Medicare Prescription Drug Bill

MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BILL -- (House of Representatives - March 17, 2004)

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Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would posit that this is a great example of waste, fraud and abuse being perpetrated by this administration in trying to sell a pig in the poke to senior citizens who are not buying it, and it is waste, fraud and abuse in its most classical sense for at least three reasons.

Number one, it is not working. Seniors listen to this and almost laugh at it. I was at a meeting put on by the local chapter of the AARP in Edmonds, Washington last week, and there were about 150 seniors there, 150 seniors who had listened to this "gobbledy-gook" put out by the administration, trying to sell this ad to them. Not one single person out of 150 seniors, not the lobbyists who they hire, but the real seniors who supposedly need to depend on real coverage, not one person bought this as a decent plan for them. And I have got to tell you, there was fire and vigor and youthfulness in that room because they were so angry at the government trying to sell them this wasted opportunity. So first thing is the waste, because it is not going to work, because seniors are not going to buy it.

Second, it clearly is propaganda. I think the GAO has looked at this, General Accounting Office, and they cited several omissions, at least in the charitable sense of the term, of these advertisements not telling seniors what the real deal is; which is, number one, left out the fact they conveniently forgot that this legislation prohibited Uncle Sam from trying to try to get better drug prices for seniors, prohibited seniors from getting drugs from Canada, prohibiting reimportation in a safe way. Somehow they conveniently forgot that. It is waste because it is propaganda.

The third is it is simply not true. Let me tell you, it seems like every week we hear about another abuse of governmental power here. But let me tell you about one I heard about just yesterday, and that was that this administration is sending out deliberately phony alleged videos that purport to be news accounts from news reporters which, in fact, were paid models and actors who were faking like they were doing a news conference. Now if that is not an abuse of government authority, I do not know what is. Right now, the General Accounting Office lawyers are investigating this abuse and I think they are going to find a violation. I will tell you why.

This administration hired actors to pose as people. One of the people they hired, actors, who at the ending of this video that the administration is using our taxpayer dollars to send this around to all these local news stations around the country, and at the end they have this actor who says, "In Washington, I am Karen Ryan reporting." Turns out she was just an actor on the take, paid for by this administration with our hard-earned dollars. It is a fraud. It is a fake. It is being investigated, and the administration should be ashamed of itself, not only for the substance of this bill which is insulting enough to seniors, but then they pay these people to fake seniors, to think there is cheering mobs out there. They pay these people to clap for this thing when we go out and talk to real seniors that I know think it is a bunch of garbage, politely speaking.

So this is a perfect incidence of waste, fraud and abuse that I wish my Republican colleagues would write letters to the White House and tell them to knock it off because it is our taxpayers dollars that are being wasted here, and it is not going to work.

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Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it needs to be said, too, that our colleague who made the assertion that he had been offered essentially a $100,000 bribe or something akin to that to his son's election campaign was a Republican. This was a Republican Member, a colleague, who made this assertion, and that is why it is important to find out what happened in the situation.

But I will tell Members why I am here at 11 at night and that is there is such a growing pattern of a corruption of democracy here in the Chamber that I have great respect for, the House of Representatives, the people's House. I am a relatively new Member to this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic process.

It is not just one thing. It is the fact they do not let Members read the bill before they vote on it, which my people believe is a corruption of the democratic process, which happened in the Medicare bill. It is the fact that when they lose, they leave the time open for 3 hours to try to break arms, like the Russians did in the Olympic Games in the 1960s when we won the game and the Russian official just put another several seconds up on the clock. My people believe that is a corruption of the democratic process. And then during that 3 hours, according to a Republican colleague, he was offered a $100,000 bribe essentially to change his vote, which he had the moral integrity not to do, by the way, and remained a "no" vote solidly because he believed, I suspect, this is a bad bill, as we do. This is a pattern, and it is not just isolated to the Medicare bill.

Let me tell Members about another couple of problems that trouble me. I serve on the Committee on Resources, and we had the Department of Agriculture people. They supervise our national forests. We found out due to some diligence of an investigative reporter, that of our hard-earned taxpayer money, this administration has spent almost $100,000 hiring a public relations firm to try to spin the public into accepting a forest plan that would allow more old-growth trees to be cut, which is against public sentiment in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, and this PR firm advised the Department of Agriculture to keep it secret. It did not want the public to find out that they had spent $100,000 to spin the public. Their memo is a classic. He said we cannot tell the public because this is, quote, "a matter of perception." We should not be spending $100,000 to create misperceptions or worry about perceptions. We ought to give the public the straight scope.

That is not the only one. The Department of the Interior, I picked up The Washington Post and I see we have an investigation going on at the Department of the Interior of a gentleman who works for the Department of the Interior, who, on repeated occasions, essentially was associated with beneficial decisions for his former clients in the oil and gas industry to open up methane wells in Wyoming and in the Rocky Mountains when he was specifically ordered not to do it.

Time after time, we are finding incidents where common sense and good practices of democracies are being violated.
Let me go back to a fundamental tenet. We have disagreements in this Chamber, and our constituents have disagreements. They disagree on a lot of things and it is not unexpected that we would have disagreements about matters of great import. But Americans ought to be able to expect at least one thing from the administration and from the President: That is the truth. Even if they may disagree with it, they are entitled to the truth in exchange for paying their taxes, and they have not got it, repeatedly. I want to go down a list of some of those things.

The President's administration told the American public and the U.S. Congress that the Medicare bill would cost about $460 billion. That was false; and more importantly, it was false and known to be false by this administration. To add insult to injury, not only was it known to be false, they ordered their own actuary to refuse to disclose this information to Congress. It is one thing to commit the sin of untruth and falsehood, it is a second sin to cover it up, which they have tried to do. That is falsehood number one.

Number two, they used taxpayer money to phony up these videos, acting like it is a news report, saying it is a news reporter reporting live, Sally Smith or whatever her name was, hiring actors to act like they liked the Medicare bill; and seniors all over the country are rejecting this Medicare bill. They want to hire actors. It is a falsehood to do that, and they did this consciously. They cannot do that by negligence or mistake. They made a decision. Somebody who works for the President of the United States said, I am going to hire an actor to fake out the seniors of this country, consciously, intentionally, and it is wrong.

Mr. PALLONE. And at taxpayers' expense.

Mr. INSLEE. And third, they told us their tax cuts were going to result in large surplus. We were going to have surpluses as far as the eye could see. They cut taxes wildly for the upper class. We now have the largest deficit in American history. That is falsehood number three, and they keep making the same mistake.

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Fourth, and to me a series that I want to go through, because it is one thing to give falsehoods to Americans when it is about money, it is another thing to give falsehoods to Americans from the executive branch of this country sworn to defend the Constitution and the United States of America when it jeopardizes and takes the lives of Americans.

I just want to read some quotes that I think we need an accounting of and some responsibility from this administration. On March 17, 2003, the President of the United States told the American people, and I quote, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." That is a direct quote. It was false. Of all the information that we have gathered after hundreds of millions of dollars, the best evidence we have is that statement by the President of the United States, "it leaves no doubt." America deserves an answer why the President of the United States told Americans that there was no doubt when the facts were at least there was significant doubt as reported by multiple intelligence agencies and the facts have come to bear that multiple statements by this administration were false and as a result of that Americans paid the ultimate sacrifice, one of whose family I visited this weekend whose children will never see their father again who died in the Tigris River trying to save an Iraqi policeman while serving in the United States Army. That family and the other 500 families and the other over 3,000 families of our wounded GIs and Marines and other proud service men and women deserve the truth, and they deserve to know why they did not get it.

On August 2, 2002, the Vice President of the United States, while talking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a group that deserves the truth after their proud service to this country, said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." That statement was false. According to the best information we have after hundreds of millions of dollars spent searching for these weapons, that statement was false. Americans who served in Iraq deserve to know why that happened. We do not know why that happened. It may have been a failure of intelligence. Our intelligence agencies may have overstated the threat. They may have left out caveats in their report to the White House. Somebody in the political machinery may have stretched, exaggerated, spun; we do not know what happened and why those statements that were made were so grievously in error that cost American lives, but we deserve an answer and this Chamber deserves an answer.

On January 28, 2003, during his State of the Union address in this Chamber to us, the President stated, "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." That statement was false. Americans deserve to know the exact circumstances that led to that falsehood being given to them leading to this war.

On March 16, 2003, Vice President DICK CHENEY on an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" said, referring to weapons of mass destruction, "He had years to get good at it. We know that he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." To our knowledge that statement was false.

On January 9, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

That statement was false.

On April 10, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, "But make no mistake, as I said earlier, we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about, and we have high confidence it will be found." That statement may be correct in the sense that he may have had high confidence. He may have had high confidence. But the underlying statement was false. With all due respect, we are hopeful about the people of Iraq; but this war was based on false information, and Americans deserve to know why they did not get the straight scoop about this situation.

On September 19, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated, "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."

People have been saying that, well, gee, the administration is now telling us that we did not mean to actually make Americans worried by saying this was an immediate threat. But, in fact, the Secretary of Defense gave reference to an immediate threat with his own language, and on multiple occasions they have continued to make that statement. When White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked if Saddam Hussein on January 26, 2003, was "an imminent threat to the United States," he stated, "Well, of course he is." This is repeated references, and we have page after page after page of statements that were false. Again, I want to repeat. The people who made these statements may have believed that they were true at the time they were making them. We do not know that. I do not know that. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. But when this country has suffered the loss of over 500 of its sons and daughters and wives and husbands and fathers and mothers, this Chamber owes it to the United States of America to get to the absolute bottom of who is responsible for these multiple falsehoods on multiple occasions with absolutely no contrition, accountability, or responsibility.

No one has lost their job over this false information except one disc jockey. Maybe it was not a disc jockey. He was a person who was involved in political discourse. Where is the accountability? Where is the personal responsibility for these falsehoods? Where is the smallest discipline of anyone for giving Americans false information leading to the deaths of over 500 Americans? Where are the changes of procedures? Where is the joint committee in this Chamber? Where is the report of the Congress? Where is the action from the Republican Party to help us find out what happened here? It is missing in action. It is AWOL. With all due respect to our intelligence committees, and they have been doing some discussion of what is happening here, but it is sadly lacking, the type of responsibility that we need to see taken, an explanation of what happened to this information.

Let me make one suggestion when we do get to the bottom of this what we are going to find. Let me tell you about a couple of things I have found through my research. There was a statement by the administration, frankly I cannot recall if it was the President or the Defense Secretary that told Americans that Iraq had developed a drone aircraft that was capable and intended to be able to spread biological and chemical weapons, that could fly over America and spread these horrendous materials over the United States of America. Obviously, that is something we should be concerned about and we should do everything we can to prevent. The problem is that the Air Force, the experts in airplanes, had told the administration before they told Americans this information, before they told Americans the information, that these things were made out of balsa wood and almost duct tape and what they were good for is maybe taking pictures. They were not meant for this other nefarious purpose. They had that information and did not share it with us because frankly there was a lot of doubt about this. There was doubt about this. We cannot expect our intelligence service to be 100 percent, but they did not tell us that.

These aluminum tubes. The President of the United States in his State of the Union address made reference to these aluminum tubes. He said specifically, "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

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In fact, before the President made that statement, one of our agencies, and it was either the CIA or the Department of Energy, I cannot remember which, had concluded that that was not what these aluminum tubes were for. They were meant for other purposes.

If this was one misstatement, we would chalk it up to the fog of war and the need to be responsible as we need to be in the war on terrorism. But when it is a pattern, when it is a pattern of falsehood that continues to be consistent in their approach to the Medicare bill and the effort to clear-cut old-growth timber in the Sierra Nevada and a whole host of issues, it is responsible for Members of the House to come and blow the whistle on this multiple corruption of the democratic process. And that is what we are here to do.

Let me suggest there is a simple answer to some of these things, these issues that we are calling for. If the President would really initiate a thorough investigation of this, we could find out why this information was false and why we found out. But do my colleagues know what he did or his people did? When this mistake was found out about this yellow cake in his State of the Union address, we found out that his statement that they were trying to get yellow cake from Africa was false, when the administration found out that was a falsehood, it was pointed out by a gentleman named Joe Wilson, who was a former ambassador who was sent by the CIA to Africa to find out whether this assertion was true, and he concluded it was not and told the administration it was not; and then the President went ahead, and somebody gave it to him. I cannot believe he did it himself and put it in the State of the Union address.

I am not faulting him for that specific failure. Somebody had to give that misinformation. But when his administration found out there had been a big mistake in the State of the Union address, one might think he might want to thank the person who helped him correct publicly this mistake because obviously none of us want to make any mistakes. We like to make sure what we are saying is credible. Does the gentleman know what the administration did? Instead, they tried to destroy the career of a CIA agent, who was Joe Wilson's wife, by outing her to destroy a citizen's career in public service who blew the whistle on this corruption of the democratic process. And that is wrong.

And we are many months passed this issue, and the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the Western World, cannot find out who in his administration did that. I am not satisfied with that. I am not satisfied unless the President picks up his phone and says I want an answer by eight o'clock tomorrow morning who did this because they are fired. And he has not done that. This is a pattern that needs to be corrected.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to point out, and I know what the gentleman is talking about, that the war and the loss of lives is certainly more important, but we have the same thing here with Richard Foster that we talked about earlier where he was basically told that if he revealed the correct information about the cost of the Medicare bill, he would be fired. And the irony of it is now there is a statement which he made recently where he says that "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policymakers for political reasons." So this poor guy who now basically came clean and explained what happened, I do not know what his career is going to be like as well, and it is just really tragic that this administration puts honest people that want to be honest with the public in danger of being fired or ultimately losing their jobs because they are just trying to be honest and tell us the truth. And we are just seeing a pattern of this continue with this administration in so many cases.

The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) used the word before when he talked about abuse of power. That is essentially what we have here. It is false information and the willingness of this administration to essentially say whatever is necessary, the means justifies the ends, in order for them to justify their ideology.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if I may, I suppose there are gray zones about conduct, but when the U.S. Congress is debating something as important as the Medicare prescription drug benefit and we are trying to figure out how to finance it so this deficit does not continue and the President knows that there are many people concerned about the cost of this and a good American patriot, in the fulfillment of his democratic responsibilities, figures out it is going to cost another $160 billion than the President tells us it is going to cost, and he tells the administration that and the White House and HHS and everybody else and they tell him that may jeopardize our ability to win our political battle and our political battle is more important than the truth. Because that is what this boils down to. They reached a conclusion here, and their conclusion is they are so smart and they are so gifted and they are so special that they are more important than the truth. Therefore, they ordered and they threatened to fire an American who wanted to and would have shared the truth with Americans and this Congress, Republicans and Democrats, because they concluded they were more important than the truth.

And I just may add, I want to tip a hat to some of my Republican colleagues here because we have Republican colleagues that are madder than hops about this too because they were concerned about the cost of this bill because we have a $500 billion deficit and we have a number of our Republican colleagues who want to fix that problem. So they are mad about this too. They are not quite as vocal as we are in this context with their party member in the White House. But Republicans and Democrats ought to agree on one thing, and that is let us get the facts and the truth; then let us have our debate and let the chips fall where they may, and we are just happy to have that debate. But it is time for them to stop perverting the truth.