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“ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4889-H4900 on May 10, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair must remind all Members that remarks in debate must be addressed to the Chair and not to an audience that may be viewing the proceedings on television or in the gallery.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, tell everybody, tell your friends, tell everybody from sea to shining sea, Mr. Speaker, to get yesterday's Record. Also, there are two other Dornan inserts in there. One is an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist, an M.D., Jewish heritage, convert to Catholic Christianity, at one time head of the Carl Jung Foundation. He talks about the horror, terror of young people having homosexuality glorified to them.
Then there is another article in here about the debauchery at one of our Federal buildings down the street; a pretty good Record to have, Mr. Speaker, from the 9th.
Now I come to this incredible American, this Medal of Honor legend, John Bulkeley. If you are looking for those patriotic films that Ronald Reagan spoke about, look for this one with Robert Montgomery and John Wayne. John Wayne was not yet the top billing in the early 1940's;
``They Were Expendable,'' from this book. I had this book and lost it when my family moved in 1943 to New York. It is a 1942 book. I am handling it gently because it is from the treasured collection of George Cox, Jr. ``They were expendable.'' It is an easy-to-read book, double-spaced. I read it all the way through last night and went to bed about 4 a.m. It just brought back all my childhood memories.
At age 9, right after Bataan, Corregidor, fighting in the North African desert, I read this late in that year, and I will get it back to our Hill legislative assistant, Mr. Cox, in good shape for his dad. He told me his dad never spoke of his heroic exploits in the Pacific.
When Admiral Bulkeley was alive and among us, after he had been down in the George Washington crypt area in the bottom floor, Donn Anderson, the wonderful Clerk of the House when the Democrats were in the majority, set up with a lot of hard work and some small support from me, the Medal of Honor tribute, with the original Medal of Honor given to young Jacob Parrott for an amazing behind-the-lines special operations, Seal-type advanced air insert team-type mission today, a real Delta Force Army Ranger mission behind the lines of the confederacy, stealing a train; half of them, all of them were captured, half executed. The leading officer was executed. Five were transferred. In the White House, Lincoln gave them the Medal of Honor and the Jacob Parrott medal held in his family for over a century and a third. He, the family, gives it to us, and it is down there. You can see it right now. I hope, Mr. Speaker, people visiting Capitol Hill will go look at it.
So Admiral Bulkeley was down there as the recipient. He is just an incredible person. I told him I wanted to bring him over here to lunch to meet the new freshmen. Why do we always keep those promises to ourselves? He is gone now, but not his memory. So the freshmen never had lunch with him. I was having a big PT boat made, a model boat, George Cox's boat, PT-41. It got delayed. I just wanted to have Admiral Bulkeley sign the deck, so I will have George, Junior, sign the deck.
But I have read this chapter from ``Devil Boats.'' George brought this by my office. I do have two of these, one in California, one here,
``Devil Boats,'' the PT war against the Japanese. Just a short mention of all the great PT work Bulkeley did off the Normandy coast. Here is what I read 2 years ago with Admiral Bulkeley watching on C-Span, Mr. Speaker.
``The Wild Man of the Philippines'' is chapter 3 of ``Devil Boats.'' When Lt. John Bulkeley reported to his Corregidor headquarters, still designated grandly as 16th Naval District, on January 18, 1942, he was handed a tersely written order by Capt. Herbert Ray, Adm. Rockwell's chief of staff: Army reports four enemy ships in or lying off Port Benonga. Force may include one destroyer, one large transport, filled with soldiers. Send two boats, attack between dusk and dawn. Returning to their base, the PT boat base at Sisiman Cove, Bulkeley began preparing for the night's mission.
By now his daring, his courage, his seemingly unlimited supply of nervous energy, and his swashbuckling exploits had gained him a widely known nickname: ``Wild Man of the Philippines.'' A striking physical appearance strengthened that label. He looked like--and before I read this, his big picture at his funeral of his Annapolis graduation picture the year I was born, 1933, was handsomer than any of these little teenage heartthrobs today, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt. None of them were as handsome as he when he was not commissioned in Annapolis, but told to wait a year, Congress has given us no money, we will pick you up later. He went to pilot training and they ran out of money. He had a few wired-together biplanes. He ended up this hero in the Philippines.
Here is his description, this handsome young man, a few years later, just turned 30 years of age. ``A striking physical appearance strengthened the label Wild Man of the Philippines. He looked like a cross between a bloodthirsty buccaneer and a shipwrecked survivor just rescued from months spent marooned on a desolate island. His shirt and trousers were soiled, wrinkled, and torn. He wore a long, black, unruly beard and his green eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed from endless nights without sleep while out patrolling the coasts in the PT boats. On each hip he carried a menacing pistol, and he clutched a tommygun in a manner that caused others to believe he was itching to locate a Japanese to use it on.''
Bulkeley indeed was a wild man, a wild man on his way to a Medal of Honor. ``For that night's raid he selected PT 31, skippered by Ed Billong, and PT 34's temporary captain was Ensign Baron Chandler. These men knew they were expendable. He was pinchhitting for Bob Kelly.'' That is the one whom John Wayne played in the movie.
It goes on with the most desperate fight of the coast, with him jumping on a Japanese barge, picking up all these oil- and blood- and water-soaked documents, bringing them back, because he had done intelligence work in his twenties for the Navy. He brings them back to MacArthur's command headquarters, and it is Japanese invasion plans to ironically run a MacArthur Korean-type Inchon amphibious landing around behind our forces, the way MacArthur got behind the Korean Communist forces, and land behind our men at Bataan, and the whole thing would have collapsed in January or February, instead of tragically on April 9, 1942, with the Bataan Death March.
{time} 1515
Fast forward, and why funerals sometimes are uplifting experiences, besides all the beautiful patriotism and seeing his lovely two sons and three daughters and his grandkids, one of whom gave a beautiful eulogy, exactly like Noah to her grandpa, Yitzhak Rabin.
At the funeral afterward at the hotel near Arlington Cemetery, I bump into his helmsman when he commanded a destroyer, the Endicott. I met his helmsman. That would be August 1944, off the southern coast of France. That is 52 years later, so Joe Cain was 52 plus whatever he was as a young sailor.
He told me that Admiral Bulkeley, then a commander, kept those same guns on a cowboy belt, two pearl-handled Peacemakers, Colt Peacemakers. He kept them on his commander's chair on the bridge of the destroyer. When he was out, Joe Cain, turning into a 23-year-old right before my eyes, said:
``Congressman, we would take those guns off his chair and put them on and we would try fast drawing and somebody would say, `The skipper's coming' and we would quickly get them back. He would walk in, and he knew everybody's name and nickname.
``He said to me, `Cain, you going on shore the next liberty?'
`Yes, sir, I am, Skipper.'
``Not with those sideburns, you're not.''
A stickler for good appearance, in spite of his desperate early days. Beloved by his men. Then I heard this story, both in his son's eulogy and from the very eyewitnesses from the crew of the destroyer Endicott, Operation Dragon off the coast.
He said that none other than Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., one of my boyhood heroes from ``dawn patrol'' and ``gunga din,'' is an American naval officer with the British. He was always an Anglophile with an affected British accent but Hollywood-born.
Doug Fairbanks, Jr., is on a British barge that is shelling the cost. Gunships, they call them. Gun barges.
He called, ```German E-boats are here after us. Help us.'' He actually said, ``For God's sake help us.''
Here comes Bulkeley to the rescue and the Endicott. All Bulkeley's big guns, the 5-inchers, were burned up from shelling the French coast all night covering Audie Murphy and the 3d Division and our men landing in southern France in August to relieve the men fighting their way through the hedgerows up north from the Normandy invasion. All their guns were burned up. All they had was a 20-millimeter small cannon.
They have a gun duel with these two German E-boats, Corvettes, right there and sink them both. The crews jump off and they pick up both the German commanders. He brings one of the German skippers up on the deck and Bulkeley from up on the bridge says, ``Salute the colors,'' a naval tradition. The German officer says, ``Nein.'' They both spoke English so he probably said, ``Hell, no.''
Bulkeley says, ``Throw him back in.'' They pitched him over the side into the water.
The German starts pleading, ``Bitte, bitte.'' ``Okay.'' They bring him up.
``Salute the flag.'' ``Nein,'' the German said.
``Throw him over again. Get set to get underway.'' Back the German goes in the water.
I said, ``Joe, I have never even seen anything better than this in a movie. It didn't happen a third time, did it?''
He said, ``It could have.''
They finally dragged him up, on the deck again. He was properly chastised and humbled. He saluted. Not a Hitler salute. Their navy were not all Hitlerites. A salute to our salute, the U.S. Old Glory flying over the Endicott.
Then he took the two German commanders into a room, and he got two of his young kids from the Bronx, both Jewish in heritage, and Cain remembered their names. ``Gottlieb,'' he said, and either ``Rosenberg'' or ``Rosenstein,'' and he gave his two young Jewish sailors submachine guns, Thompsons.
Bulkeley says, ``You understand English, right?'' These two guys are from the Bronx, or Brooklyn, and they are kind of proud of their Jewish heritage. ``Don't move or you'll be sorry.'' And he left these two young Jewish American sailors with their Thompsons on him.
Now to the eulogies.
I hope I can get through all this. If I cannot, Mr. Speaker, I want young people and not so young people to get this special order so they get the full eulogy of son/active-duty Capt. Peter Bulkeley, and a CNO who from the ranks as a 16 or 17-year-old seaman, Admiral Boorda. Adm. John M. Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations, senior ranking naval officer on active duty.
His remarks made on April 19, Patriot's Day, he was the highest-
ranking person there. They brought me forward, I kind of slipped in the back; somebody recognized me, and asked me to come forward.
No, I will stay back here. No, come forward.
Here is a row for Cabinet officers. Empty. High-ranking administration people, active-duty military over here. Here is a row for Congressmen or Senators, empty, empty, empty. No Medal of Honor winner from the Senate. No Navy Cross winners from the Senate. No former Secretary of the Navy; from the Senate, no Senators.
Some people in the House felt bad there were not enough people at Ron Brown's funeral. I wanted to go to Ron Brown's funeral. I was caught in California. Ron Brown hosted me at Patton's grave as the only Congressman or Senator who showed up December 16 in Europe for the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. I do not know what is wrong with this Chamber and the other body that we did not have tributes all during World War II to a not particularly memorable day in October. We had great World War II heroes, Sonny Montgomery, 101st Airborne paratrooper Sam Gibbons and Henry Hyde on our side. Just a few World War II guys said wonderful things one day but nothing from Pearl Harbor, to that day in October, after the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. I just do not understand why people are not listening to what Reagan said.
So Admiral Boorda begins his remarks, ``You may cast off when ready, Johnny.'' Those were MacArthur's words to Squadron Commander Bulkeley. I am sure Bulkeley, as I discussed with George Jr., turned to Ensign Cox and said, ``Georgie, let's move it out of here. Anchors aweigh.''
Admiral Boorda began.
``Will Rogers said that we can't all be heroes.''
By the way, he beautifully delivered this, Mr. Speaker. ``Some of us have to stand on the curb and clap as they go by.'' Or salute.
``When he made that statement, Will Rogers could only have had one type of person in mind, John Bulkeley.''
``We gather here today.'' This is the new chapel at Fort Myer, in this place, on the bluff above Arlington.
``In this place meant for heroes and applaud a true American hero as he passes by. And we come together here as the rest of America stands up and cheers for a man who symbolizes the very best about our Nation. While we are saddened to no longer have the great John Bulkeley with us, it is not a day of sorrow. He would not have liked or allowed that. Today is a day meant to remember, to give thanks.''
He goes on with page after page telling about his early years in the Navy, the film, They Were Expendable, America's leading man, John Wayne; America's sweetheart, Donna Reed. Do not forget Eisenhower's communications coach, Robert Montgomery. But most of all it was a great story about unbelievable courage and sacrifice.
He talked about how Admiral Bulkeley was famous in the end of that great 55-year legendary career for memos. He would send a one-paragraph memo, sign it and put a P.S. that would go on for pages and pages and he always ended, and I would like to end this speech in advance this way, ``Just thought you'd like to know,'' Mr. Speaker. Great speech, Admiral Boorda.
``Admiral Bulkeley lived his life for our Navy and our country. He did so with guts and heart and most importantly with honor. His service stands as a tribute to every sailor, every American, every person on this earth who cherishes freedom. His life touched more than just us. It touched the world. And so today America says, `Thank you, shipmate, for giving us the very best.' And while we know that you were always too special, too extraordinary to ever need our thanks, we just thought you'd like to know.''
He paid great tribute to Alice Bulkeley whom I met. Beautiful young English girl whom he met in China during some very dark days after the Panay. He was then assigned to the Sacramento, the last coal-burning ship in the U.S. Navy. He married her and no sooner were they married than he had to leave her alone on their honeymoon with a Colt .45 under her pillow to go off on secret assignments for the Navy in China itself.
He comes to the end, Admiral Boorda, our CNO. He says, ``Alice, I know that John loved you with every fiber of his being. And that while he's no longer here, he's still with you and your family in every way. I can feel it in this chapel. I can see it in the faces of your beautiful family. The wonderful children that John helped you raise: John Jr.; Joan; Peter, our Navy captain; Regina.''
I have a daughter by that name, Kathleen Regina. Regina told me her nickname is Gina.
``And Diana,'' the youngest, ``and your lovely grandchildren are each a testimony to the tremendous husband and father that he was and always will be in your hearts. John's life was a full and fulfilled life. He did what he wanted to do and in the way he wanted to do it. He had a special wife, a great family, and the undying love of a grateful Nation. And he knew he couldn't ask for more than that. In remembering, in giving thanks for Admiral John Duncan Bulkeley, we should be happy and heartened, for he was a man who truly gave it all and who truly had it all. So when the time came, when he once again heard a familiar voice calmly say, `You may cast off when ready, Johnny,' he had prepared his ship well. He had passed the most important inspection. He was ready for his final voyage.''
Then after that beautiful eulogy and the beautiful eulogies that I should have asked for from his grandchildren--they also read scripture, one grandson, one granddaughter--his handsome son Peter got up. Capt. Peter Bulkeley, and he said:
``Admiral Boorda, thank you for your very kind remarks. As our Chief of Naval Operations and as a personal friend of the Bulkeley family, we really appreciate your deep concern, your compassion, and personal kindness from all of us. Thank you again. For everyone, please sit back and relax and let me tell you a story about a very special man. Typical of the Admiral, he would want me to come to the point, so this is what he really wanted you to know. He had no regrets of his life, that he lived a long time, married the woman he loved, raised a family to be proud of, and served a Navy second to none.''
Mr. Speaker, I pause here in Peter Bulkeley's opening eulogy to remind you and anyone listening to this Chamber proceeding that Ronald Reagan asked me to do things like this, that I may have my weird detractors who do not understand why I am concerned about the social decay of our country, why I want even defense publications like Armed Forces Journal International, or Roll Call, or the Hill, Marty, why I want you to pay attention to what Billy Graham said, poised on the edge of self-destruction. That is why I am doing this. I want people to hear these words about a real hero. Why no one showed up from this administration, unbelievably. The Army did send their No. 2 man, General Reimer's deputy.
I went to another tribute a few weeks later. It was not written up in the Hill or Armed Forces Journal International. It was not written up there. But I went to a ceremony at Arlington last Sunday where I was given some small piece of thank-you for getting 5,000 warriors--men and plenty of women--the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for what they did in El Salvador. No Senators, no Congressmen except myself, nobody from the administration. As a matter of fact, the Senate and some strange blockage at the highest levels of the Pentagon did not want these 5,000 male and female warriors to get that medal. And now I have kicked open the door and we are going to get some Bronze Stars and some combat infantry badges and combat medical badges for these people. Nobody showed up there. A beautiful Sunday, playing taps from the grave of Army Colonel Pickett. I got to meet his dad, a retired Army Colonel Picket.
How did Colonel Picket die? On his knees with a Communist bullet from the FMLN shot into the back of his head, killed this young enlisted man lying wounded on the ground, the copilot Captain Dawson was already dead in the cockpit of their helicopter.
When did that take place? January 1991. Nobody noticed because a week later the air war of Desert Storm started.
I will close without any more interruptions, just sit back, as Peter Bulkeley says, and listen to this story of a man who was a legend, and when I told Buck McKeon of our House that I could not believe nobody was there, he said, ``You mean he outlived his fame.''
He said, ``If Ron Brown had lived to be Admiral Bulkeley's age, in his eighties, would anybody have remembered him or his less than 4 years as Commerce Secretary?''
{time} 1530
No, I guess if you die young, on the line, you get buildings named after you. But if God gives you a good long life and a beautiful family, only a few remember and show up to say good-bye.
Peter continues:
When I pressed dad on `no regrets,' he sheepishly told me with a twinkle in his eye that that wasn't quite altogether true. And he finally said, I do have one regret, Pete. I should have gotten a bigger boat. A destroyer is not too bad, but he was the kind of guy who could have handled a super carrier. So if you are contemplating a bigger boat, you know what to do.
I will not have in my lifetime a greater honor than today as an officer in our Navy and as his son, because I get to talk about my dad. Admiral Boorda, Admiral Larson, Superintendent at Annapolis, Admiral Trost, General Dubia, the number two man in the Army, General Blott, Assistant Secretary Perry, Assistant Secretary, Medal of Honor recipients, two of them from Army, Vietnam, another cause for freedom that Reagan and I both believed in, and so did Admiral Bulkeley, representatives of the Senate, none were there, and the House, one, members of the diplomatic corps, a couple, allied representatives from France, they were there, Philippines, Great Britain, members of our armed forces, all of them in uniform, friends from Hacketstown, New Jersey, and around the globe, all of those who served and knew Admiral John Bulkeley, and most especially my mom, my sisters, Joan, Regina and Diana and their husbands, my brother at the organ, beautiful, my wife, all eight of the Admiral's grandchildren, we have come together to honor a great man, a patriot, a legend, a hero in the truest sense. A husband, a father, a friend; a simple man that did his duty as God gave him the ability to do, and the man that tried to keep a low profile, but somehow always ended up in the limelight of life.
Admiral John Bulkeley is a legend. He devoted his entire life to his country and to his Navy. Six decades of his life were spent in the active defense of America. Even after retirement in 1988, he remained engaged in the direction of our Navy and our country. He represented the Navy and the veterans at Normandy during the D-Day celebrations, laying wreaths and flowers of his and our fallen comrades. He provided inspirational speeches to our youth and our leadership. He believed in America.
My dad believed in a strong defense. He believed in a Navy he loved more than his own life. John Bulkeley's destiny may have been cast long before he sought the salt spray of the open ocean. His ancestors that preceded him, like Richard Bulkeley, brought aboard HMS Victory by Lord Nelson just prior to the battle of Trafalgar, and with my son Mark, I stood on the spot on the deck of the Victory where Admiral Nelson was hit.
We went down below decks. I stood on the spot and touched the deck where he died. That is down at Portsmouth. But at the British Naval Museum in Greenwich, I then saw his uniform where the French sniper's bullet entered at the top of his epaulette.
Mr. Speaker. So I am with the history of Peter Bulkeley's words at this point.
Then there is John Bulkeley of HMS Wager under Captain Bliegh, who sailed with Anson's squadron to raid Spanish silver ships of the New World, and Charles Bulkeley, raising the Union Jack for the first time on an American warship, the Alfred, commanded by John Paul Jones. All this influenced his intense love of the sea.
He was born in New York City, as I was, grew up on a farm in Hacketstown, NJ, and wrote his high school class poem in 1928, if you can believe that. A poet, and he loved opera. And they played his favorites in the background, Mr. Speaker, all during the reception after the funeral.
He loved animals, and took great care of feeding and caring for any that sought his help. He was compassionate to those needs. He loved his black cat.
His love of the sea however was his dream and destiny. Unable to gain an appointment to Annapolis from his home State of New Jersey, his determination led him to Washington, and after knocking on doors, he gained an appointment from the State of Texas.
As America dealt with the depression, his dream of going to sea, however, received a setback. Only half of the 1933 Academy class that graduated received a commission. John Bulkeley, noted early on for his intense interest in engineering, went on and joined the Army Air Corps, I stand corrected. Like the crazy flying machines of the day, he landed hard more than once, and after a year, he left flying for the deck of a cruiser, the Indianapolis, as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy.
That was an ill-fated ship.
In a recent message to the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations recounted a story about the Admiral, cautioning all that read the message there are thousands of John Bulkeley stories. I have been fortunate enough to have heard a lot of them, but I am sure not all, as cards and letters continue to come forth to this day, with just another story to top the previous received one.
Many will, and do move with pride and love, respect, and maybe in some cases almost disbelief. Stories, as we all know, can grow. But I have also had the benefit of talking personally with the men and women that were there with the Admiral when history was being made. And the stories stand the test of time. I will only mention a few today.
Ensign John Bulkeley chartered an interesting course in his early years, and was recognized early on by the Navy's leadership. A new ensign in the mid-thirties, he took the initiative to remove the Japanese ambassadors's briefcase from a stateroom aboard a Washington-
bound steamer, delivering the same to Naval Intelligence a short swim later. This bold feat, of which there were to be many more in his life, did not earn him any medals, but it did get him a safe one-way ticket out of the country, and a new assignment as chief engineer of a coal burning gun boat, the Sacramento, also known in those parts as the Galloping Ghost of the China Coast.
Picture in your minds the movie Sand Pebbles. That is it. There he was to meet a young attractive English girl at a dinner party aboard the HMS Diana. Alice Wood, later my mom, and the handsome swashbuckling John Bulkeley, would in the short period of courtship, live an incredible story together.
In China they would witness the invasion of Swatow and Shanghai by Japanese troops, the bombing of U.S.S. Panay. The were strafed by warring planes and, watching from a hotel, soldiers at war in the street below. John Bulkeley, with a uncanny propensity to stir things up, often took the opportunity to bait the occupying Japanese soldiers, dashing with his bride to be into no-man's lands, chased by Japanese soldiers, and once in a while shooting them with a BB gun air pistol only their back sides, ``just for fun.'' He fit the mold of Indiana Jones, hat, coat and all, and not necessarily a commissioned officer in fore and aft cap of the day.
But John Bulkeley learned a lot from this experience, as a chief engineer, and also what war was all about and what an enemy invading force was capable of doing.
At the dawn of World War II, and now a Fleet Lieutenant commanding motor torpedo boats, John Bulkeley hit his stride as a daring, resourceful and courageous leader, determined to fight to the last against enemy forces attacking the Philippines. His exploits have made legends as well as movies.
As a young lieutenant, he would, ``Say no one knows what war is about, until you are in it.'' Fearless in battle, resourceful and daring, that was Bulkeley. Men like George Cox, skipper of PT-41 would write in 1944, ``I would follow this man to hell if asked.'' A lot of others would agree.
And General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, after being ordered out of the Philippines and arriving at Mindanao following a 600 mile open ocean escape, Mr. Speaker, aboard a 77 foot motor torpedo boat through enemy lines, would say, ``You have taken me out of the jaws of death. I shall never forget it.'' He probably added ``Johnny.''
John Bulkeley's daring exploits will never be forget even. By the way, MacArthur said that to George Cox, Sr., too.
Hard as leather on the outside, he was also a man with compassion and a love for his fellow man. Reflecting to me a month ago, just before his death, about those terrible early days of World War II, dad wept over the decision that his men and our Army at Bataan were left behind to face an enemy of overwhelming strength.
Imagine, Mr. Speaker, this tough 55 year active duty seawolf still brought to the tears to his own son remembering the men we left behind at Bataan, like Colonel Eugene Holmes, who Clinton used so shamelessly in the summer of 1969. That is the ROTC commander at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
But he also acknowledged that when the coach calls possible you to bunt, then sacrifice you do, with all the strength and conviction you can muster, for the overall victory cannot be achieved unless we are prepared to give it will our all. From the Pacific campaign, where he would command another squadron of PT boats, he would go to the European theater, just in time for norm and difficult. At the recent 50 day celebration, my sister and I, that would be Joan, along with our spouses, had the honor to accompany the Admiral and my mother. And what a beautiful spouse, Navy wife, Peter's wife is.
Many a time I heard from a Navy veterans, ``thank you for saving my life. I would not be here were it not for you.'' He would hear them say that to his dad.
Let me reminisce a minute. As we were leaving Charles deGaulle Airport, another World War II vet, recognizing the Admiral, engaged him in conversation. As they departed, my dad said to this vet, ``see you in the next war.'' Upon hearing this, the veteran quickly came to attention, rendered a snappy salute and responded, ``I will be there, sir. Ready to fight.'' Where do we find such men? Peter is quoting Michener there. It is probably in his subconscious.
John Bulkeley led naval forces and torpedo boats and mine sweepers in clearing all the lanes to Utah Beach, keeping German E boats, who, Mr. Speaker, had killed almost 900 men near Slapsand, England in Operation Tiger in April, less than two months before D-Day, and it was kept secret for 25 years that more men died because of German E boats at the end of April of '44 than died on the beaches of Normandy in the waters of Normandy.
The German E boats were to be kept back from attacking the landing ships along what they called the Mason Line, running parallel to Utah Beach, and picking up wounded soliders from the sinking minesweeper Tide and the Destroyer Cory.
His World War II exploits would not be complete without the mention of his love for destroyers, of which he would command many in his years to come. As Normandy operations wound up, he got his first large ship, the Destroyer Endicott, a month after D-Day. I told this story about the British gunboats, the two German Corvettes charging in as dawn's light broke. I told that story. I want to use every minute here. Peter tells it better than I did.
When I asked about dad about that action, he said ``What else could I do but engage? You fight, you win. That is the reputation of our Navy, then, now, and in the future. You fight, you win.''
Let me pause. The Admiral was a strong believer in standards.
Mr. Speaker, my Reagan prologue was so long, I have 12 more beautiful eulogy remarks of Peter Bulkeley. I will submit them for the Record. I think it is important enough that on one of the 3-hour special orders I have next week, and I ask permission for those special orders right now, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I will finish Peter's remarks, picking up with the Southern France invasion support and refer to today's May 10th Record, so people can get it. That gets Peter's dad an extra mention on the House floor.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the remainder of Capt. Peter W. Bulkeley's eulogy for his father, Adm. John D. Bulkeley.
Let me pause--The Admiral was a strong believer in standards, some may say, from the old school, as the enemy Captain of one of the corvettes soon learned. Coming up from the sea ladder, he would not salute the colors of the Endicott, and was promptly tossed back into the sea. The third time, did the trick and he was taken prisoner and allowed on deck. I had heard this story a long time ago, but last year, I had the privilege of attending the Endicott ship's reunion, and was told this same tale, over and over again by the crew that served and loved their Captain, John Bulkeley.
World War Two closed and the Admiral emerged as one of the Navy's and America's most decorated heros--Having been awarded the Medal of Honor, The Navy Cross, The Army Distinguished Service Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a Second Award, Two Silver Stars, The Legion of Merit with Combat V and The Purple Heart twice over, the Philippine Distinguished Conduct Star and from France, The French Croix de Guerre. Asked about his many decorations, John Bulkeley would only comment, ``Medals and Awards don't mean anything, it's what's inside you, how you feel about yourself that counts''.
With an eye to the future John Bulkeley, looked forward to the day he would become an Admiral in the Navy he loved so much.
As President Kennedy in early months of his administration dealt with an ever increasing crisis over Cuba, the Admiral got his wish and for a quarter of a century would serve as a Flag Officer in the Navy.
Challenged in his first assignment as Commander of the Guantanamo Naval Base, he met and defeated the challenge of Fidel Castro's threats of severing the water supplies of the base. Today, Guantanamo, stands as a symbol of American resolve because men like John Bulkeley stood up and refused to bend, and took the initiative to stare down belligerent threats of lessor men, not friendly with America. Perhaps a tribute of the time, was the wanted poster, offering 50,000 Peso's for him, dead or alive by the communist leadership of Cuba along with a description, ``a guerrilla of the worst species''. . .
At Guantanomo, for those that have visited, there is a hill that overlooks the Northeast Gate, a Gate, with a sign that reads ``Cuba, Land Free From America''. I stood with my dad on that hill almost 32 years ago. Cuban troops began moving about, his 19 year old driver, a Marine Lance Corporal came running up and stood directly in front of the Admiral, ready and willing to take the bullet that would end the life of his Commander. The Admiral loved his Marines, the Marines loved and respected him in return. He would be with them day and night, in fatigues, ready to conduct war if necessary but more to defend Americans and The Land of the Free against the Communist yoke of tyranny. As COL Steven's, the former Commanding Officer of the Marine Barracks at Guantanamo wrote recently, adding three more stories to the Legend of John Bulkeley. The Admiral had the compassion for the men in the field, taking time again and again to bring them relief, whether cookies on Christmas morning or visiting them at odd hours of the night to ease their nerves, they loved this man. The Admiral would construct on that hill, the largest Marine Corps Insignia in the world, as a quiet reminder, that the United States Marine Corps stood vigilance over the base. And in tribute, a Marine would write: ``John Bulkeley, Marine in Sailors clothing''. Camp Bulkeley is still there in Guantanamo today and the Marine anchor and globe has a fresh coat of paint.
John Bulkeley never forgot his early years, the hard iron like discipline, the poor material condition of the fleet and the need to always be ready. In his own words, to be able to conduct prompt, sustained, combat operations at sea. Assigned as the President of the Board of Inspection and Survey, a post held by many distinguished Naval Officers since its inception almost since the beginning of the Navy, his boundless energy would find him aboard every ship in the Navy, from keel to top of the mast, from fire control system to inside a boiler, discussing readiness and sharing sea stories and a cup of coffee with the men who operate our ships, planes and submarines. He was relentless in his quest to improve the safety and material condition of the fleet and the conditions for the health and well being of those that manned them. He conducted his inspections by the book in strict accordance with standards as many a man well knows, but his love for the sailors always came through. His ``Just thought you'd like to know letters'', was another invention of his, that was designed to be ``an unofficial report'' but of course were often greeted by a groan by the recipient in the Navy's leadership, knowing that John Bulkeley had another concern that needed attention and the number of information addrees receiving the same ``Just thought you'd like to know'' letters, often was longer than the letter itself. The Admiral would laugh about his informal invention less than thirty days ago.
After fifty-five years of Commissioned service, John Bulkeley retired to private life. I was there at his retirement ceremony with Admiral Trost, then Chief of Naval Operations. John Bulkeley as you recall, did not like notoriety and wanted to keep a low profile, throughout his life, even his last day in his Navy. His ceremony as requested was brief and to the point. Held in the CNO's office, with family present, all he sought after giving his entire life to his country and his service was to have the CNO's Flag Lieutenant, open the door so he could slip his mooring line and leave quietly.
Today we celebrate the final journey of a Great American, John Bulkeley, and let him sail away. We should not mourn for he would not want that, preferring we celebrate his long life, fruitful life and a life he chooses to lead. When asked to describe his own life; He said: ``Interesting, Fascinating and Beneficial to the United States.''
The spirit of John Bulkeley, is here. You can see it everywhere. You can see it in the faces of our young sailors and marines, the midshipmen and our junior officers who will be challenged to live up to his standards of integrity, loyalty, bravery and dedicated service to country and to service.
John Bulkeley's career and service to the nation spanned six turbulent decades of this century, he saw first hand desperate times and the horrors of war. Yet he was also a father, marrying the woman he loved and in his own words,
``it was the best thing I ever did''. And raised a family he could be proud of. Because we're proud of him. Mom, you were his right arm, his closest friend for a long and full life. You gave him your love and your support. You truly were the Wind Beneath His Wings. Yellow roses and his Colt 45 that he gave to you on your wedding night, while he stood watch out in Swatow Harbor provide us comfort of this love for you and his service to country. Before he passed away, his family, every member, child and grandchild, sons and daughters-in-law all came to be with him in his last days. This by itself, is testimony of the legacy he leaves behind and the love his family had for him.
Today we face a different challenge that what John Bulkeley did. Old enemies are our allies, but now there are new foes who challeage our country's interests and our way of life sometimes even inside our own borders. Admiral Bulkeley's efforts and sacrifices for a better world, a free world, his integrity and honor, and a combat ready fleet, ready to conduct prompt, sustained combat operations are his legacy to our nation.
Seated before me, are many of the warriors that fought alongside the Admiral, shared in his beliefs, his determination, his losses, his grief and his unfailing love of family, service and country.
With his passing, the watch has been relieved. A new generation takes the helm and charts the course. His Navy, he shaped for so many years is at sea today, strong and better because of him, operating forward in far away places, standing vigilant and engaged in keeping peace and helping our fellow man, but ready for war.
In his own words he leaves this with you. ``Be prepared! Your day will come, (heaven forbid), where you will be called to go forward to defend our great nation. Your leadership, bravery and skill will be tested to the utmost!''
``You should never forget that America's Torch of Freedom has been handed down to you by countless others that answered their country's call and often gave their lives to preserve freedoms so many take for granted. This torch is now in your hands. You have a great responsibility to uphold: Duty, Honor and Country. God Bless each of you and protect you.''
Just though you'd like to know!
So, we gather together today to say farewell to a man we love, respect and cherish. A man that did his duty, that made his mark in life and left the world a better and safer place. God bless you Dad. All lines are clear.
A BAD TIME FOR FAMILIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, this week we will end it with the celebration of Mother's Day on Sunday. I think it has been a bad week for mothers and a bad week for families and a bad week for children. We had a Republican housing bill which passed, which greatly reduced the participation of the Federal Government in the provision of housing for the poorest people in America; bad for families, bad for children, bad for mothers.
One of the highlights of the debate on this bill was the offering of an amendment which would have just kept the present provision in the bill which says that no family should be made to pay more than 30 percent of their income for rent in public housing. No family should be made to pay more than 30 percent. That was removed by the Republican majority, and the amendment which was attempting to put that back into the legislation was voted down by the Republican majority.
It means it was telling poor families in America that you should pay more than 30 percent, be prepared. But no Member of Congress pays more than 30 percent of their income for housing, I assure you. Very few people in America pay 30 percent or more of their income for housing. That is not the way budgets for families are constructed. Yet we are saying that poor people should pay more than 30 percent. So it was not a good action to benefit families and mothers.
Next week we are looking at a situation we are going to be voting on the defense authorization. We are told that $13 billion is being added to the defense budget; $13 billion being added. How is that going to benefit families and children and mothers in America?
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Beyond that, we have no hope next week of voting for the increase in the minimum wage. The increase in the minimum wage calls for a mere 45-
cent increase in 1 year and a 45-cent increase the next year, a total over a 2-year period of an increase of 90 cents, which would bring the minimum wage up to $5.15 per hour.
Mr. Speaker, that would be good for families, families that are at the very bottom who are working, who find that, although they are working, they cannot make ends meet, cannot live on $4.25 an hour, which is the present minimum wage. So we would do a great deal for families, for mothers and children, if we were to move next week to pass an increase in the minimum wage.
But that is not on the horizon. What we are going to do instead is pass a bill to increase the defense budget by $13 billion. The authorization to increase the defense budget is for $13 billion additional.
Next week we will probably have the Republican budget on the floor, and of course the Republican budget will be passed because the Republican majority has the numbers to pass it. The Republican majority this year, this fiscal year, has already cut $23 billion out of the budget. That $23 billion, a large part of those cuts were in housing, and many of the cuts were in job training.
Activities and programs that are very needed, very much needed by the American people in general and certainly by families, by mothers and children, and yet they were cut. In this coming Republican budget we can expect more of the same kinds of cuts. In fact, the cuts in Medicaid and Medicare are back on the table. It was a retreat from those, but they are back on the table. So there will be an even larger cut in this year's budget than we had last year; $23 billion was just a beginning.
More important for families and for children is the fact that we are going to have in the next 10 or 15 days the Medicaid entitlement on the chopping block. Medicaid entitlement means that Medicaid, which had only existed for a little more than 30 years, it was part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, created a little more than 30 years ago. The Medicaid entitlement says that, if you are poor, if you can pass a means test which shows your family is poor, then you are entitled to Medicaid, which is federally funded. The Federal Government will make certain that you get the aid you need in order to take care of your health needs.
Now, that is an entitlement. It means that no matter how many people are in need in a given year, the Federal Government stands behind the process by which they shall be taken care of. They have a right to the care, and the Government will provide the Federal share of the dollars. That entitlement now is being threatened. The Governors, both Democratic and Republican, have voted that they would like to have the Medicaid entitlement removed, not have the Federal Government stand behind the provision of health care for poor people. The States will instead take care of it on a finite basis. No entitlement. That means that there will be a certain amount of money available, and all of the people who get sick after the money is spent will not be taken care of. The entitlement is gone.
Mr. Speaker, the entitlement for nursing home care will be gone because two-thirds of Medicaid money goes to finance care for people in nursing homes. Two-thirds. Only one-third goes to poor families. Two-
thirds goes to people in nursing homes. So that is threatened. That will be removed. That is not good for families, not good for mothers, not good for children.
In fact, the movement of the Medicaid entitlement will mean a first step toward genocide, in my opinion. We are going to give it to the States. That means it will be decentralized genocide, a first step toward decentralized genocide. I will talk more about that later.
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about all of those items, but let me just talk about a few things that are nice that happened this week. National Library Week was this week, and it was an occasion where the libraries celebrated 50 years of the Washington office of the American Library Association. They were quite happy that the Federal Government has given anything to libraries.
We had a banquet where they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American Library Association, Washington office, and they honored some Members of Congress who had helped with libraries over the years. As I sat there and listened to the celebration, it occurred to me that never have so many applauded so lustily for so little. Never have so many applauded so lustily for so little.
The Federal Government has done very little for libraries over the years. Over the 50-year history of the national ALA Washington office, they have received very little help from the Federal Government relatively speaking.
In fact we have a bill which is pending now in the Senate which will authorize $150 million in aid to libraries; $50 million is what the Senate has, and I think the House of Representatives has $110 million. There is some kind of talk there will be agreement whereby the higher figure may be accepted, and we will have $150 million in aid to libraries. Well, that is down from where it was just 5 years ago. At one point we got as high as $217 million.
Aid to libraries has gone down instead of up. This has happened at a time when we are talking about the need to increase our level of education for families and for children.
So it is good that National Library Week took place. It is good the librarians are happy and celebrating the fact that we have gotten an agreement almost to maintain the level of Federal funding for libraries at $150 million a year. The authorization now will go down. The authorization was open-ended, but now the authorization will set a ceiling that no more than $150 million will be available to all of the thousands of libraries across America who need some kind of assistance.
Of course, State and local governments provide most of the money for libraries, but that is the way it is. Why should it be that way if education is a national concern and our national security is dependent on education? Then you would think libraries would be getting far more than they get now in terms of aid from the Federal Government.
Libraries are the biggest bargain the Government has for the millions of people served. The dollars, which are pennies per person, are quite great indeed. So the value of what we spend for libraries is unexcelled in any other area of expenditures in education. But that was a mixed blessing. I am not happy with what the Federal Government has done in this critical area, but we celebrated.
We also had a mixed victory in terms of people with disabilities. I spoke last week about the fact that the bill which provides aid to children with disabilities, it is called IDEA, Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, that act is what is in existence right now, they are trying to replace it with another act, which would be a new authorization, and they are chipping away, I said, at the Federal Government's commitment to children with disabilities.
There are many ways in which the Federal Government in that legislation would reduce its level of commitment. I am happy to report that the committee I serve on, the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, postponed the markup. The markup was to take place on Wednesday, the 8th, and now it has been postponed.
And one of the reasons it was postponed is because the numerous groups that are concerned and involved with trying to help improve this legislation have all indicated that I was correct; that when they looked at the bill closely there was a withdrawal of the Federal commitment in a very basic way.
For years, the Federal Government has committed itself to picking up the cost of the excess, part of the cost of the excess. It costs a certain amount to educate a child in a school system. And whatever the additional cost was to educate a child because they had disabilities, that cost went up. The authorization language was that it would pick up 40 percent of the excess cost; 40 percent.
Now, we have never actually appropriated enough money to reach the goal of 40 percent of the excess cost, but we did get up to 7 percent; 7 percent. In the new legislation that was being proposed we were backing away from that commitment and zero percent was committed. We thought that was a big step backward, and I am glad to hear that we have postponed the markup. That is good news for mothers, it is good news for children.
There was also good news occurring today. We have in the Capitol a rally of thousands of nurses. Nurses have come because they feel they are shut out of the whole process by which health care is being reengineered. Health care in America, the system, is undergoing some revolutionary changes. The biggest change relates to the health maintenance organizations, health maintenance organizations which will be providing service to people on a per capita basis.
They will have each individual family pay a certain amount of money and they will provide service for that individual, for that family, for a year on the basis of that per capita amount.
They are changing the way health care is provided because with the dollar figure placed on each family, the incentive for the HMO is to try to keep the cost of the health care down. That is a laudable goal. We do not want to spend any more for health care than we have to spend. But we find excesses have started to develop where HMO's, given no kind of regulatory controls, have been pushing the quality of health care steadily downward because they want to keep the costs down.
That has resulted in legislative action in many States. Some States have said we cannot push a mother with a baby out of a hospital after 24 hours. HMO's have started to do that. The HMO's have been saying 24 hours is enough if a woman has a baby in a hospital; she has to go. So some States have said, no, it is 48 hours.
It used to be the doctors and the nurses and the people taking care of the mother who had the child that made the judgment as to when that mother could go safely home with the child. So here is something that gets to the heart of what Mother's Day is all about. The nurses are here to say that that kind of activity, either by hospitals or by health maintenance organizations, endangers the quality of life of the child and the mother. They are here to say that as nurses they want the opportunity to be able, as professionals, to say when wrong decisions are being made about the care of patients.
Nurses are our experts on the front line in health care. They see more of patients than doctors. Nurses are closer to the situation. They read the vital signals on a day-to-day basis. When we are in the hospital we see more of nurses than we see of doctors. When young children come into the world, most children are born in hospitals in this country, nurses are one of the first experiences they will encounter, even if they do not realize it. And often, of course, if we are fortunate to live a long life, as we live longer and life becomes more complicated in terms of physical maintenance, we are going to spend more time in hospitals. And nurses, at the end of our lives, are probably going to be one of the last set of people that we have experiences with.
So I want to congratulate and thank the nurses who have come today to Washington by the thousands and say that they are very much a part of what Mother's Day is all about. Many of them may be individual mothers, of course, and we certainly applaud that, but certainly in terms of keeping mothers together at a very critical time in their lives, taking care of infants at a very critical time of their lives, nurses are very much on the front line.
It is Mother's Day, and I hope that on Sunday, as we reflect on Mother's Day, we will stop and think about what the Nation is doing for mothers and what the Nation is doing for children, what the Nation is doing for families. Among Members of Congress there is a lot of rhetoric this year about family values. Everybody talks about family values. And when one hears the dialog, we think that family values are all about whether or not children will be allowed to see pornography on the Internet or whether we will take a stronger step about getting pornography off the TV sets or getting violence off the TV sets.
I think that is important. We should get rid of pornography and violence. Certainly violence is pervasive on our TV sets. Our children see hundreds and hundreds of murders. By the time a child reaches high school, they have seen thousands of murders on TV. So we should deal with that, and that is part of what family values are all about. I am certainly not criticizing that. But it is just a tiny part of what support for family values has to be all about.
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Support for family values and support for families ought to be about so much more. It ought to be about food, clothing, shelter, providing educational opportunity. It ought to be about providing jobs that have wages that are large enough, wages that are high enough to guarantee that when people work they earn enough money to make a living.
But in celebration of Mother's Day, I just want to digress for a moment and say that in March 1990, when we had a day care bill before us and the talk about mothers and children and what the Federal role should be in trying to guarantee that poor mothers who go to work have an opportunity to have their children get day care coverage, it was a long debate.
During that debate I got very angry about the way the Members of the House were dragging their feet. Indeed, Members of both Houses were dragging their feet on a concrete answer to the problem of day care for working mothers, poor working mothers. I wrote a rap poem because I was very impressed at that time by the fact that rap poems had become, rap music had become very popular. I was not happy with the kind of content that the rap music had, what they were saying, the substance of rap music was not impressive. But I was impressed with the possibility of rap as an art form. I was impressed with the possibility of rap as a poetry form, a literary form. I still am an exponent of rap as a literary form that ought to be developed. I think that like the sonnet, it has a lot of potential for expressing strong feelings.
The first rap that I wrote and put into the Congressional Record was called ``Let the Mothers Lead the Fight.'' It is all about the fight for mothers to get public policies which are conducive to the improvement of the quality of life for families. At that particular time it was day care.
There are many others that, many other public policies that do relate to families. I dedicated this rap poem to Marian Wright Edelman, because Marian Wright Edelman at that time was very much in the middle of a fight to get better day care for families, for poor families.
Marian Wright Edelman, as you know, is the head of the Children's Defense Fund. The Children's Defense Fund is going to have a stand for children here in Washington on June 1. And the same issues that we were discussing, in March 1990, are very much on the agenda today in May of 1996. In fact, the situation is more serious now because we did not have a threat of Medicaid being taken away in 1990. Now Medicaid may be taken away from families in 1996. So I think the rap poem is appropriate. I will read it again here. I will read it for the first time on the floor because the first time I just submitted it into the Record. It is called ``Let the Mothers Lead the Fight.''
I dedicate this to all the mothers on Mother's Day. It is very significant that when I first put this in the Record, a local newspaper in my district ran the poem on the front page of the newspaper that weekend just before Mother's Day. So I want to note that it is not the first time that it has been pulled from the pages of the Congressional Record. We did have it run in one of our local weekly newspapers back in 1990:
Let the mothers lead the fight-Sisters snatch the future from the nightDangerous dumb males have made a mess on the rightMacho mad egos on the left swollen out of sight
Let the mothers lead the fight!Drop the linen-throw away the laceStop the murder-sweep out the arms raceLet the mothers lead the fight:
Use your broomSweep out the doomDon't fear the mouseBreak out of the house-Rats are ruining the world!Let the mothers lead the fight!
Fat cats want to buy your soulSaving the children is the mothers role:Cook up some cool calculationsLook up some new recipesLock the generals tight down in the deep freeze.Let the mothers lead the fight!
Human history is a long ugly taleTragedy guided by the frail monster male:Babies bashed with blind bayonetsDaughters trapped in slimy lust nets,Across time hear our loud terrified wail-Holocaust happens when the silly males fail.Let the mothers lead the fight!
Snatch the future back from the nightStorm the conference rooms with our rageFocus X-rays on the Washington stage.The world is being ruined by rats!Rescue is in the hands of the cats:
Scratch out their liesPut pins in smug rat eyesHate the fakesBurn rhetoric at the stakesEnough of this endless selfish nightLet the mothers lead the fight!
Holocaust happens when the silly males fail!March now to end this long ugly taleLet the mothers lead the fight!
Stand up now to the frail monster male!Let the mothers lead the fight:Snatch the future back from the night!Let the mothers lead the fight?
I was told later on that that is a little too angry. It is a little too anti-male. It is a little too hostile, but that was in March of 1990. That was before the attack on Aid to Families with Dependent Children. We are almost certain to end Aid to Families with Dependent Children as a Federal program as an entitlement. That is almost certain. I am not even going to bring up, get up anybody's hopes that we can hold on to that.
What we are fighting now is to hold on to the entitlement for Medicare, something which mothers and families, children cannot survive without. Poor families need Medicaid. If the mothers do not lead the fight, it appears that the silly males who are in control of policies and power are going to move to take away the Medicaid entitlement. That is going to be a first step toward what I call decentralized genocide.
The nurses were here today, the nurses were here to talk about health care. The nurses were here to talk about the fact that there is a health care industrial complex that is being developed. What do I mean by that when I say a health care industrial complex? I mean that health care instead of being primarily a service is going to be primarily an industry, a vehicle for making profits.
Health care has always been an industry, a service and an industry, a very vital service, but it is an industry. It employs people. Income is earned. Capital is made, is required to build hospitals. All kind of auxiliary companies feed in, the laboratories and the companies that build health care machinery, the drug companies that do the research and earn tremendous amounts of money on the drugs that they develop. It is an industry. It has always been an industry. There is nothing wrong with it being an industry. It is an industry that large amounts of public funds are put into. Taxpayers money goes into the health care industry.
I have said many times, I can think of no more noble way to spend taxpayer money on than to spend it on helping people to stay healthy and helping people who are already ill, helping people who are elderly, who need nursing home care.
There is no more noble way to expend Federal dollars than in the health care industry. The problem now is that the health care is becoming too much of an industry, more industry than service, whereas service was a primary goal before. And the patient and the people and the health care was first.
Now the industry goal of profits, how much money can we make, has become the most important goal. Large insurance companies are buying health maintenance organizations. Pharmaceutical companies are buying health maintenance organizations. The stock market has health maintenance organizations on the stock market. There is a great deal of pressure on every stock market company to produce profits. You have to produce more and more and higher and higher profits.
Where are the profits going to come from? The profits have to come out of giving less care to patients because in many cases these health care maintenance, these health maintenance organizations are being funded by government, the Federal, State and local governments, or they are being funded by industry that wants a lower cost.
The industry wants to spend less money on health care. The government wants to spend less money on health care, and you cannot get profits by raising the price that you charge industry or government. The only way you can make money and increase your profits in health care is to decrease the kind of service you provide to the patient.
Well, that is not exactly true. You might get rid of some waste. There may be waste in the way service is provided. Too many people may be doing the same kinds of things. There may be waste in the amount of money you pay for equipment or waste in the amount of money you pay for drugs.
It is possible that you can legitimately save money and increase profits. But we see too many examples where the easiest course of action by the health maintenance organizations has been to decrease service. That is the easiest way to make the greatest amount of profit.
I am not here to lead a charge against health maintenance organizations. I am not here to try to cover up the fact that in my community, many of my communities, poor communities, Brownsville, East New York, Bedford Stuyvesant, parts of Crown Heights and Brooklyn, New York, people have suffered for years without HMOs being there. The Medicaid mills and the abuses of doctors who were taking exorbitant fees and giving little service, health care has always been a problem.
So health care may be improved through health maintenance organizations. It is possible. I am not going to be dogmatic enough that health maintenance organizations represent some kind of evil that ought to be stopped. No. The argument here is that as you reengineer the health care system, as you restructure it, then do not just restructure it to maximize profits. Restructure it to give better health care. And in the process of restructuring it, include the nurses in the dialogue. Let the nurses give us advice as to how we can restructure health care to make it more effective and at the same time less costly.
When you restructure health care, let the patients be involved. When you restructure health care, by all means, do not push the doctors out on the fringes. There are doctors organizations, medical organizations of doctors complaining about the fact that their decisionmaking powers have been taken away, that they are second-guessed by people who are accountants, that accountants are now running the show who never went to medical school, many of them who did not take a biology course in high school. But they are looking at the costs, and they want to know how badly were people bleeding when they went to the emergency room. If they are not bleeding so many liters, then do not give them emergency care. Send them home.
Reductio ad absurdum, absurd situations like that are almost occurring where people are being told in the emergency room, you have to call your HMO, check with them. And if they say we cannot give you emergency care, then you have to go home. We cannot deal with it. A doctor on the scene in the emergency room to be able to make the judgment, does this person need emergency care or not, and a health maintenance organization should be required, mandated to follow through on the doctor's decision that a person needs the health care.
So we are into a situation now where the most intimate kind of thing that affects families, that affects children, that affects mothers, their health care, the most intimate kind of care is now a matter of public policy.
Public policy has to defend the patients and defend the mothers and defend the children from the possibility that they will be abused by people who are trying to maximize profits. That is the kind of situation we find ourselves in.
Mother's Day, this Sunday, has to be a day of reflection on what is happening in health care, about health care in America. Mother's Day has to be a day where you deal with some of the issues that I have raised in a piece of legislation that I am drafting which got called the Patient and Health Care Professional Protection Act.
Mother's Day has to be a concern of some of the activities that are taking place around the country other than here in Washington. In New York, on next Sunday, May 19, there is going to be rallies at 5 different hospitals to deal with health care. It is called Hospital Support Sunday.
On May 19, in New York, there will be in each one of the 5 boroughs people of all walks of life getting together to come out to show their support for maintaining proper care at the hospitals. New York, we have threatened hospitals that may be closed. Hospitals may be sold. Hospitals may be leased. A number of problems are being generated by the fact that they are trying to make maximum profits off of hospitals and set up a situation where they can maximize the amount of money being paid off the patients.
So in unison with nurses and doctors, people will be coming out on May 19 at 5 different hospital sites to let it be known that the people care about health care.
In this bill that I have, we have 2 major sections. One is to protect the rights of the health care consumer, the patient. It establishes a Federal mechanism for the emergency investigation of the most egregious cases involving death or life-threatening situations. We have situations now where the Federal Government does investigate and survey hospitals. They have come up with reports on the death rate at hospitals that are receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds. But that is after the fact. It is a survey, a study undertaken, sometimes years after the deaths have occurred because they are looking at statistics and how many people in a given area, people in the health care, the heart care surgery section or people who are suffering from asthma, how many deaths in those categories are recorded on the records of the hospital. They have come up with a pattern.
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That has been very useful in determining that some hospitals have patterns of improper care. But it has not been useful in dealing with emergency situations that might save some lives by stopping immediately practices which are dangerous. So a mechanism would be built in here to do that.
We also outlaw what is called the gag order. There are contracts being forced on nurses now where the nurses have to sign a gag order which says you cannot discuss the care being given in this hospital with anybody outside the hospital, you cannot discuss it even with the patient's family. So that is a process that is ongoing that nurses have to deal with.
They are taking care of people, they see things happening not good for the patient, they see things happening that may endanger the patient, but they cannot talk to the family about it. They cannot complain to anybody else about it. It mandates that the gag order of this kind will no longer be there; the Federal Government will make that illegal.
My legislation mandates that there must be a compilation of uniform national patient outcome data collection and analysis to make sure that patients are taken care of, are systematically receiving quality care based on sound evidence. That is a systematic analysis of what happens when patients go to hospitals: Do they have to come back for the same treatment? Do they get infected while they were in the hospital? What pattern is there in this hospital which relates to the patient outcome, directly related to the patient? Hospitals often evaluate it now based on what kind of machinery do they have or what kind of procedures do they undertake, or what are the qualifications of the medical staff; but not on a basic activity like what is happening with the patients.
So there are other mechanisms also which deal with patients.
Most important of all, I insist in this legislation that we create an office of consumer advocacy for health at the State level, and then we insist that there be independent patient advisory committees created at the level of the HMO. That is, every health maintenance organization would have a percentage of its funds paid into a statewide fund that is used to fund health advisory organizations, patient advisory organizations, that would be run by patient groups, a certain percentage. I put in 1 percent; 1 percent of the gross spent on health care should be set aside so that patient advocacy, patient advisory organizations can be funded on a regular basis.
Yes, there will be relief and appeal mechanisms built in. But unless you have the opportunity for patients to organize and have their own group process, they will have no chance against the establishment, medical care establishment, when they have a grievance. So we want patients to have the same kind of activities, mechanism to defend themselves.
And then, of course, we are protecting the health care professionals against any further harassments by having a mechanism for developing nationwide guidelines established. We want to prohibit the discharge and the demotion or harassment of any nurse, doctor, or any other health care professional who assists in an investigation of the hospital or of his or her employer.
We want to guarantee compensation for victims of whistleblower retaliations. We have a whistleblower program for people to inform about abuses in Medicare, waste and corruption in Medicare, but we do not have whistleblower mechanisms which inform about abuses of patients. Nurses need to be protected and compensated if there are retaliations when they report these kinds of abuses.
This is just a brief summary. I do not want to go into details here because I think it is very important to note there is a political process that is beginning. The patients and the nurses, the doctors, all the people who really care about health care more than they care about profits, they outnumber the people who want to make money. So they have a political advantage in our democracy. And what they need to understand is that this is going to be an ongoing political debate for years to come.
It will take us 10 or 15 years to straighten out this new reengineered health care system. In the process of straightening it out, we must have the people who are the experts on the front line there. We first must open up the situation so that they are respected and they are allowed to come to the table and they are allowed to help decide how we are going to reengineer and restructure the system.
In New York State we just had yesterday an announcement made by Governor Pataki. And Governor Pataki is a Republican. I seldom have praise for Republicans. But Republicans, too, can do some good, and I want to praise the Governor for having taken a definitive step in solving some problems related to HMO's in New York State.
A lot of different people have been complaining. The State assembly has a bill which is trying to regulate and improve the care of health maintenance organizations. The State Senate has a bill, the Governor brought them altogether, he brought in the health maintenance organizations, he brought in representatives of the health plans, the Blue Cross/Blue Shield. He brought in certain groups that say they represent patients: New Yorkers for accessible Care, Coalition of Health Care Consumer Organizations. But a lot of different people.
I do not see nurses there. I do not see nurses particularly represented in the groups that are specified here, and that is unfortunate. And I am not sure that the health care consumer organizations really represent consumers, because there is no grassroots consumer organization. Nobody in my community has ever belonged to any of these New York Accessible Care organizations, but at least it was a beginning, and I want to applaud the Governor for making the beginning, and they think they have a bill, they have an agreement, which all parties will agree to and they can have legislation develop as a result.
That is a beginning. It is important to get that legislation out, it is important to have it start on a positive foot. It is a positive move forward, but there needs to be a lot of refinement, there needs to be a lot of new input from nurses. There needs to be a lot of input from patients. There needs to be a lot of input from city council people, from assemblymen, from State senators, from Congress people.
We have said that what we want is a freeze. In New York we are asking for a freeze on the situation. One of the demands for health care support certainly which is going to take place on this next Sunday, May 19, is that there be a freeze to stop the health care industry from stampeding us into a situation which will make the health care system more difficult to improve. We want to freeze so that profits will not be the utmost consideration; freeze everything for 6 months, do not do anything until more people have a chance to have input into the systems that are being proposed for change. Do not sell any hospitals.
We have a mayor, a Republican mayor, who is obsessed with privatization; any privatization is good. So he wants to move forward and privatize. They have a situation now where $43 million was given to, a contract was given to, an organization, and they were in such a hurry to privatize until the total contracting process was illegal. They signed the contract with a staff member, and the board had never approved it. They found out that members of the mayor's own staff had family that was later employed by this company that got the $43 million contract. That kind of conflict of interest and nepotism was rampant. So they withdrew the contract, and now the FBI is in New York investigating the way the mayor's office puts out these contract.
So privatization, moving at breakneck speed, will generate a lot of problems for government and for the taxpayers. Let us freeze the selling of hospitals, let us freeze the granting of contracts, let us freeze the privatization process for 6 months.
Then we are asking that we have a disclosure of current and long-term plans. Whatever the mayor has on the drawing table for his municipal hospitals, let it put it out publicly, let us see it, let us have full disclosure, let us see what the current plans are, let us see what the long-term plans are, and let us all take a look at it and have a chance to comment on it.
This is just simple democracy, the kind of democracy we used to have here in the House of Representatives. When the minority Republicans were in the minority, the Democrats shared information and we had hearings and we did not push bills through without notification. That old-fashioned democracy that we used to have here, we need it at the level of city government and we need it at the level of State government, in the health care areas. So we want full disclosure and an opportunity to comment.
And the final item is we want inclusion in the process, recognize some of the nursing organizations, and the patient organizations and the doctor organizations, recognize them officially and accept from them alternative proposals for the way the health care system is going to be restructured, accept alternative proposals and accept a process of negotiation. If the alternative proposals that are prepared by citizens groups, and we were going to set up a commission in New York, a citizens commission with representatives from the unions that are in hospitals and representatives from the patients, representatives from the nurses and other medical professionals and representatives from community leaders. With all three of those, all those groups represented, four, plus additional people, senior citizens and groups that are impacted most intentionally by health care services, if all of them are represented in the process, then we think we can negotiate systems that benefit everybody.
There is not going to be an overnight process. We know it is going to go on for a large number of years. We know that there are going to be a lot of tensions. We know we will be up against the health care industrial complex. But here is an opportunity for our health care industrial complex to show us that it can be in the interests of the people, a health care industrial complex can act to improve health care in America.
You know, I think the older I get the more I understand how America runs, and if you do not have one of these complexes, you are not going to get very far in terms of government.
We have a military industrial complex that is totally out of control and obsolete, but very powerful, and it still commands the greater part of the budget. It is now going to get an increase of $13 billion. A military industrial complex is the kind of complex that we have to have in order to defeat Hitler's Germany. If we had not had a military industrial complex operating effectively and efficiently when it was needed, we would not have won the war, we would not have been able to stop the spread of communism. So the military industrial complex made a great contribution. It costs too much, it abused its power, it charged too much, it spent too much, and even now when the danger is over, communism is collapsed, and we have no wars of the magnitude of World War II, they want to continue to spend money and use the taxpayers' funds to make profits when it is just not moral anymore, it is not needed.
But let us salute them for what they did. Let us understand that they have to be brought under control by the taxpayers, they have to be brought under control by the Members of Congress and other legislators. It is out of control, and it is obsolete. But we need a health care--if we are going to have a health care industrial complex to move things, let us make sure the abuses that took place with the military industrial complex do not take place with the health care industrial complex, that it does not become an oppressive force dominating the budget and forcing us to cut our libraries.
We cut the budget for libraries, we cut the budget for title I, cut the budget for Head Start. Let us not cut the budgets of all these programs to keep our health care industrial complex going because we want to increase the profits. Let us make certain it is trim so that we have a complex that is providing maximum service and maybe some people will make some money, maybe they will not. Possibly they will.
Maybe we need an industrial complex in order to offset the other industrial complexes like military industrial complex and the health care industrial complex when we really need librarians, teachers, and educators, and publishers, and manufacturers of computers for schools and school construction companies.
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You ought to get all involved in the education industrial complex. We need industrial complexes to offset industrial complexes. Maybe the future of the American economy and the future of our whole political society has a lot to do with how we balance off these complexes.
There is a banking industrial complex. The banking industrial complex is probably the wealthiest, and they have done the most harm to our society in terms of taking money out of taxpayers' pockets. The banking industrial complex pulled the largest swindle in the history of mankind. The banking industrial complex is responsible for the savings and loan swindle. The savings and loan association swindle has cost the American taxpayers already about $300 billion. Taxpayers have paid $300 billion to prop up the banks that were destroyed in the savings and loan banking swindles. It was not just savings and loan banks, but also other banks.
So we have the banking industrial complex that really should be brought under control, we have the military industrial complex that ought to be brought under control. Now we have a new health care industrial complex that we ought to try to get control of before it runs away and destroys large segments of the society and misuses money. But that is the way it is. These complexes are going to be there, one way or another. We have to face up to that and start looking at them with clear eyes, at what runs America.
These complexes have a lot to do with how America runs. There is an oil industrial complex. The gulf war was all about making certain that the oil industrial complex did not get put into a position where it was begging Saddam Hussein. That was a good move in terms of the fact that, in hindsight, Saddam Hussein had to be stopped.
But let us understand what is happening. Let us understand that a health care industrial complex is dangerous if it gets to the point where their drive to make money is destroying lives in America on a day-to-day basis, and therefore it must be brought under control.
One of the good things that happened this week was that the nurses came to Washington today. The nurses are here. That was good. That is in line with making America safer and more acceptable for mothers and for children and for families, very much in line. On May 19, back in New York, we are going to, again, try to get the input of the nurses, the input of the doctors, the input of the patients into the restructuring of health care in New York City.
There are rallies being held in all five boroughs. In Brooklyn the rally is going to take place at Kingsborough Hospital on Clarkson Avenue. In Queens, it is at the Queens Hospital Center, Grand Central Parkway. In Manhattan, it is at the Harlem Hospital. In Staten Island, it is at the Staten Island University Hospital. In the Bronx, it is at Lincoln Hospital. People are getting involved.
What Americans are saying in New York, in California, in Massachusetts, and in a few other places is that we understand now what is happening. Our first demand is that you let us make democracy work. Let us get involved. Let us make certain that whatever new system is being developed is for the benefit of all the people.
I want to close by asking that all groups all across America take the time out to focus in the next few days on health care, take the time out to focus specifically on Medicaid as a part of our health care system. Medicare is a kingpin of the American health care system. Medicare is the forward step in the American health care system, Medicaid. Medicaid is the forward step, Medicare and Medicaid, but Medicaid is the forward step toward universal health care. Medicaid is for people who cannot afford health care. It is the only step our Government has taken to reach out there and say that we take responsibility for what is most basic: whether you can live and breathe and be healthy.
Medicaid is for poor people. You have to show that you are poor through a means test. The farmers who get subsidies in Kansas and other western States, they do not have to show a means test. They do not have to show they are poor. They get lots of money. The average in Kansas, I think in the last 5 years, has been $40,000 to $50,000 that has been given to every farm family, at least $40,000 to $50,000, without any strings attached in terms of you have to prove you are poor.
The Freemen in Montana, the group out there with the FBI surrounding them, they are angry because the Government wants its money back. The Freeman, the guy who heads that whole operation, owes the Government
$830,000, almost $1 million; $830,000-some. His ranch has been repossessed because he had a farmers home loan mortgage. He is angry and ready to kill somebody because he got away with that for so long, he received Government largesse for so long that be began to believe he had a right to it. If you tried to take it away, he would kill you.
It is that mixed up out there, out west, where the Agriculture Department has forgiven about $11 billion in loans. That was on the front page of the Washington Post, that $11 billion had been forgiven,
$11 billion forgiven. So Medicaid is for people who prove they are poor.
There are some Federal subsidies, some taxpayer giveaways, that have nothing to do with you proving you are poor. You just get it because you have the right kind of connections: your are a farmer and you live in Kansas, Montana, or New Mexico, you get it. But Medicaid is for people who prove that you are poor. You have to prove that you are poor.
One-third of Medicaid funds go to poor families. Two-thirds of Medicaid funds go to nursing homes. People in nursing homes have to prove they are poor. Many people who go into nursing homes were middle-
class people before they became poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. They got sick, they had problems, they had to spend a large amount of money on doctors and medicine, so they lost their income and they become eligible then to go into nursing homes, so two-thirds of the money for Medicaid goes to nursing homes. So when you get rid of Medicaid, you are getting rid of health care for poor families and you are getting rid of health care for the elderly, people in nursing homes.
There is a threat now that the Medicaid entitlement will be taken away. They are going to have block grants that go to the States. The States say, we want the money, but with the block grant there will be a limited amount of money. It will not be that every person that gets sick, every family that is poor and needs health care will get it because the Federal Government stands behind it as a right, but it will be in accordance with the amount of money available.
When the State runs out of money, if you are sick, you do not get any help. When the State runs out of money, if you need to go into a nursing home, you will not be able to go into a nursing home. The States will be in charge. There will be all kinds of new forms of corruption and all kinds of new forms of waste, because State government is the worst-run government in America.
We have had a lot of talk on the floor of this House about States should be allowed to do certain things because they are closer to the people. They are closer to the people, but they are the least visible forms of government. There are all kinds of things that go on in State governments that never get exposed, you never get to hear about. State governments usually do not keep a record of their legislative proceedings that is made available to the public. Yes, they have minutes and you can get them, but most State governments, it costs money to buy the minutes of the proceedings of the State legislature. Here you get a record every day of what is happening on the floor of this House.
The Federal Government is very visible. The Federal Government is complicated but highly visible. There are certain things done at the State level that can never go on at the Federal Government level. There are all kinds of favor-granting, all kinds of nepotism, all kinds of things happen, all kinds of granting of contracts that would be illegal at the Federal level. But we are going to hand all this to the State government. The care of our health will be handed to the State government. State governments will be able to decide which people have disabilities. The Federal Government in the legislation that is being proposed has not defined what a disability is. A person with a disability will have to have his disability defined by the State government.
There is a conflict of interest, because the State wants to save money. They do not want to have too many people with disabilities that cost a great deal of money to take care of in terms of health care, so they will, in their attempt to save money, define away many legitimate disabilities.
State governments have a history. If you look closely at some of the monumental cases of corruption in American public life, they have happened at the State government level.
I want to close by acknowledging that on public radio this morning, National Public Radio, they talked about a State Senator in Alabama who said that ``Slavery was good for black people. Slavery was good, and slavery was a form of States rights at its best. It is the best form of States' rights.'' That is a good example of what we are talking about. Slavery is praised as a form of States rights at its best. The States had the power to do what they wanted to do. Of course, beyond the States you had the planters and plantation owners, and anybody who owned the slave had the power to do whatever they wanted to do with a human life.
What you have, if you push the power of life and death down to the State level, is the beginning of what I call decentralized genocide. Health care is a life and death matter. If you put that in the hands of people who cannot be watched, who are not held to any Federal standard, if you put it in the hands of people who are making decisions to save money instead of providing maximum health care, if you put it into a situation where every State will be trying to outdo the other in terms of lowering its benefits, they are ratcheted down. The State with the lowest benefits will be the guide for all the other States. No State will want to have higher health care benefits than another, because if you have better health care benefits in one State than you do in another, they will say that people are going to tend to move into the State with the better health care benefits, so everybody is going to go down to the level of the lowest common denominator.
A lot of lives will be lost in the process of going down to the level of the lowest common denominator. We will have the beginning of decentralized genocide.
There is a story in the paper about Brazil having put on trial policemen who went out and shot poor kids in the streets every night. They kept finding bodies of children. This is Mother's Day coming up. Mothers always make you think of children. Mothers and children are inseparable. Think of this, as a closing thought. In Brazil the policemen were going out to shoot down the children because the children were poor children who ran around the city all day long picking pockets, making havoc. The store owners did not like them, nobody liked them. Policemen started killing them. Now you have the policemen on trial, and the policemen are saying that they were doing what the public wanted them to do by shooting down poor children.
These are poor children who have no health care. These are poor children who have no welfare, because there is no welfare system. There is no Aid to Families with Dependent Children. When you take these steps by changing public policy so there is no aid to people who are in desperate straits, you throw them onto the streets, you create a situation where, in the end, the apparatus of the State, the police, will begin to be used to destroy people. It is a very serious matter.
As we go into Mother's Day, and really care about mothers and really care about children, we ought to resolve that we ought to take another look at the policies that are being generated on the floor of this House. We ought to take a hard look at the proposals in next week's budget that are going to cut Medicaid and Medicare. We ought to take a hard look at the effort to get rid of Medicaid as an entitlement. If Medicaid goes as an entitlement, it is the first step into systematic decentralized genocide in America.
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