not belief that the negotiations are now done at the Committee on Appropriations level. I believe they are being orchestrated by the Republican leadership in this House. and I think the Republican leadership has proven itself to be dysfunctional with respect to those negotiations and with respect to doing the peoples business. So now we are called upon to approve our fifth continuing resolution. a continuing resolution that does not assure that the work will get done. There is no evidence from approving the past three continuing resolutions that the work of this Nation has been done by this body. For that reason. I find myself very inclined to oppose this continuing resolution. Maybe we should stay in over the weekend. Maybe the people ought to work all night. Maybe the leadership ought to give the gentleman from Florida and the gentleman from Wisconsin and others with expertise and experience in this field the ability to get the work of this Nation done. The sidebar tragedy to all of this is that. while 435 of us remain in town. while a couple of dozen committees remain in town. while the floor is in session periodically from time to time waiting for the Committee on Appropriations. the Republican leadership will not let the rest of the peoples business go forward. So we are not able to have the consideration of a prescription drug benefit for our elderly population. Many of us now know what our grandparents and our parents struggle with in terms of pain for the prescription medicines they need. We know that we need to provide them some additional financial help. The President has made that proposal. But we cannot get consideration of that on the floor. Many of us know that we need to extend the fiscal solvency of Social Security. but nothing is before this Congress that would extend that solvency by a single day. And so. we do not attend to that business. the needs of the elderly. the needs of future generations to know that Social Security will both be secure and financially solvent when they need it. We passed HMO legislation. and then we see just a brutal force act of appointing conferees that are not inclined to support that legislation. that are not inclined to support progressive managed care protections for families that are denied care in many cases by HMO bureaucrats. by managed care employees. that have no medical expertise. that interfere with the doctorpatient relationship. So that HMO legislation will not come forward in a form that it will help American families meet the medical needs of their children and of their family members. Why did they do that? Apparently. they could not stand to have two honest brokers on this committee so they could not appoint the gentleman from Georgia or the gentleman from Iowa who are proven to be honest brokers on behalf of real and sensible HMO reform. While we spent the first 9 months of this legislative year while the Republicans tried to sell to the American public a trilliondollar tax bill. the vast majority of benefits that went for very large corporations and very. very wealthy individuals in this country. a tax bill and a tax cut that was repudiated by the American public overwhelmingly. especially when they compared it to their other priorities of protecting Social Security. making Social Security secure. improving the educational system of their children. reforming the HMO system. providing for a prescription benefit. America said they would like us to address those issues before they start addressing tax cuts for the wealthy. they would like to see us pay down the deficit if we are not going to do that before they want tax cuts for the very wealthy in this country. Having lost that battle. the Republicans are now here telling us that we after a trillion dollars that they apparently said that they had room for. given the deficit. given the longterm debt. given the Social Security problem. a trillion dollars. they now come back and say we do not have a dime for prescription drug benefits. we do not have a dime to improve our education system. we do not have a dime to try and help people out in the Social Security system. we do not have a dime to try to help people with minimum wage. In fact. minimum wage. designed to help people who are the working poor. people who get up and go to work every day of the year and at the end of the year they end up poor. rather than do that. they want to load up the minimum wage with 90 to 100 billion dollars in tax cuts. 75 or 80 percent of which goes to the top one percent of people in this country. So while we are trying to help what are lowincome workers with increasing the minimum wage. they say the price of that is we have got to lather up the top one percent of this country with $100 billion in tax benefits. The fact of the matter is that this continuing resolution will do nothing to get the peoples business done in this House of Representatives because the Republicans refuse to address this legislation. They refuse to do what America needs to have done. what American families wants. the education of the children. the protection of their elderly members. the protec* tion of wages.