This past week, U.S. Congressman Michael Burgess (R-Lewisville) spent the week in Lewisville to attend a host of meetings.

Monday, he sat down with The Leader to discuss a variety of topics.

Oversight committee

Burgess was named the top Republican on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in February. The subcommittee, a true oversight committee that has no legislative powers, has been involved in a variety of issues this year, including the Toyota investigation and the BP oil spill. It is the principle subcommittee that has oversight over agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health and the Center of Disease Control.

It is also playing a role in the implementation of the new health care law to oversee how it is run through government agencies.

Ultimately, the secretary of health and human services will issue rules and regulations based on the law.

“It’s pretty important for this bill since there are so many areas where the secretary is going to undertake rulemaking that it will be life-altering for so many people because of how vast the reach of this health care bill is,” Burgess said. “My opinion is that this subcommittee should take a very proactive role in this oversight.”

Burgess used the stimulus bill that passed in February 2009 as an example of why oversight is important, noting that it contained a small portion that had to do with information technology, electronic medical records and electronic prescribing. He noted that in January, the department of health and human services made the rules of how this would work, adding that many doctors didn’t think it was feasible and were left scrambling.

“It would be better to be proactive about this rather than let the agency come up with the rule and then try to fix it,” Burgess said. “We’ve created some very difficult situations for doctors and hospitals to deal with. And we’re going to have that happen over and over and over again with this new law.”

Burgess said while he would like to repeal the law, he said only time will tell if that’s possible.

“I don’t like the bill, and there are a host of problems with it,” he said. “But at the very least, this subcommittee gives me the chance to monitor the implementation of it.”

Health care reform

Health care reform has been and continues to be Burgess’ number one priority as a congressman. He said he agrees with the president’s goals for healthcare reform, which are to lower the cost of health care for the consumer, to make sure that Americans who are currently happy with their health care coverage can keep it and to provide coverage for all those who are currently uninsured. However, Burgess said he has “different ideas” of how to achieve the goals in the best way possible.

Even though Congress passed the healthcare reform bill, Burgess said the bill does not solve the problems with healthcare in the U.S.

“I don’t like the bill we passed I think it has a host of problems,” Burgess said. “The main problem: it wasn’t a healthcare bill, it was a tax bill. It was a tax bill passed under the cover of being a healthcare bill.”

Burgess said ideally the bill needs to be thrown out and Congress needs to start over. However, he said right now, appeal is not an option for those who oppose the bill. Burgess, who spent nearly three decades practicing medicine, said that the healthcare bill has not done anything to help improve the industry.

“I’ll tell you from the standpoint of trying to run a medical practice and take care of people who are sick or hurting, we’ve done nothing that improves it,” Burgess said. “We’ve done a ton of stuff that’s going to make it harder.”

Cost and liability reform were major issues that Burgess said people are concerned with. He praised Texas for its efforts with liability reform but said on a national level, the issue was ignored.

“Liability reform was totally and completely shut out during discussions of healthcare reform,” Burgess said. “Cost was something that was one of the big concerns, and we didn’t really do anything that dealt with cost.”

Health care reform was an immense lost opportunity, according to Burgess. He said with the new administration and the desire from the president, the healthcare bill could have been a much better solution to the problem. The failure of the healthcare bill, according to Burgess, is in large part due to a lack of bipartisian effort.

“Republicans were shut out of the bill process, and it didn’t have to be that way. It could have been a much more bipartisian effort,” Burgess said. “We should have come up with smaller fixes; that’s what people were asking for. Well over 50 percent of the country opposed the bill, yet it still passed.”

The only bipartisian aspect of the healthcare bill was the opposition, according to Burgess. He said “nobody wanted it.”

“None of the Republicans wanted it, about 35 of the Democrats said no dice and they passed with a small majority,” Burgess said. “There will never again be a major social restructuring of legislation like this health care bill that passes just along a single party line that was a mistake.”

Burgess said in Congress he has noticed a “broad recognition” that the way the health care bill passed, was “a bad way to legislate and govern.”

“There was not a thing in the bill that improves the delivery of health care and a lot things that make it more difficult,” Burgess said.

Americans on Medicare face another potential hurdle in the near future. There is a potential 30 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursement, according to Burgess.

“As it is, not everyone takes Medicare, and now [with the potential reduction] as a consequence doctors are struggling with how to sustain a practice,” Burgess said. “Doctors are having to make an uncomfortable decision that they will have to limit the number of Medicare patients they see.”

Burgess said as a result, more and more doctors will begin affiliating with hospitals in order to overcome rising costs.

“There were better approaches that could have been taken,” Burgess said. “Now we have to throw out what has already been passed. We must simply get rid of it and then begin to fix the things people told us to fix.”

In the near future, Burgess said it will be critical that Congress has an active role in the oversight of the health care bill.

Burgess said there are nine solutions he suggests for health care reform: insurance reform, tax fairness, medical liability reform, portability, Medicare payment reform, having enough doctors to care for patients, price transparency, preventative care and wellness programs and creating products people want.

Gas drilling

While Burgess said he opposes the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, he said he is fine with a local gas drilling moratorium, such as the ones in place in Flower Mound, as long as the residents support it. He said rules shouldn’t differ between communities but that different communities may make their own decisions.

But Burgess said there needs to be a balance on the gas drilling issue and that it needs to be predicated upon safety.

“Developers have to demonstrate that they can do this activity safely,” Burgess said. “This is a problem for you. If you wish to continue to develop this resource, not just in Flower Mound but also in more rural areas, you are going to have to step up with best practices and ensure that everything is done correctly.”

Burgess pointed to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as an example of the importance of credibility, saying profitability was put ahead of safety.

“I suspect the other big companies knew what was going on,” Burgess said. “It is up to the drilling community to police its own.”

Burgess added the importance of key state agencies, such as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of correcting their credibility issues.

Burgess said while some people want the federal government to outlaw hydraulic fracturing in the drilling process, he feels that would be a mistake because of the importance of energy from shale drilling for natural gas. But he said safety comes first.

“If additional measures need to be taken, if there needs to be additional documentation of cementing of wells so that you don’t get groundwater contamination, then that’s just going to have to be the way it is,” Burgess said.

The economy

Burgess said one problem with the economy is the lack of job creation, and he pointed to several things as to what has hampered that.

“Job creation comes from the private sector, in my opinion,” Burgess said. “Right now, we have punished the productive segment of society over and over again and created an environment that’s openly hostile to job creation.”

Burgess said legislation such as the health care bill, financial regulatory bill and next year’s tax structure have given uncertainty to small businesses. He said Medicare cuts, requirements by employers to provide healthcare, taxes and energy costs cripple potential business owners.

“Instead of making an environment that would be encouraging to small businesses, we’ve only frightened them,” Burgess said. “Until you bring those people back into the job creation side, jobs are going to suffer. And the joblessness is what’s continuing the recession.”

Immigration

Burgess said he is “committed to reducing illegal immigration,” and there is an important first step that the country must take.

“We must establish security on the border,” Burgess said. “We should focus on how to protect our citizens.”

In April, Arizona passed its illegal immigration law, which went into effect in July. The law requires police “when practicable” to detain people they reasonably suspected were in the country illegally. However, a federal judge delayed this provision just days prior to the effective date of the law. The law also allows the police to charge immigrants with a state crime for not carrying immigration documents. Burgess said he has “no problem with what Arizona did.”

“It’s painful that we (the national government) haven’t done our job to protect citizens,” Burgess said. “This was the worst way to go about dealing with the issue. Here we have a state that felt that their security was threatened, and the U.S. government didn’t step in. We must protect our citizens.”

Burgess is a member of the house immigration reform caucus. While in the caucus, he has worked to address the problems with the current policy.

“Congress just passed a bill that was way too little, but at least it was something,” Burgess said. “I believe the lawlessness that exists on the other side of the border is a threat to our citizens. I am committed to reducing illegal immigration into our country and the first step must be to secure our borders.”


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