Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr.
Chairman, I yield 1½ minutes to my
colleague, the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. PAUL).
(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission
to revise and extend his remarks.)
1999 Ron Paul 112:1 Mr. PAUL.
Mr. Chairman, I thank
the gentlewoman for yielding me the
time.
1999 Ron Paul 112:2 Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of
this amendment. This will improve the
bill. I am very concerned, as a physician,
that this bill will do great harm
to the practice of medicine. This is
micromanaging the palliative care of
the dying.
1999 Ron Paul 112:3 So I strongly support this amendment
because it will remove the severe
penalties and the threats. Physicians
are accustomed to practicing with lawyers
over their shoulders. Now we are
going to add another DEA agent over
our shoulders to watch what we do.
1999 Ron Paul 112:4 It is said, well, there is not going to
be any change in law. Well, if there is
not, why the bill? Certainly there is a
change in law. This bill does not state
that it is dealing with euthanasis. It
says it is a pain relief promotion act.
1999 Ron Paul 112:5 Generally speaking, I look at the
names of bills and sometimes intentionally
and sometimes just out of the
way things happen here, almost always
the opposite happens from the bill that
we raise up. So I would call this the
pain promotion act. I really sincerely
believe, as a physician, that this will
not help.
1999 Ron Paul 112:6 Too often physicians are intimidated
and frightened about giving the adequate
pain medication that is necessary
to relieve pain. This amendment
will be helpful. This is what we should
do. We should not intimidate. The idea
of dealing with the issue of euthanasis,
euthanasia is killing. It is murder.
1999 Ron Paul 112:7 I am pro-life. I am against abortion.
I am absolutely opposed to euthanasis.
But euthanasis is killing. Under our
Constitution, that is a State issue, not
a congressional issue.
1999 Ron Paul 112:9 Mr. Chairman, today Congress will take a
legislative step which is as potentially dangerous
to protecting the sanctity of life as was
the Court’s ill-advised Roe versus Wade decision.
1999 Ron Paul 112:10 The Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999, H.R.
2260, would amend Title 21, United States
Code, for the laudable goal of protecting palliative
care patients from the scourge of “assisted”
suicide. However, by preempting what
is the province of States — most of which have
already enacted laws prohibiting “assisted suicide”
— and expanding its use of the Controlled
Substances Act to further define what constitutes
proper medical protocol, the federal
government moves yet another step closer to
both a federal medical bureau and a national
police state.
1999 Ron Paul 112:11 Our federal government is, constitutionally,
a government of limited powers. Article one,
section eight, enumerates the legislative areas
for which the U.S. Congress is allowed enact
legislation. For every other issue, the federal
government lacks any authority or consent of
the governed and only the state governments,
their designees, or the people in their private
market actions enjoy such rights to governance.
The tenth amendment is brutally clear in
stating “The powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited
by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people.” Our nation’s
history makes clear that the U.S. Constitution
is a document intended to limit the
power of central government. No serious reading
of historical events surrounding the creation
of the Constitution could reasonably portray
it differently.
1999 Ron Paul 112:12 In his first formal complaint to Congress on
behalf of the federal Judiciary, Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist said “the trend to federalize
crimes that have traditionally been handled
in state courts . . . threatens to change
entirely the nature of our federal system.”
Rehnquist further criticized Congress for yielding
to the political pressure to “appear responsive
to every highly publicized societal ill or
sensational crime.”
1999 Ron Paul 112:13 However, Congress does significantly more
damage than simply threatening physicians
with penalties for improper prescription of certain
drugs — it establishes (albeit illegitimately)
the authority to dictate the terms of medical
practice and, hence, the legality of assisted
suicide nationwide. Even though the motivation
of this legislation is clearly to pre-empt the
Oregon Statute and may be protective of life
in this instance, we mustn’t forget that the saw
(or scalpel) cuts both ways. The Roe versus
Wade decision — the Court’s intrusion into
rights of states and their previous attempts to
protect by criminal statute the unborn’s right
not to be aggressed against — was quite clearly
less protective of life than the Texas statute
it obliterated. By assuming the authority to decide
for the whole nation issues relating to
medical practice, palliative care, and assisted
suicide, the foundation is established for a national
assisted suicide standard which may not
be protective of life when the political winds
shift and the Medicare system is on the verge
of fiscal collapse. Then, of course, it will be
the federal government’s role to make the
tough choices of medical procedure rationing
and for whom the cost of medical care doesn’t
justify life extension. Current law already prohibits
private physicians from seeing privately
funded patients if they’ve treated a Medicaid
patient within two years.
1999 Ron Paul 112:14 Additionally, this bill empowers the Attorney
General to train federal, state, and local law
enforcement personnel to discern the difference
between palliative care and euthanasia.
Most recently, though, it was the Attorney
General who specifically exempted the
physicians of Oregon from certain provisions
of Title 21, the very Title this legislation intends
to augment. Under the tutelage of the
Attorney General, it would thus become the
federal police officer’s role to determine at
which point deaths from pain medication constitute
assisted suicide.
1999 Ron Paul 112:15 To help the health care professionals become
familiar with what will become the new
federal medical standard, the bill also authorizes
$24 million dollars over the next five
years for grant programs to health education
institutions. This is yet another federal action
to be found nowhere amongst the enumerated
powers.
1999 Ron Paul 112:16 Like the unborn, protection of the lives of
palliative care patients is of vital importance.
So vitally important, in fact, it must be left to
the states’ criminal justice systems and state
medical licensing boards. We have seen what
a mess results from attempts to federalize
such an issue. Numerous states have adequately
protected both the unborn and palliative
care patients against assault and murder
and done so prior to the federal government’s
unconstitutional sanctioning of violence in the
Roe versus Wade decision. Unfortunately,
H.R. 2260 ignores the danger of further federalizing
that which is properly reserved to
state governments and, in so doing, ignores
the Constitution, the bill of rights, and the insights
of Chief Justice Rehnquist. For these
reasons, I must oppose H.R. 2260, The Pain
Relief Promotion Act of 1999.
Notes:
1999 Ron Paul 112:1
Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Here, Ron Paul thanks The Honorable Nancy L. Johnson of Connecticut.
1999 Ron Paul 112:11
The tenth amendment probably should be capitalized: The Tenth Amendment.
1999 Ron Paul 112:13
In Oregon Statute the second word probably shpould not be capitalized: Oregon statute.
1999 Ron Paul 112:16
the bill of rights probably should be capitalized:
the Bill of Rights.
