Last week, the Committee on Energy and Commerce was marking up the prescription drug bill. Last Wednesday, we stopped at 5 p.m. in the afternoon when we should have been working into the evening. Why? Because my friends on that side of the…

37 years ago, the majority Republicans voted against the creation of Medicare, which has turned out to be probably the single best program the U.S. government has ever sponsored. Republican leader Newt Gingrich said that Medicare should…

the prescription drug bill we are introducing today is straightforward. It is easily distinguishable from the Republican bill introduced last week. There is no fine print in our bill. There are no holes in our prescription drug coverage…

let us call this vote what it is. This is a brand-new fast track bill. Rules do not include 191 pages of never-before-considered legislative changes to a bill that passed the House by a single, weeping, arm-twisted vote. No one here can…

last Friday morning, while most Americans were still asleep, the Republican plan to create a drug benefit was pushed with brute force through the Committee on Energy and Commerce. While the Republican plan has too many flaws to mention in…

earlier today I heard a Republican member of the Committee on Ways and Means absolutely distort the truth about the Democrats' prescription drug plan, saying that it requires that seniors go into the Democrats' plan whether or not they…

Republicans are telling us repeatedly that seniors deserve better prescription drug options like those available to Members of Congress. I wholeheartedly agree, but it is difficult to see how a Republican plan that requires seniors to go…

early Friday morning, under cover of night, the Republican plan to create a Medicare prescription drug benefit was forced through the Committee on Energy and Commerce on strict party lines. The prescription drug proposal made by the…

Republicans want Medicare to take a right turn, and that right turn is to expand health maintenance organizations, to deliver the prescription drug benefit through a privatized HMO/insurance system. We want to see Medicare remain a public…

I want to sort of build on what my colleague has just said. Our plan, the Democratic plan, a Medicare prescription drug benefit, is administered by a program that Americans have learned to trust in the last 37 years, the Medicare program…

the House will soon consider a motion to go to conference on H.R. 3005, the fast track bill. Normally, the process for beginning a conference is a noncontroversial pro forma exercise, but attempts at passage of a special rule make clear…

earlier this month Congress made a choice. Republicans in this body passed legislation giving literally hundreds of billions in tax breaks, hundreds of billions of dollars, to the richest one-half of one percent of Americans, to…

the U.S. air traffic control system is the largest and most complex in the world, and it is the safest. President Bush issued an executive order last week stripping aircraft traffic control of its inherently governmental designation. This…

American lives depend on the strength and the reach and the cohesiveness of our public health system. For far too long, we have neglected our public health infrastructure, the men and women on the front lines, and the resources they need…

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment briefly on the Medicare provisions in the bill. One or more of my colleagues has expressed concern about the inclusion of some provisions in this legislation that are important. I want to make sure my…

The President and House Republicans' message on welfare reform has been loud and clear. States need greater flexibility, but when it comes to abstinence education, they are unwilling to afford that same flexibility. If States want the…

There is a frustration in this House of Representatives as we have seen from this line of speakers, probably 10 people on the Democratic side, who care enough to show up on the House floor and talk about health care issues. There is a…

when large employers, unions, and progressive Members of Congress and governors and senior groups and consumer advocates join forces on the same issue, Congress listens. What is the issue? Prescription drugs and prescription drug prices…

Antibiotic drugs have revolutionized human and veterinary medicines. Many diseases and infections, tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid, cholera, which were once difficult to treat, and often lethal, have been made readily curable by…

Mr. Speaker, speaking earlier today, in fact, walking over from my office in Rayburn to the House floor to work with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) on the Ryun legislation today, and I was talking to some people whose families…

Mr. Speaker, the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders reports that some 40 million people suffer from a speech, voice, language, or hearing impediments. Many of these impairments are found at birth. Every day…

This bill, quite simply, directs the NIH to direct more funds to research, information and education on blood cancer diseases. As my colleagues here on the floor know so well, while less than 5 percent of Federal funds for cancer research…

I rise in support of the Christensen resolution. Our values and success as a Nation are a function of multiple races, multiple ethnicities and multiple cultures. The Nation's health care system, our medical research, our medical education…

In recent years the United States has become the world's largest steel dumping ground at the expense of U.S. jobs, U.S. families, the U.S. economy, and maybe U.S. national security. It is a fact. This fact must be addressed now. As a…

when the House and Senate wrote their budget resolutions last year, Members were assured by the President of huge surpluses as far as the eye could see. The projected surpluses held great promise. They were expected to be large enough to…