WASHINGTON: Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Ennis/Arlington, made the following statement Thursday at full committee markup on the Democrats’ stimulus proposal:

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“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

“Today, we are going to mark up five different committee prints in the areas of broadband internet deployment, energy, and three health care titles that represent all the provisions for the majority’s stimulus package that are within our jurisdiction. I wish I could say I was looking forward to it.
 
“While I appreciate and support your interest in exercising this committee’s jurisdiction, and while I understand the majority’s desire to move quickly on the stimulus package, I think the short leash that the speaker has put us on restricts our ability to write competent legislation. We have not had a single hearing on anything in front of us, meaning that the only opinion we’ve heard on the expenditure of billions of dollars is that of the speaker. We’ve been told that even one hearing would be one too many, and that we have a single day to approve these five complex propositions that will affect the lives of millions. That’s because the speaker wants the entire stimulus package on the House floor next week. We all understand that if don’t accommodate her timetable, she’ll yank the bill away and handle it herself, and the decline of our committee’s status and influence will accelerate.
 
“By my count, in front of us are 269 pages of text. I have not yet seen the most recent CBO score, but suffice it to say that these 269 pages approve the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars. Will this package of legislation waste money? Will it abuse people? Will it raise a dust cloud of unintended and unhappy consequences? Will we be embarrassed by some of what we approve here today? The answer is yes, yes, yes and yes.

“And yet we seem to have no choice but to forge ahead. Mr. Chairman, I told you yesterday that I would work with you to do what we can today with all deliberate speed. We are all here to do our best with the material in front of us, and I will do my part to ensure that happens.

“I want to turn now to the specifics of the prints in front of us, starting with the broadband title. I think this language misses the mark. If the point of this exercise is to meet the president’s call for bipartisan ideas that stimulate broadband deployment and the economy, I do not believe that including controversial provisions on network neutrality, open access, minimum speeds, and build-out requirements do that. These provisions are not bipartisan, and they harm rather than advance the stated goal. So-called network neutrality and open access provisions discourage investment and innovation. The speed requirements are unrealistic at best, and neither competitively nor technologically neutral at worse. Maybe the worst of it is that this sort of legislative lard discourages companies from participating in the stimulus plan.

“With respect to the energy title, I would note that the authorization provisions will spend about $25 billion for renewable energy, transmission projects, and increased energy efficiency. Those are all laudable goals, and if energy funds were spent right, they might yield some real results. But this title leaves almost 70 percent of our country’s electricity supply to twist in the wind by short-changing the development of carbon capture and storage. About half of our electricity comes courtesy of a half-million men and women who work for and around the coal industry. America has 240 years worth of coal and nearly everybody in our country depends on it. Yet this package only provides a relatively miserly $2.4 billion to develop the carbon capture and storage technology which the Obama administration says is essential.

“This package focuses $8.4 billion on renewable energy loan guarantees. Currently, 20 percent of our nation’s electricity comes from nuclear energy, a zero-emissions supply of domestic energy. This package contains no dollars of stimulus funding for nuclear power.

“In my opinion, the energy provisions before us over-stimulate a small area of our economy and neglect the rest.

“Now, onto the three healthcare titles. The Health IT print includes provisions to promote adoption of Health IT, including privacy and security protections. I support efforts to promote the widespread adoption of Health IT and the promise it holds to make our healthcare system better. Last year, our committee marked-up a Health IT bill that was put together by Mr. Dingell, Mr. Deal, Mr. Pallone, and me. This was a good bill and reflected what a good product this committee can turn out when we take the time and make the effort to sit down together and work out language in a bipartisan manner. I am encouraged that a number of provisions included in the bill today appear to have been built around the framework of our bill last year.

“However, I am also saddened that for some reason an important patient privacy protection – that of patient consent for how a patient’s information is used or disclosed – was not included in this bill. Furthermore, unlike the bill we marked up last year, this bill ties Medicare and Medicaid payments to doctors, hospital and health plans to the use of electronic health records through bonus incentives that later switch to payment penalties. What seems absurd is that the bonus payments for use of electronic health records do not start until 2011. I ask the question – how in the world are payments to providers in the year 2011 for using electronic health records going to stimulate the economy that faces us today? Mr. Chairman, Health IT is one area where there is great bipartisanship in this committee. We all voted for the bill last year – we should take this bill through the committee process separate from the stimulus.

“The committee print on healthcare insurance assistance attempts to help with folks who are not working or have lost their job and are facing the loss of their healthcare insurance. Right now, 3 out of every five Americans (160 million) under the age of 65 are insured through employer-plan or another job-related arrangement. I am concerned that the language before us goes too far in just one direction by providing premium assistance for persons eligible for COBRA. There are a variety of other ways to get at this issue, including health savings accounts, high risk pools, and the individual market. Further, it draws no distinction between high-paid executives who probably got significant severance packages from low-level employees who were given nothing but a pink slip. That doesn’t seem right.

“This title also permanently extends COBRA coverage to any person 55 or older who loses their job or any person that has worked for a company for at least 10 years. So folks can be on COBRA for 10, 20, 30 years – until they are eligible for Medicare. Again, that doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t we at least end this extension when a person becomes eligible for other group health plan coverage after getting a job?

“Furthermore, the bill as I see it essentially federalizes Medicaid. The ‘temporary’ Medicaid option for unemployed persons is funded 100 percent by the federal government, without any regard for a person’s income or asset levels.

“Finally, the provisions in the Medicaid print will increase the federal share of the Medicaid program by more than $87 billion over the next two years. Think of it this way: The Democrats want families who work for their living and pay their taxes to believe that adding $120 million a day to government welfare will create jobs, build economic growth and expand individual opportunity for Americans. Unless you operate a welfare program, you’re likely to get more stimulus from a cup of coffee.

“In talking about proposals to increase federal payments to state and local governments, Congressional Budget Office Director Dr. Peter Orszag stated in official congressional testimony last year that ‘if federal assistance merely provides fiscal relief by paying for spending that would have occurred anyway and does not affect state and local revenues in the short run, then it provides no economic stimulus.’ Clearly, the Democrats’ proposal to simply shift more of the costs of the Medicaid program onto the federal government is ‘paying for spending that would have occurred anyway.’ Adding billions of dollars to the deficit and swelling the number of people addicted to welfare is hazardous to the health of the American economy and toxic to the dignity and prospects of poor people.

“So it seems the new Congress is bringing us back to the days of throwing money at problem because it may not be the best solution it is the easiest. We are going to give more money to states but not ask for improvements in the administration of their program in return. According to investigative reporting by The New York Times, over 10 percent of the Medicaid spending in the State of New York goes to pay claims that are simply criminally fraudulent and an additional 30 percent of the state’s Medicaid spending is going to pay for items and services that are considered to be ‘questionable.’ While the Democrats in Congress want to add over $40 billion to our federal deficit in order to increase the federal Medicaid reimbursement rate by 8 percent, wouldn’t states be far better off if Congress would simply help them address the 40 percent of their Medicaid expenditures that are either criminally fraudulent or simply unnecessary?

“When Virginia Governor Mark Warner was in charge of the National Governors Association, he said that the unsustainable growth of Medicaid spending has every state and the federal government ‘on the road to a meltdown.’ His solution was to update the severely outdated rules and regulations and allow State governments the flexibility to run their programs with a hint of innovation, efficiency, and accountability. Today’s proposal to simply increase the federal taxpayers’ share of Medicaid spending does nothing but accelerate the car on the road to meltdown.

“The American people do not want more welfare, they want more freedom. They want more innovation, more efficiency, and more accountability in welfare programs like Medicaid. The public hates waste in government, but the Democratic leadership in Congress wants us to spend right now and reform in the distant future.

“As I previously mentioned, many provisions in this bill that have absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy, even if some may be good ideas. Too many are simply giveaways to interest groups. I would like anyone to explain how providing more money and authorities to abortion providers will stimulate the U.S. economy. That doesn’t pass anybody’s laugh test. Nearly everybody I know is passionate about the policy involved, but I think we can all oppose this attempt to sneak an abortion provision into law by holding it out as a solution to unemployment. That’s a ruse that insults all of us equally, regardless of what we believe about life and choice.