Kids in Disasters Well-being, Safety, and Health Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, Mr. McHenry's input into this dialogue that we have here is essential. I look forward to the pugnacious Mr. McHenry's deliveries on this floor and in committee and before the media over the next 2 years of the new 110th Congress.

As always, Mr. Speaker, it is a profound honor and privilege to address you on the floor in the United States House of Representatives, the people's House. As I bring up this subject matter that is here before us, I have a series of things, random thoughts on the passing scene, focused on current events will be my message here today.

There are mistakes that are made and there are things said and done in political campaigns that don't always reflect the wishes or the policy, but things are said sometimes to win elections and then you have to follow through on that.

We have had some standards to look back on. The first 100 days of the presidency, many Presidents have made their pledge that in the first 100 days they are going to move pieces of policy, and they have endeavored to keep those pledges.

When the Republicans took over the majority in 1994, they also made a pledge in the first 100 days that they would bring, at least bring to a vote a series of reform changes called ``Contract With America.'' Looking back on that, and it depends on your analysis and definition, but something like two-thirds of that agenda was passed into law. I believe all of it was voted on in this Congress. But yet it was done under a regular order. It was done under an open process, and it was done by bringing the legislation of the Contract With America, which I am comparing now to this first 100 hours of the new majority's agenda, comparing those two initiatives that were brought up in the campaign and the pledges that were made. But they were brought through in regular order in the Contract With America in 1994.

Regular order meaning that the bills were introduced and they were brought to subcommittee where they had a full subcommittee hearing and there was open debate and there was an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to offer their amendments into the subcommittee on each of those pieces of legislation. As it came out of subcommittee, it went to full committee where there was an opportunity for the full committee members to weigh in. As we know, the committees are where we have established and developed expertise. If you look at the chairs and also the seasoned veterans on committees, both Republicans and Democrats, and I look at the Judiciary Committee where there is a tremendous amount of seniority, and I have the honor to serve on the House Judiciary Committee, there is a replete, not necessarily complete but a very replete body of knowledge within the minds of the members of the committee and the staff. And of course the history and the resources that are there.

That is why we put legislation through the subcommittee and committee processes so we can weigh in with our judgment and bring our individual expertise to bear, and we have an opportunity to hear from our constituents because they will read the language and they will parse the words and let us know where the flaws are.

Mr. Speaker, my first step into public life was going from the private sector, being a construction company founder, owner and manager into the legislative arena as an Iowa senator. And the first thing I learned was the law of unintended consequences.

In other words, you can have a good idea and it sounds perfect to you from your limited perspective. You can put that down into the form of a law, and if I were king for a day as a younger man, I might have offered some of those ideas I had earlier in my political career as an edict that I believed should have been the law of the land and lay that out there and give a bob of my scepter and declare that to be law. But my mistakes would have been as a younger, less experienced man, and sometimes still today those mistakes, I didn't understand the law of unintended consequences. I didn't understand that my ideas needed to be vetted across the spectrum of the other people that I served in the State legislature with, and I carry that experience with me into this Congress. I didn't understanding that I needed to float those ideas out to the various constituency groups that are there to be voices of individuals, and I didn't understand that I needed to float those out to individuals and get those ideas out in the press and publish my bills so that people that are interested can look in and weigh in and make phone calls, send e-mails and write letters, come and visit and lobby as individuals or join up with their various constituency groups that are out there to be able to analyze and be a louder voice as members of a group so that all of the expertise that America has to offer can come to bear on the judgments and decisions that we make here in this Congress.

But that whole process that I have described, the process utilized in 1994 with the Contract With America, that entire open, bipartisan process has been usurped by this rules package that has been brought here to the floor of this Congress. We learned essentially a new term. I don't know if anybody in this Congress understood it at the time. Some did, I imagine, because they came up with the effort on the rules.

I came down here to put up my first vote on a motion to commit. Now I have voted many times on motions to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, if I may describe that. A motion to recommit is a motion that says if you bring a bill to the floor and then it gets debated here on the floor, the motion to recommit says we want to recommit it back to committee and sometimes recommit it with instructions back to committee because there are Members here in the full House that didn't have an opportunity to weigh in on that bill as it came through committee. They didn't sit on the appropriate committee, for example. So they had a viewpoint that needed to be considered. And if a motion to recommit is successful here on the floor, that says a majority of the Members of the full House of Representatives have concluded that there are other ideas that needed to be considered, send it back to committee with instructions so those other ideas can be considered. That is a motion to recommit.

But we voted on a motion to commit, not recommit, a motion to commit. A motion to commit is send it to committee. And the reason it is a motion to commit rather than a motion to recommit is this legislation has not gone through committee. It has not gone through the subcommittee process or the committee process. It simply then is legislation that was held very tight. I don't know if it was in a locked briefcase, but it was something that the public and press didn't have access to. Members of Congress didn't have access to it. In fact, I believe many of the lower ranking Members of the majority party didn't have access to this legislation. It was secret legislation that was thrust upon us and the only opportunity that we have is a nondebatable motion to commit to committee for the first time because it didn't go through the committee process.

I submit, Mr. Speaker, that is inconsistent with the pledge that was made throughout the election process and throughout the campaign process.

There are a number of quotes that were identified, and I have some of them. I don't have all of them. One of them by now-Speaker Pelosi was this, and this was on CNN on November 9, so 2 days after the election. That would have been Thursday. She said, ``Democrats are ready to lead, prepared to govern.'' I don't quibble with that part of the statement. But the completion of the sentence is, ``ready to lead, prepared to govern, and absolutely willing to work in a bipartisan way.''

Mr. Speaker, there is no definition of bipartisanship that I can apply to this process unless many of the Members of the majority party were as shut out of this process as the entire minority party was. I suspect that is the case. I don't want to parse the language in there, I just want to say that the spirit and intent of that statement, ``willing to work in a bipartisan way'' has been violated here, but maybe not the technical definition of that. We can expect these things because we have a house full of lawyers that are good with language and they will find a way to convolute this language to be able to defend themselves.

So I point out this process. Motion to commit, nondebatable motion. All you can do is plead for a recorded vote, and that is the only opportunity to voice objection, but there is not an opportunity to improve the legislation. And that is really what we need to do, always, all of us in a bipartisan way, at least provide an opportunity for amendments in the process. That means in the subcommittee process and in the full committee process, and then here on the floor of the House of Representatives in open debate so the public can evaluate this process, not a secret or closed process, but an open process to the public. We owe you that, America. We owe you an open and clean process and we owe you an open dialogue and an open debate.

If we don't do that, you will be drawing conclusions such as they don't believe in what they are doing enough to be able to have an open debate. What kind of work is being done here that we are not able to have it withstand the scrutiny and the criticism that might come from the public if it were an open process.

So I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that promises get made during campaigns. There were many promises made during the last campaign that will not be kept by the new majority party. But the promise that seems to be the one that is sacrosanct is the promise that in the first 100 hours we will do these things. In order to accomplish these promises of achievement within the first 100 hours, which is comparable to the first 100 days in presidential promises or the promise of the 1994 new majority, in order to achieve those goals and keep those promises, the promise we will do it within the first 100 hours, the only way to meet that was to take this bipartisanship and set it aside and suspend it at least temporarily, if not permanently, for the 110th Congress, and to set aside the subcommittee process and set aside the committee process.

We have one more avenue here that there can be an open forum, and that is the rules process. At least a member can bring an amendment to the Rules Committee, explain their amendment in open forum and ask for a vote on their amendment as to whether that amendment can be allowed to be considered here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

I was astonished there were this many amendments when I came here as a freshman a couple of Congresses ago. I was astonished that there were so many amendments that were turned down, that did not see the light of day. But there was an opportunity to present them to the Rules Committee, and I did that many times and I got turned down many times as a member of the majority party. But we don't even have a rules process that is open enough that you can present your amendments to the Rules Committee.

In fact, I believe the Rules Committee, as an example already, will not be meeting, it will simply be a decision that is made by the leadership of the majority party, and the recorded votes of the Rules Committee will be secret. That is part of this package, as I understand it, too, Mr. Speaker.

So of all of the promises that will be broken, the one that should be broken is the one that is sacrosanct, the promise of accomplishment in the first 100 hours. If we could just look at that and say we understand your motive, but this is not conducive to bipartisanship or open process; in fact, it is not conducive to good legislation because the good ideas of Democrats and Republicans are shut out of this process.

I will just ask this of now-Speaker Pelosi: Why don't you just break one promise instead of a series that will ultimately be broken, and break that promise about 100 hours so that you can keep your promise about bipartisanship, and keep your promises about an open process and ethical process. That is far more important to the American people than a promise to accomplish certain legislative endeavors within the first 100 hours.

This 100 hours is meaningless to the American people. All of this has to go over to the Senate. The Senate has to be willing to take it up. The Senate has to be able to vote cloture on some of this, and I think it will be filibustered, and it has to get to the President for signature. Timing is not as essential, it is the policy that is important. It is important to have an open process, it is important that we weigh in and that amendments be allowed to be offered and that they be considered and that they be voted on so the American people can have confidence in this process.

And sometimes, sometimes, this body, this great deliberative body of the people's House, will reach the right decisions. In fact, I believe often we will. When we do so with public debate and an open process, we reach the right decision for the right policy for America and we also reach it by using the right reasons, the reasons of open dialogue that allow people's positions and their knowledge to come to that debate.

Sometimes we will make the wrong decision, and when we do that, if we have open dialogue and open debate, then at least it is arguable that we have arrived at the wrong decision, but at least we followed the right process, and we can't fault the reasoning on how we get there.

I would compare Gerald R. Ford, and may he rest in peace, Gerald R. Ford, whom we said good-bye to within this past week, the man who came to the Presidency after having served 25 years here, Mr. Speaker, in the House of Representatives, a man who was almost without guile as President. A President who made decisions at a time when we

needed someone who had absolute integrity. The person who had confidence, the confidence and the endorsement of Democrats and Republicans at the time, Mr. Speaker. And with Gerald R. Ford as President, when he made a decision, when I agreed with him and he laid out his reasoning and his rationale, when he made the right decision, he made it for the right reason.

He thoughtfully deliberated on the components of the information, the interactivity of them and what the result would be and what the constitutional foundation was on that decision. And he made his decision, and he told us why. And that established confidence in the integrity and the judgment, in the intellect, and the character and in the faith of Gerald R. Ford.

When he made the wrong decision, and I will just say when I disagreed with him would be my definition of the wrong decision, he still laid out his argument. And when he laid out his argument, I could not fault him for using the wrong criteria. It was well thought out. He made his arguments well. When we disagreed, I would have a different argument.

But those kinds of debates that he had within himself, he earned that respect of us for President Ford. That kind of deliberation, that kind of integrity so far in the 110th Congress is nonexistent because there hasn't been an opportunity to have that debate on any of this that has come to this at this point and the rules deny there be that kind of debate and deliberation in the future.

So I talked about the new motion, still it was in the rules, but a motion to commit. New to use. You will hear a discussion, Mr. Speaker, about PAYGO. PAYGO means pay as you go. It means something different to Democrats than it does to Republicans. And I will say that when Republicans talk about PAYGO, we mean we want to pay as we go, as do Democrats, but we believe we should constrain spending and slow the growth in government and we should find ways for reconciliation and maybe do a rescissions package so that we can rachet this spending down to keep it within the revenue stream.

We believe that the Bush tax cuts have absolutely flat out been proven to stimulate this economy. Revenue is up. Revenue has increased significantly since the Bush tax cuts were put in place. That is why our deficit has been reduced. It is because revenue has gone beyond our expectations. But the PAYGO argument for me is I want to slow this growth in spending so that we can get the size of our Federal Government back in line with the size of our revenue stream.

For example, last year there were mistakes made by the majority party in the last couple, three Congresses. I believe that there was too much money that was spent, Mr. Speaker, and I think that we should have shut that down earlier. I was surprised when I came to this Congress as a freshman in January of 2003 that there wasn't a balanced budget that I could simply endorse, jump on, and go to work with. It was a condition where we were dealing with the reality of the politics rather than the necessity of balancing the budget.

And in order to produce a balanced budget, I would have had to create my own with my new staff, who didn't really have that time and understanding of this overall 2.7 or $2.8 trillion national budget. But things crept away from a balanced budget, and we know why. We know there was the bursting of the dot-com bubble that took place and it was necessary, and I could go into that perhaps on another date, Mr. Speaker.

And we also know that we faced an attack on September 11 that shut down our financial industry and that the effort was to turn our United States economy into a tailspin. It needed to be brought out of that nosedive, and the tax cuts that we passed brought it back up out of that nosedive. We knew that we had to engage in a global war on terror and it was going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars to be able to defend Americans that had been killed in greater numbers on our soil than ever at any time in history, and we set about to do that.

So three big things sent us into a deficit: the bursting of the dot- com bubble, the attack on September 11, and the necessity to fund the effort in a global war on terror. Those three things. And as the stimulants took place on the tax cuts, it has taken a little while to get them to take hold, but there is no argument that this economy is the strongest and most powerful economy that I have experienced in my lifetime, and it is measurable by a lot of different ways. Anything that goes up and is good for the economy is up. Anything that goes down that is good for the economy is down, and the opposite is also true.

This has been a powerfully strong economy with growth in something like 18 of 19 previous quarters, and all of that growth has been up around the 3 percent level. So this economy has been powerful, and this growth has been really a great position to be in to be able to say let us let the economy grow us out of this. Let us slow this growth of balance. Let us balance this budget.

But let us not balance it, Mr. Speaker, with tax increases. That is what PAYGO means to Democrats. The tax cuts have provided the growth in our revenue stream. Tax increases will diminish the growth in our revenue stream. But their idea of pay-as-you-go is to increase taxes and increase spending, as we heard Mr. McHenry say, to the tune of $800 million in this package. That $800 million won't be paid for by cuts in other line items in any significant way. That, in their mind, is paid for by tax increases.

As has been stipulated by the new incoming chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel of New York, none of the Bush tax cuts he would say he would support or endorse. And as you listened to him respond across the media airwaves, it always came back to the only way that you could characterize his position was we are going to increase taxes.

When you increase taxes, you slow this economy. Ronald Reagan once said what you tax you get less of. What you tax you get less of, and what you subsidize you get more of. But I want to talk about the what- you-tax-you-get-less-of component of that, a very wise statement of President Reagan's, and that is in our infinite lack of wisdom here in the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, we tax all productivity in America.

In fact, the Federal Government has the first lien on all productivity in America. And you can measure that by personal income tax, corporate income tax, capital gains, taxes on interest income, taxes on dividend income, taxes on your pension, taxes on your Social Security. I am forgetting some of those taxes. How about your savings and investment? Any way you can describe productivity, the Federal Government is there to tax it; so we get less productivity because we tax our productivity in America, and Democrats are poised to increase the taxes on our productivity. What you tax you get less of.

If you are paying a 10 percent income tax and you are making $50,000 a year and they want to raise that tax up to let's just say 50 percent, why in the world would you try to increase your revenue stream by 50 percent if your taxes are going to go up by the average of 50 percent and 10 percent, say, roughly 30 percent on average? That will not happen in the minds of the American people. That is why organized economies never work. That is why Marxism has failed. That is why socialized economies, managed economies, have always failed. Free enterprise has been the thing that has provided incentives so that people could produce all they could produce and they had an incentive to be able to keep the max amount possible and still be able to provide the services that are necessary to hold our sovereign state together.

Democrats want to raise taxes to balance the budget. Republicans want to cut spending to balance the budget.

So last year I put together the formula that would get us to a balanced budget. And if we just wanted to do it all at once, we need to be looking at what that balanced budget was to do that all at once. And we say, first of all, there is nondiscretionary spending. This is the kind of spending that is already in the formula, that is, what it is going to cost for Social Security, what it is going to cost for Medicaid, what it is going to cost for Medicare. That is most of them, those formulas that are automatic transfer payments that are

already set up in the equation. That is nondiscretionary spending. Many people think you can't affect that. That we shouldn't change it, maybe adjust the rules in such a way that there would be fewer recipients or fewer dollars of Medicaid, for example.

That needs to be addressed, and we have tried to address entitlement spending. That is that nondiscretionary spending and the other phrase for it: you are entitled to Social Security. You are entitled to Medicare. You are entitled to Medicaid. But the rules of those entitlements are in the code today, and those rules are something that can be changed and adjusted. And I am not here to talk about how to do that specifically, although I do have some ideas on how to approach that, but we need to address entitlement spending.

That was the President's effort when he came out right after his second inaugural address and traveled the countryside and spoke about reforming Social Security. That operation will collapse at some point unless we have the political courage to touch that third rail and fix it. That is an entitlement.

Another one is Medicare. Being from the State that is last in the Nation in Medicare receipts on a per capita basis, there is much that must be done to help our people out who are on the short end of that stick. But entitlement spending is a component of this. They want to increase taxes rather than adjust entitlement spending. And the more they can grow entitlement spending, the more they can take us into socialism. And I don't want to have a managed economy. I want to have a free enterprise market economy. That is what I came here to promote and defend.

PAYGO for Democrats is raise taxes; PAYGO for Republicans is cut spending. And last year for the 2007 fiscal year, which much of that is still ahead of us, we could have left entitlements in place. We could have left defense spending in place at the appropriated levels that we have now and done nondefense discretionary spending. That is the rest of the budget that I haven't mentioned.

Mr. Speaker, nondefense discretionary spending could have been appropriated at the term of 95 percent of what it was for the 2006 fiscal year and we would have had a balanced budget.

Some of the Democrats have pledged to support a balanced budget that does not include increasing taxes, that does include reduction of spending in nondefense discretionary, that discretionary spending that doesn't put our Nation at risk. Ninety-five percent of the 2006 fiscal year, that doesn't mean an increase. That actually means a decrease of 5 percent in funding.

Well, if I have a family budget and all of a sudden I look around and I think I am going into debt here and I guess I am not going to be in a position to pass that debt along to my children, and we should not be, then we need to be willing to live within our means. And whatever your means are, most of us, if we had to look back and think we can have a balanced family budget if we would just reduce our overall spending down to 95 percent of what it was last year, we would willingly make that adjustment, recognizing that we haven't been as responsible as we should have been, and made the budget adjustment.

That is the kind of PAYGO we need to do in this Congress. We need a balanced budget here, yes, Mr. Speaker, but not PAYGO with tax increases. Pay as you go without tax increases. That is the Steve King position, and I believe that will be a core position on the part of many of the Republicans.

Another way that we can adjust, address spending, is the earmark reform. I have been in strong support of earmark reform. I have stepped in and voted for 16 of the 17 that Congressman Flake brought to the floor of this Congress in the 109th Congress, but I don't think that really does the job. They are pieces that I agree with.

But I want to do some real reform here, Mr. Speaker, and I am prepared to introduce a bill. It is a bill that I introduced last year.

The problem is this, we talk about giving the President a line item veto, so that when there is spending that comes out, and maybe you want to talk about the Bridge to Nowhere, that is one of those issues that has been raised up as a earmark. Well, if the Bridge to Nowhere comes up, or the Cowgirl Hall of Fame comes up or some of these other earmarks that have been rather notorious in the media, we would ask the President, under a presidential line item veto to veto that, take it out of the budget, save that $273 million or whatever the number might be for any of those items, or $1 million line item veto to maybe study the nocturnal habits of the salamander, or whatever it might be. You know some of those, Mr. Speaker, they have been out in the news.

These are earmarks that get slipped in, generally at the committee level, as the bill is being drafted. It comes out here. No Member of Congress has an opportunity to evaluate those earmarks, nor an opportunity to bring an amendment that could strike those earmarks from the bill. They arrive in a compromised fashion often as a conference committee report that comes back in the negotiations between the House and the Senate.

It comes to the floor. We have got to vote on it to move to keep the government operating, and what happens is, there are line items in there that have been earmarked by people who are inside that conference committee, and these Members of Congress here, Democrats and Republicans, are held accountable for voting ``yes'' or ``no'' on pork projects that they didn't know was in the bill.

I would illustrate it this way, when I first came to this Congress, there was a 3,600 page omnibus spending bill. I was only here about 3 days, or maybe even two, and that bill came to the floor of this Congress, and 20 minutes after it was made available to my staff to evaluate, the final vote went up here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

That process meant that I was accountable for all of those earmarks that were in that omnibus spending bill, those 3,600 pages. It is one thing to try to evaluate a bill and read what's in it, it is not possible within the time we had, but it is at least possible to evaluate something that is in the bill.

Try and find, Mr. Speaker, something that is not in the bill. Try and look through 3,600 pages to determine that there are omissions as well as the issues, the earmarks that are in the bill.

This process does need to be more open, so I have drafted the CUT Act, and it is cut unnecessary tab, and the tab references, if you have a tab in an eating or drinking establishment, we want to cut this tab.

I believe this, that Members of Congress need to have a legitimate opportunity to have their own line item veto. I think every Member of this Congress should be able to offer an amendment to a bill that strikes out the line items of their choice under an open rule.

So the CUT Act does this, Mr. Speaker, it allows once a quarter, four times a year, for a bill to come to the floor under an open rule, and it may just be a shell bill, it may not have a single line item strike in it, but it allows under an open rule any and every Member to bring forth their list of objectionable spending, objectionable earmarks, and have them offer those earmark strikes.

All it would do is be a rescissions bill that reduces spending, and the reduction in that spending goes to address the deficit. When the deficit is addressed, then it goes back into the general fund, which ultimately reduces our national debt, gives every Member of this Congress an opportunity to have a line item veto of their own offered to all Members of Congress.

So let us say there is a crazy appropriation out here that got slipped into a bill. It will surely happen, Mr. Speaker, it will happen hundreds and perhaps thousands of times. Let us just say that the blogosphere out there is lit up, that people go to their Web pages, and they scrutinize the work that we do. We need to give them a lot of access to do that because they are the next watch dogs on this Congress.

It used to be that the watch dogs sat in this gallery, and many do, and I am glad they are here, but then as those watch dogs were also up here in the press corps, and then the press wrote, and it got into the newspapers, and sometimes, weeks later, had got out into the press in the corners of the United States of America

Well, now we are real-time. We are real-time, and it has been press real-time for a long time, but it is even better now because we have an Internet, we have a blogosphere. Let us just say that there is a completely objectionable earmark that has been slipped in by a committee chairman, or maybe an agreement with a ranking member, that comes out of a conference committee, and it comes down to the floor of this Congress.

Let us just pick the nocturnal habits of salamanders for $10 million, to have a subject here that we can talk about and understand. Well, we don't really need to understand the nocturnal habits of salamanders, at least at that kind of experience to the taxpayers. But whatever the motivation was that put it in there, we will not see it. We will not have time to read the bill. But that bill then, once it passes a conference report, goes to the President, and he will sign that bill, because there are many things in there that we must have to keep the government operating, and now we have got $10 million wasted on the nocturnal habits of salamanders.

There is nothing Congress can do about it, we have done it. We have been complicit, our rules have been complicit in allowing these things to happen, not just with this earmark, Mr. Speaker, but hundreds and even thousands of them. My CUT Act allows this, it allows a Member to stand up on the first day of the quarter, hopefully it will be the leader and the leaders, and they will say, I have a bill at the desk made in order under the rule, and this bill is the CUT Act bill, then that allows the shell bill to come up like an appropriations bill, only this is a deappropriations bill, a rescissions bill, that every amendment that strikes spending by line item is in order, and the Members can flock over here to the Capitol, and being responsive to their constituents, being responsive to their constituency groups, being responsive to the bloggers out there, that have gone down through this legislation, have read every single line item, have read the details and the nuances of it, read every details and the nuances of it; and then, these Members of Congress can come here, offer their amendments to strike the $10 million that would be spent for the nocturnal habits of salamanders, and you can add line after item after line item, strike after strike to that.

When that happens, we will have an open process, a process that will allow for the people of the United States of America to weigh in on our appropriations that we are doing here.

That, Mr. Speaker, is a description of how the CUT Act works. A lot of us would like to see the President with a legitimate and effective line item veto. But I believe this Congress deserves a legitimate and an effective line item veto. It is why I put a lot of research into this, I have examined it, I have floated it out to the various constituency groups. I have asked them for their input because I don't want to have unintended consequences. I want to be able to provide a process here that is good for the future of America, an open process, a process that gives everybody in this Congress a line item veto, at least to offer the amendment.

When that bill passes off this floor, and I don't envision just eliminating $10 million on the nocturnal habits of salamanders, I envision there to be 25 or 50 or 100 or 300 or more line items that are accumulated into that bill that are struck. Because individually, they will not be able to withstand the scrutiny of the majority of the Members of Congress, because you, the people of America, and the American people, I should say, actually, Mr. Speaker, will insist that we be fiscally responsible and that we not waste money.

So let us just say that there are now 100 line items strikes, each one of them representing an amendment to the CUT Act bill that is in order, and that $10 million to the nocturnal habits of salamanders is the first one, and that saves the taxpayers $10 million. We go right down the list of those things that you know about, Mr. Speaker, those things that are in the media, strike after strike after strike, and we have now accumulated 100 different strikes, line item vetoes, and out of those 100, there is in there, perhaps, let us pick a round number, $1 billion. Now this bill, then, passes off this House of Representatives, and it goes over to the Senate, where we ask them to take it up.

We cannot write their rules, Mr. Speaker, but we can ask them to take up a bill that we pass here, a rescissions package that has the full support of the American people that cuts $1 billion out of our spending that reduces our deficit and when, successfully, we are at the balanced budget level, pays down the national debt.

That is the CUT Act, Mr. Speaker. That is a line item veto for Members of Congress. That is Congressional accountability. That is the kinds of things that we need to have an opportunity to debate here on the floor of this Congress when we kick off this 110th. That is the kind of amendment that has been shut out of this process, not just out of the process of subcommittee and committee, but shut out of even being presented at the Rules Committee so that there can be access to the media for the debate, the deliberation, and so that there will be people that can be held accountable for their vote when they decide they don't want this kind of an open process.

I submit that there is no desire for this open process on the part of the majority. I believe that I need to continue to beat this drum, and I will.

To package the PAYGO argument up and move on to the next component of this, PAYGO, for Republicans is, control and constrain spending to achieve a balanced you budget, no new taxes, less spending, balanced budget, fiscally responsible, PAYGO for Democrats is buy what you need to, spend what you need to pass by your Members, raise taxes, so that you can say that you balanced the budget.

That will work until you kill the goose that lays the golden egg, what you tax you will get less of. We will get less tax gas production in America as taxes increase. That means then that there will be less revenue coming in, coming off of the production in America, and eventually this economy will be constrained It will shrink, and we will have, we will finally kill the goose that lays the golden egg. We will have to come back around, reduce tax again, stimulate again, do what we did in the aftermath of September 11 to reduce tax, do it in the Reagan way, do it in the John F. Kennedy way, the Reagan way, the George W. Bush way, those things, those tax reductions have always increased and stimulated our economy. That doesn't seem to be something that is within the scope of understanding on the other side, because there is a different agenda. It is a socialization agenda.

So, that is the description of PAYGO, Mr. Speaker. Now, the next component that I want to talk about within this rules package is the idea of ethics reform. Ethics reform, I agree, we needed to reform some ethics. We didn't do enough in the 109th Congress to reform ethics. We did things that were, I thought, window dressing.

My view on ethics is that, I mentioned the bloggers a little bit earlier. We need to give the American people sunlight. They have got to have sunlight on this process. That means that we should not have rules that are written and reports that are written in such a way that the information is difficult to access, or difficult to understand, or impossible to legitimately analyze and draw real black and white conclusions.

But in truth, that is the system that we have today, and it is the system that has been improved some over the years, but it has got a ways to go. The system that I would submit is under a package that I have offered called the Sunlight bill. That means that I want a light on the things that we do.

I think that we live in a fishbowl anyway, all 435 of us, we are scrutinized by the press whenever we show up in public, we are recognized, and that is great, it is flattering. It is a tremendous honor to be able to represent the people here in the United States House of Representatives. The trade-off for that is you don't get a lot of privacy. The requirement for that is that you report your finances, for example, and that we report our campaign finances, as well as our personal finances, and we report our financial dealings. That includes real estate transactions, purchases.

But we have a system that is not open. We have a system that is not accessible. We have a system that is not really sortable, and it is vague enough

that you can't draw clear conclusions from that reporting system that we have. I have offered the Sunlight Act to fix all of that and to make it more, and I am going to say far more, accessible to the American people.

First and the easiest one to deal with is the Federal Election Commission reporting. Now, all of us have to go out and raise money in order to get elected to this Congress. Money is a necessity for the people to express their freedom of speech. If we don't raise the money, eventually someone will spend a lot of money. No matter what our level of integrity is, you cannot sustain a seat in the House of Representatives if you are not willing to go out and raise some money and be able to advertise on a political campaign.

It is unfortunate. I don't know that it was envisioned by our Founding Fathers, but it is necessary. Mr. Speaker, if we concede the point that money has to be raised by Members of Congress, and it does, then we also need to discuss, and I believe, concede the point that we should have full reporting of our campaign finances, and we do have a law that requires full reporting, and I don't want to imply that that doesn't exist, it is just that the reporting isn't necessarily in real- time.

It isn't necessarily in a format that is accessible. So if it is not accessible, easily accessible, then it is not as full as the reporting should be. The Sunlight Act asks this, that the Federal Election Commission reporting, our campaign finances, be reported in real-time. And it sets up some parameters on how much time you have if you receive some revenue from an individual or from a PAC, the timing of that is a little looser until you get down to the last 30 days of a campaign. In the last 30 days the Sunlight Act requires that you file those campaign contributions every 24 hours, every single day, the last 30 days, you file those campaign revenues. Somebody hands you a check, that gets deposited, but it gets reported the same business day. That is not too much to ask when you have that kind of flurry going on. We have to do a lot of things on a real-time basis, and that is one of them.

But that is only, but to report that, to report it to the FEC and have the FEC bring that report out in their own good time, in a time that it is not possible for the public to understand where the monies come from, and we agree, I believe, that utilization of funds to advance a candidacy or to advance a cause are political speech, but free speech.

So if funds are speech, and the reporting of those funds is an open process, it needs to be in a timely fashion. So say if there were, what if there happened to be an entity out there that was one who was rejected by Democrats and Republicans but put a lot of money in a campaign and that didn't show up until after the election, Madam Speaker. But the public, had they known that, might have voted for the candidate who didn't receive those funds. That is my argument as to why we need to have real-time reporting.

But I want to take this back to the blogosphere. We have people out there that have their blogs and they are watching the mainstream news media. They are interacting with other blogs. They have their information conduits that come from whatever their access points are. Maybe they happen to be in politics, or maybe they are just a pundit that is well wired and well connected. And they might see information that the rest of the country doesn't see. That is how news is gathered. So the bloggers are gathering the news and they are writing their opinions and sometimes they are taking information and then sorting it in a fashion that people can use it and they can understand it.

I submit that we should submit ourselves, Madam Speaker, to the scrutiny of the blogosphere; that we should have FEC reporting, campaign finance reporting in real-time in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format that will allow anyone out there in America that has access to a computer or to the Internet to go click on that information, if they want to know where Steve King's revenue stream came from, download that into a database that you can sort.

If you want to sort it alphabetically, sort it alphabetically. If you want to sort it by dollars, biggest contribution down to smallest, do that. If you want to sort it by date, do that. If you want to sort it by name, do that. But we should put that information out to the public so that you can scrutinize, in the public, where our campaign funds come from, so that you can evaluate sometimes the positions that we take. Because if they can be indexed to the influence of money, you need to hold us accountable. We owe you our best judgment.

We don't owe the public a vote that is a bought vote. And the public needs to have an opportunity to identify if there is someone who is influenced too much by money, and it needs to happen in real-time. It needs to happen every single day 30 days prior to an election. That is part of the Sunlight Act, to shed light on our Federal Election Commission reporting, real-time, Internet accessible, downloadable, searchable, sortable database so that the American public has access.

Now, Madam Speaker, that would take care of the reporting on our FEC documents. Essential open process, put me in the fish bowl, make it real-time. I am already in the fish bowl. Let's be honest and open about it and we will get these adjustments made, and they will be made by the people out there in the country, and that is where it should be.

The next part of this that needs reform even more, Madam Speaker, is our personal financial reporting from an ethics perspective. And I will reiterate that when a Member of Congress files a financial disclosure form and files it under the ethics rules that are there, they sign that document and pledge that it is true and accurate and done so within the rules and the guidelines of ethics. And to violate that, to willfully violate that and falsely report is a felony. It is a felony. It is worse to report wrong data on your ethics than it is to come into the United States illegally. It is a felony to report inaccurate information willfully on our financial disclosure forms.

But we have ranges of financial reporting, ranges that, not all of them committed to memory, and I didn't come down here prepared to go through them component by component. But I can just give some examples off the top of my head, Madam Speaker. And it works kind of this way. If you have liabilities, I am speaking again in general terms, not to the specific numbers within their financial reporting. If you have liabilities, perhaps between zero and $100,000, you put a little X in that column on this little kind of little spread sheet but it is a paper spread sheet. So you put an X in there and say, well, I owe somewhere between zero and $100,000. Or maybe you say I have no liabilities. And if you have assets that might be within $250,000 and $750,000, you put a little X in that box.

Well, then if you want to analyze what somebody is worth, you might have $100,000 worth of debt and they might have no more than $250,000 worth of assets, but you can't determine if they have no liability or $100,000 worth of liability and you can't determine whether they have $250,000 worth of assets or $750,000 worth of assets. And so as people go up the line in their reporting, the difference, the dollars in disparity get greater and greater and greater to the extent that, Madam Speaker, we have a Member seated in this Congress who reported low six digits in net worth assets 5 years earlier, and then 5 years later, showed up with somewhere between $6.4 million and $25 million in net worth. How does a person make $6 million in assets or, excuse me, in net worth value over a period of 5 years on the salary of a Member of Congress? How could a person expand that from $6.4 million on up to $25 million. Those questions cannot be legitimately answered without the Department of Justice and search warrants and Ryder trucks and filing cabinets loaded up to take into the investigation and computers being picked up and brought in and a massive financial analysis to figure out what really was going on. Were there taxpayer dollars that were pouring into this? Was there a Member of Congress that was enriching himself at the expense of the taxpayers? That is why we have the reporting of our finances.

But the ranges that are in there don't allow for the public to see that early enough to be able to call that question, get it into the media and bring that

Member into bay so that it doesn't get completely out of hand. This one, from my viewpoint, looks like it is completely out of hand, and I think it is going to take more tha months yet for Justice to be able to do complete scrutiny of this and find out what really happened.

But if that Member that I am referencing, and if every Member, and I am speaking about every Member in this Congress, were required to put down exactly the dollar amount of their liabilities and exactly the dollar amounts of their assets so that you could look at their net worth, and understand that there is an amount of appreciation that might come with real estate investment. There might be an amount of appreciation that comes with stock options and investments. That needs to be reported. That should be traceable and trackable, and we should be required to put down exact dollar amounts, not ranges. Not a range of $5 to $25 million. If I were in that range, it is a lot of difference between being worth $5 million and $25 million. Where did the money come from is the reason that we have to report our finances.

The American people, Madam Speaker, do not have access to that information. That allows unethical Members of Congress to hide the worth that they may have been gathering in a fashion that is less than ethical. I believe we need to have sunlight on all of the financial proceedings, not just our Federal Election Commission reporting, not just our campaign side, but on our personal side as we are required today, but not in a range, not in a range of $5 to $25 million, not in a range of zero to $100 now, or $250,000 to $750,000, but in a range that is to the nearest dollar.

Exact reporting, and, Madam Speaker, do so in real-time. Do so in a downloadable, searchable, sortable database format, so that the bloggers out there, or anyone who has access to the Internet, be it a public library or their laptop on the bus or whether it is their hard- wired computer that sits in their basement, can sit down and say, I think I have been watching somebody here that is my Member of Congress. I don't know how they are doing so well. I am hearing rumors out here. Let's see what's really happened and go look and see, if we are going to be an open process, let's be an open process. Let's put sunlight on everything that we do in this Congress, Madam Speaker.

Let's put real-time reporting, downloadable, searchable, sortable formats on our FEC reporting for our campaign funds. Let's do that same thing for our personal finances. Let's open this up to the American people. Let them scrutinize our finances and the movement of our finances so that if some Member can be in here in the year 2000 with a net worth of perhaps $100,000, and in the year 2005 have a net worth of $6.4 million, or more, the American public can ask the question, why. Why did that take that kind of jump? It is not something that can be analyzed or justified unless there are special conditions. Those conditions, those circumstances have not been addressed at this point. I believe we need sunlight on everything that we do, sunlight on our campaign stream, sunlight on our personal finances.

And while we are shedding light on what is going on here in the Chamber, Madam Speaker, it is a bit of a surprise to many of us who come into this Congress to walk down here on the floor of Congress and hear a debate going on and it doesn't seem to be fitting with the debate we were watching on C-SPAN on the television in our office in the 5-minute walk over here. Things have changed. And you can walk on the floor of this Congress and thinking you are coming to weigh in on the debate of H. Res. 5 and find out you are debating H.R. 3495.

Now, neither one of those bills has a name in my mind. But we have names for these bills too that help describe what it is we are debating. And we are sitting in this technological era, where I have just called for real-time access for financial reporting of the Members of Congress, but the people that are sitting in the gallery here in this House of Representatives, Madam Speaker, unless they have got some kind of ear piece in them or some kind of a BlackBerry that they are allowed to have and I don't know that they are, that can tell them what is going on here on the floor of Congress they will not know when they walk in this Chamber what this debate is all about.

They will not know the bill that is before us. They will not know the amendment we are discussing. They will not know why some of the rhetoric doesn't match the language of the bill and the intent of the subject we are talking about. They can't know, Madam Speaker, because there isn't a single sign around this Chamber that tells the people that come into the gallery to witness the people's House what it is we are actually talking about. And if a Member of Congress walks in and they have been 1 minute or 5 minutes or 10 minutes out of the loop in their walk from their office and their watching their C-SPAN camera to come over here, the bill may have changed or a bill may have been temporarily deferred. It might be a different one that is taken up. And in that transfer of that subject matter, they can't know unless they walk over here and interrupt the person or the staff and ask what are we discussing, what are we debating. What is happening. I thought I came over here to talk on H.R. 6, and instead I am over here on H.R. 3094.

The reason that we don't know that is because we don't use the simplest of technology, a technology that at least when we vote puts the number of the bill up here on either end of the Chamber, illuminates it on the wooden panels so that you can see the vote that comes up. There is no technological reason, there is no procedural reason why we can't just ask for the sunlight bill on finances, why we can't just shine the light up on the wall, a subject matter that is being debated, the number of the bill that is being debated and the name and perhaps the number of the amendment that is also under discussion at the moment. That would allow anyone who comes in off the street to witness the debate and deliberation of the people's House to immediately sit down and understand what the debate is all about and understand what the amendment is and who has got the amendment up, and they will figure out then instantly who is the proponent, who is the opponent, and the process becomes more open.

The simplest thing that should be nonpartisan, this very simple idea is not just my idea but an idea that is supported and endorsed by many. I would ask if we could submit this idea to the freshmen that have come in. Those who have come out of State legislatures understand that the technology is there and has been there for years in State legislatures. When you walk into the chamber of a State House or a State Senate almost anywhere in the country, the subject of the bill is illuminated on the wall, the bill number is illuminated on the wall, the name of the person offering the amendment and the number of the amendment is offered on the wall with a short description of the bill, the amendment, so that the public can easily see what is going on, so that the members who are elected can walk in the room and instantaneously understand the process that they have walked into and be able to pick up immediately and engage in the process.

That is part of the light that needs to be shined on this process, Madam Speaker. And I raise this issue up with this particular discussion because it happens to be something that is almost without cost. It should be absolutely bipartisan. In fact, it should be nonpartisan in its nature. Everyone who serves here should be interested in being able to have easy access to the process and the procedure we happen to be under. And it is something that allows the people in the gallery to understand what is happening.

Right now, it could have ``Special Order by King'' on there. They could have a little clock on there to tell me how much time I have left before the gavel drops and my time has run and expired.

But at this point I would ask the Speaker how much time I have remaining.

Oh, boy. The gentleman will then immediately conclude my discussion, and I really appreciate that I have been able to bring it to that conclusion in exactly the 60 minutes that have been allowed. I appreciate

also the privilege in speaking to you, Madam Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, a parliamentary inquiry.

My only parliamentary inquiry is, in fact, that we are now in fact taking up the WRDA veto override, and that debate will take up 1 hour, and the time has been equally divided.

Is that the correct parliamentary procedure or order of business?

Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, let me say at the outset, I have supported President Bush on many occasions. In fact, I pulled a list of some 43 measures on which I supported the President in an attempt to sustain a veto.

But today, my colleagues, I must respectfully disagree with President Bush's veto of this important and long overdue Water Resources Development Act. I believe it's far too important for both our Nation and for my State of Florida and, again, for all the projects that are in the backlog. I'm disappointed the President and the White House have decided to veto this legislation that includes many critically

needed infrastructure and restoration projects.

For the first time, you've heard this since 2000, the year 2000, Congress will enact legislation authorizing, and this is authorizing, we are setting Congress's priorities for authorization. All of these projects in this bill must come back for approval for funding.

But this particular bill includes all of the water resource projects to restore our endangered ecosystems across the country, construct new levees, dams, rebuild our beaches, and work on other important water resources projects.

A significant portion of the bill, I might say, deals with Everglades restoration, something that we've been working on for years. And also another significant portion of this legislation deals with work and reconstruction of some of our water resources projects in the damaged gulf of the United States.

There's been, as you've heard, a water resources bill introduced in every Congress since 2000; however, controversies always dash the hopes of approving a measure.

After I assumed responsibility for ranking member of the House Republican leader on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I met with the new chairman, Mr. Oberstar, and I sat down and we tried to decide what were our priorities. And this is a great example of how this body should work. This is a bipartisan measure. Mr. Oberstar, this was one of his priorities. He worked on it for a number of years. I came new to my leadership position, but pledged to work with him; and we did work together on this.

Let me say also, ironically, I feel sad today that Mr. Oberstar is not joining us. Our hearts, our thoughts and our prayers are with him. He's recovering from surgery yesterday which he had scheduled some time in advance.

But he served this House for 32 years before he became the chairman of T & I. He made a commitment, a bipartisan commitment to work together, and we did that. And when you do that in this House, you can achieve anything. And in a few minutes we will achieve an override of the President's veto because we worked together in a bipartisan manner to rebuild our Nation's water resources.

Let me say also that earmarks, and this contains a number of projects, earmarks have gotten a somewhat tainted reputation and were criticized. But what we did, and what I tried to do on the Republican side, was make certain that this was a transparent process. Every Republican House project was publicly submitted, publicly available for review, and very carefully vetted. In fact, Mr. Oberstar and I cut more than 100 projects from the 2005 proposed House-passed WRDA proposal that did not pass.

The 2007 WRDA bill addresses what I believe are the important needs of our Nation. Again, I think this is a good bill that represents investment in America. These investments will improve trade, protect our homes, our businesses from flood damages, and from other ravages of Mother Nature we've seen. They'll enhance our quality of life by restoring aquatic ecosystems like in the State of Florida with the Everglades restoration.

This legislation ensures our ports and waterways remain viable in the international marketplace by authorizing critical navigational deepening projects. Maritime commerce is absolutely essential to the future of our economy. Congestion at an outdated port or waterway is becoming a national economic issue, and this bill addresses that economic problem. Products moving into our waterways aid our environment and lessen highway and rail congestion.

Efficient waterways must be, in fact, an integral part of America's intermodal transportation system, and this bill helps do that.

To maintain our place in the global economy, the United States must have modern ports and waterways. Our ports and waterways need to be improved to handle additional traffic. And what's coming are mega- ships, a new class of larger liners and freighters that are coming. We have almost no ports that can handle that type of traffic. This conference report addresses these needs in several ways, including improvements to waterways in my State of Florida, as well as in Texas, Louisiana, Virginia, and other areas.

In addition, this bill authorizes seven new locks and other navigational improvements on the upper Mississippi River.

The WRDA conference report authorizes critical projects to provide flood protection to millions of Americans. And we've all seen that if we neglect our waterway infrastructure or our water protection system, you've heard that adage, we pay now or we pay later. Well, I can tell you we'll pay much later if we don't protect ourselves from, again, reducing the potential flood damage that we've seen.

This bill includes many projects that protect our cities from floods and also from those coastal storms we've experienced.

The Corps of Engineers is the leader in planning and carrying out our environmental restoration projects. And this conference report that we will override a veto on in a few minutes is by far the greenest, most environmentally friendly Water Resources Development Act ever passed by Congress. This bill's major new focus is environmental restoration, and again, it contains the first work. In 2000 we authorized study of cleaning up the Everglades. This bill authorizes work on the Everglades.

Everglades restoration, as I said, has been talked about for years. And it is a national ecological treasure that must be protected for future generations of Americans.

I might say too that the restoration of the Everglades is in partnership with the State of Florida. And I have a message from a Republican Governor, Charlie Crist, was handed to me earlier: Greetings from Brazil, where he's now with 200 businessmen. And the Republican Governor of the State of Florida is urging that we override the President's veto, basically because of what I said about the Everglades and other critical water infrastructure projects in the State of Florida.

This bill does not, as I said, guarantee funding. Money will have to be appropriated to meet these authorization levels; but it represents a critical commitment by this Congress to restore, again, an ecological jewel in Florida and water resources projects throughout the United States.

Also addressed in the bill are policy issues that will improve how the Corps of Engineers actually conducts projects, and that's also important. There's a peer review process that I think is critical to monitoring and protecting whether the projects perform as designed.

I know the President is concerned that the conference report authorizes more projects than could actually be funded. All of those projects may not ultimately receive funding from Congress. They have to come back to Congress, even after this authorization. But it is important that we authorize, through this conference report, a good list of investments from which the Congress can later prioritize funding.

Finally, I know the White House has expressed concerns with this bill. However, again, the House bill in 2005 contained 784 projects. The House bill in 2007 that we worked to examine in a transparent manner the projects, contains 682. Over 100 projects were cut out of the previous House bill. Again, this was, I believe, an open and transparent and a bipartisan process that, hopefully, will restore some of the public's confidence in this process.

And, finally, we have to realize that this bill, since we haven't passed one since 2000, represents the equivalent of three WRDA bills. When we had a backup in 1986 we, in fact, funded $11 billion worth of projects back in 1986 because we hadn't passed a bill in a long time.

So while I wholeheartedly respect the President's veto, we, as Congress have a responsibility to provide for our Nation's resources and infrastructure, provide the leadership to get that job done. And I urge Members to support overriding the President's veto.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to one of the leaders in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to another leader on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on the Republican side, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Boustany).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to one of the true fiscal conservatives of the House, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to another fiscal watchdog in the House, a leader in the Republican Study Group, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes at this time to the senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the former immediate past chair of the committee, the distinguished gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young).

(Mr. YOUNG of Alaska asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased at this time to yield to a gentleman for whom I have the greatest respect; he is also the ranking member of the Water Resources Committee, has done an excellent job on this bill working in a bipartisan effort. It is my honor to yield 5 minutes to our ranking member, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker).

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to yield myself one-half minute for the purpose of an introduction, and then I am going to yield 3 minutes to the individual I want to introduce.

Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues, it is now one of the greatest pleasures I have had to introduce a gentleman who I got to know for a brief period of time. He came into this House, and he has done an incredible job of representation in a difficult time for his State of Louisiana. I had the chance to go down with him and look at infrastructure projects after the damage. I think the people of Louisiana recognized, in an unprecedented historic fashion, his leadership, in electing him Governor in a tide that was historic in proportions.

So, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, the gentleman and future Governor of the State of Louisiana, our colleague, Mr. Jindal, the gentleman from Louisiana, again, I recognize for 3 minutes.

I will continue to reserve until the last speaker.

Understanding that Ms. Johnson will close, I yield myself the balance of our time.

Now, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, we come to the close of the debate on overriding the Presidential veto. Today, indeed, has been a strange day. That is the interesting thing about politics and government in the United States of America. Look at the people who have spoken here; a future Governor. We have heard people who have had their homes destroyed, their property. We had a strange day here today. My side of the aisle ended up voting not to end a particular debate on a possible impeachment resolution of the Vice President. Here I am, a staunch supporter of the President's effort to maintain fiscal responsibility, supporting override of his veto.

But this is a very difficult job. It is a difficult job for me. It is a difficult job for the President. I think we like to do everything we can. I think it is in the heart of the other side of the aisle, and I know in the heart of my fellow Republican Members to do as good a job

as we can in representing people. I know the President has had to make some difficult choices coming into office with the events of September 11 and the terrorist threat that we face and the line drawn in the sand by al Qaeda and Iraq. And national security is our primary responsibility, but we also have responsibility to our infrastructure.

So we have tried to sort out those priorities in this process. We do need an investment in our infrastructure.

The President is right in, probably, his stance. I think we are right in our stance. This is an authorization bill. This is not a spending bill. It does prioritize for the Congress bills that have been carefully considered and projects that have been considered by Members, and Members make very sincere requests based on the conditions of their particular districts.

It is a great system and it does work. I understand the President's commitment to fiscal responsibility, and I think we have tried to act in a responsible and good-steward fashion.

In closing, I again want to thank Mr. Oberstar. Unfortunately, he is not with us today, on this day that he worked so hard for. I thank Ms. Johnson. I want to thank Mr. Baker, our ranking member, and all of those who have worked, particularly the staff: Jim Coon, our staff director; David Heymsfeld on the Democrat staff side; John Anderson and Ryan Seiger; all of the staff, those named and others, who have worked to bring this bill together, all with the same intent, to improve the lives, the resources and the condition of our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the matter under consideration.

I will.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, it was a little over 2 years ago that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita tore through the gulf coast leaving a trail of tragedy and despair in their wake.

Endless news reports documented the disaster, the catastrophe, the misfortune and the heartbreak of the affected communities. Even some of our colleagues lost their homes. Many wondered how they could help these victims, whose homes, families and livelihoods were destroyed in a matter of hours.

Washington may be geographically far from Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas, but it gives us no excuse to dismiss the travails of those States. We cannot merely look at these events through protective glass, ruling on the fates of these communities from far away. We must be on the ground, planning recovery and reconstruction to ensure the devastation experienced never happens again.

Most of us have traveled to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina to try and understand what needs to be done to help the region prepare for the future.

I have seen firsthand the devastation faced by the citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding region.

On September 15, 2005, President Bush stood in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the dark of the night and stated, ``Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.''

How is vetoing the Water Resources Development Act consistent with this pledge? We need to change how we deal with these events.

Our Federal emergency planning should not consist of after-the-fact recovery. We must institute prevention. We cannot simply wait for tragedy after tragedy and then hastily truck in meals ready to eat or trucks of bottles of water. We need to truck in reform now.

Prior to the hurricanes, the gulf coast had but a patchwork of protection. The wetlands had disappeared. The buffer that could have reduced the wrath of the winds and storm surge of Katrina and Rita had been vanishing. This legislation authorizes the Army Corps of Engineers to begin to replenish the water coastline.

WRDA 2007 also closes the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, commonly known as ``Mr. Go,'' taking a proactive step to help the people and the businesses of Louisiana, Mississippi and the entire Gulf Coast States. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet was authorized to provide a shorter shipping channel from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans; yet the projected traffic for this corridor never materialized. Unfortunately, the outlet may have substantially contributed to the severe flooding of the City of New Orleans and the lower Ninth Ward during Hurricane Katrina.

WRDA 2007 is also essential to fulfill the President's commitment to rebuild New Orleans even better and stronger than before the storm. Unfortunately, by vetoing this legislation, the President is turning his back on the commitment to rebuild this great city, vetoing the authorization for the Corps to raise enhanced flood protection levees surrounding the City of New Orleans and to achieve a 100-year level of protection.

Some may think that investment in our Nation's infrastructure should have a cost ceiling. We will never be able to contain this cost until we do some of the work. That investment in our Nation's future should only cost so much. Well, for those who make this argument concerning this bill, I urge them to study the recent past of this legislative body.

This bill is not new. As many times as we don't finish it, cost goes up. WRDA 2007 contains water resource projects that have been pending in the halls of this Chamber for far too long. Water resources legislation is most effective when authorized every 2 years. Even the executive branch department indicated that we need $19 billion every other year to bring this, all the infrastructure, up to par. This hasn't happened.

The last bill was signed in 2000 by President Clinton. This bill clears a 7-year logjam. A larger bill is necessary to carry a larger load.

When President Bush states that this bill is too costly, he is not considering the time lag. This debate is not about whether this legislation could cost $14 billion or $15 billion, but about whether this legislation authorizes projects that reinvest in the Nation's crumbling infrastructure.

We do right by this country when we invest in its infrastructure. Regrettably, we are falling miserably behind. China spends 9 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure. India spends 3.5 percent and the U.S. spends a meager .93 percent. We must do better.

We don't want a situation where our beaches remain contaminated with open sewage or other contaminants. We passed this particular conference report on August 1, 2007, the same day that the highway bridge I-35 collapsed in Minnesota. We stood on this floor considering investment in infrastructure at the same time that emergency personnel were working the wreckage of a structure that unexpectedly is unstable. Our country cannot continue to put an arbitrary cost ceiling on investment in our public works.

If we do this on a regular basis, we won't have to do that.

Simply put, this legislation is about meeting our commitments to the Nation on protecting lives and livelihoods, ensuring economic competitiveness in the global marketplace, and restoring the Nation's ecological treasures.

For example, WRDA 2007 authorizes the first three projects in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, the Picayune Strand, Indian River Lagoon, and the Site 1 Impoundment Project.

Since 2000, all 15 components of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan have been delayed. Costs have decreased, and even in my paper this weekend, there was an article on how the Everglades were disappearing.

Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park continue to be listed in the directories of our country's most endangered parks. As the population of the State of Florida has boomed, land management has not kept pace. This bill begins the journey to a better Florida.

If safety and human protection are not good enough reasons to secure the passage of this legislation, I urge the President to consider our industry. WRDA 2007 seeks to improve our waters for our industry and our environment. This bill authorizes seven locks and dams in the Upper Mississippi River, as well as the ecosystem restoration projects in the Midwest region.

This bill doesn't just address large water resources projects. Many smaller projects are contained within this legislation, seeking to improve cities and small towns across the Nation. We'd like very much for drinking bottled water to continue to be a selection and a choice, rather than a necessity.

These projects do not make national headlines, but they make a difference in the quality of life for those who live in these vicinities. Without these projects, many communities would be without necessary flood control, ecosystem restoration, and economic and public health necessities.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the flood control needs of my district in Dallas. The Dallas Floodway accepts 1,600 square miles of Trinity River watershed runoff and safely moves the flood waters through the City of Dallas by virtue of levees that form both sides of the 2,000 foot-wide floodway. The flooding has been projected to flood the downtown area where all of the basis of our economy is. The floodway levees protect the downtown Dallas vicinity from a potential flood damage loss to property and infrastructure of $8 billion or more.

The 23 miles of levees for the Dallas Floodway were originally constructed by local interests in 1932 and reconstructed by the Corps in 1960. Since 1960, the upstream watershed has experienced the exploding population growth, which has significantly increased run-off, overwhelmed our antiquated interior drainage pumps, and greatly reduced the flood protection afforded by the levee system.

My district's flood control needs are great; and like other communities across the Nation, they are anxiously anticipating the resumption of a predictable, consistent and 2-year WRDA cycle.

Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that this Congress send a message to the American people today that we intend to make our Nation's infrastructure a priority.

I urge my colleagues to join with me and vote ``yes'' in making our infrastructure a priority, vote ``yes'' for your districts, and vote ``yes'' to override the ill-advised veto.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina, our majority whip, Mr. Clyburn.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello), senior member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 1 minute to our majority leader from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the distinguished senior member of the committee from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Melancon).

Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have left?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to Mrs. Tubbs Jones from the State of Ohio.

(Mrs. JONES of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, so I rise to close.

I would like to thank Mr. Oberstar for his tremendous leadership, Mr. Young, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Baker, and, of course, Mr. Mica. We have worked together for the last 6 years, actually, a little longer, 7 years, on a bill to try to address these infrastructure problems throughout our Nation. This is the first opportunity that we have really had to begin to address the many massive problems that we do have.

It gives no one pleasure to override any President because I was always taught to listen to both sides. This time, Mr. Speaker, I believe it's a necessity. We simply must begin to address these many, many problems that we are facing. If we had done what the executive branch had recommended, we would have had at least $19 billion in 2001; another $19 billion in 2003; and another $19 billion in 2005; then the $19 billion due this year. As it is, $23 billion is short $55 billion.

So we are not addressing every problem, but we are trying our best to prioritize; and hopefully we can get back on schedule and address these problems every 2 years so that we won't have to deal with more floods like Katrina and Rita; we won't have to do without our Everglades as they begin to disappear.

So thank you very much to the staff, to all of the Members, both minority and majority, because we have all been one or the other. We have been majority and we have been minority. We still work together. This bill hasn't changed that much, no matter who was in the majority or no matter who was in the minority, because we know that problems of this sort are really simply not Democrat or Republican; these are people's problems and we simply have the responsibility to address them.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask everyone to vote to override this veto.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of my bill, H.R. 3495, the KIDS WiSH Act.

Before I start, I would like to thank Chairman Oberstar and Chairwoman Norton for their work in bringing this bill through the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I also would like to thank Ranking Member Mica and Ranking Member Graves for their bipartisan support. Their leadership and their staff have been instrumental in strengthening the merits of the bill and the concept of this commission. Finally, I would like to thank the House leadership for bringing this important bill to the floor so quickly.

The KIDS WiSH Act will establish a National Commission on Children and Disasters that will conduct a comprehensive study to examine and assess the needs of children to prepare for, respond to and recover from all major disasters and emergencies. The bipartisan commission will report to the President and Congress on their findings, conclusions and recommendations to address the needs of children and emergencies. In addition, the commission will consider the need for a permanent national resource center on children and disasters that will be a resource for emergency managers, schools, housing agencies, transportation entities and other relevant organizations.

Disaster and emergencies strike all over this country, and they affect children in small and large numbers. This spring, Greensburg, Kansas, which had a population of 1,389, experienced a horrible tornado. Children aged 0-17 make up 25 percent of the population of Kansas. That translates into about 347 children who were affected. This may be a small number compared to Hurricane Katrina, but each of those children's lives were utterly changed after that one tornado.

In the San Diego area, as a result of the recent wildfires, nearly 850,000 people were evacuated. In California, the population is about 26 percent children

0-17, so that translates to roughly 220,000 children who had to be evacuated. On October 24, 2007, FEMA reported that 13,000-plus individuals were housed in shelters. That translates to roughly 3,500 children.

Since Hurricane Katrina, many improvements to our emergency management system have been made, but there is still much work to be done. The basic tenet of disasters and emergencies is to ``make a plan.'' You hear it in public service announcements all over Florida and the Gulf coast, and it is written on many of the materials distributed by FEMA. Make a plan, make a plan.

But, for all of that talk, we do not have a plan for children. Children are one of our most vulnerable populations, and their needs are unique and cannot be easily assumed from emergency plans for adults.

Earlier this year I met with the chief of the Division of Community Pediatrics from the University of Florida and he brought to my attention that emergency evacuation equipment is often brought for adults, but children cannot be transported in adult equipment, and often that type of equipment is missed. From needles and tubing to oxygen masks and ventilators, children need equipment that has been specifically designed for their size.

Do you know if the hospitals in your district are prepared for children in an emergency situation? Hospitals are just one of the many areas where improvements can be made for children in emergency situations and why the commission is needed.

More than 400,000 children under the age of 5 lived in and were evacuated from counties and parishes that were declared disaster areas by FEMA in response to Hurricane Katrina. In addition, 1,100 schools were closed immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Two years later, only 45 percent of New Orleans schools have reopened. Finally, the most startling statistic from Hurricane Katrina is that 5,192 children were missing or displaced and it took nearly 6\1/2\ months to unite each child with their parent. However, the effects of disasters on children are not limited to events of this magnitude.

Additionally, in this day and age we cannot keep thinking that children will not be harmed in a terrorist attack. In 1995, nineteen children were killed and more than 80 children were injured at the Oklahoma City bombing.

More than 6,000 children were in the immediate area of Ground Zero during 9/11, and if the attacks were more widespread, it would have reached over 1.2 million public school students.

In the D.C. area we are painfully aware that during the sniper shooting, schools and children are not overlooked by terrorists. We must have a plan for children in the event of another terrorist attack.

I have been working hard to bring this issue to light. I led 23 other Members to call on FEMA to have an expert on children and disasters as a member of the National Advisory Council. I offered an amendment to the fiscal year 2008 Homeland Security appropriations bill that will add $1 million specifically for children and disasters.

Finally, I held an important forum with experts from emergency management, pediatrics and disaster recovery to discuss how to prepare, respond to, and recover from all hazards for children. Over 100 people attended this briefing to show their support for the legislation.

As adults, we may think this is unnecessary; but once again, we must think how children are different. I encourage the commission to think outside the box. Children are a diverse group and the commission should remember children in the context of private schools, preschools, after- school programs, day care facilities, pregnant women, foster children, and orphanages.

Last year, Congress passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act of 2006. Congress has recognized how pets can slip through the cracks during an emergency, but has yet to have a plan for children in an emergency.

Children should not be forced to suffer through another learning experience like Hurricane Katrina. Congress must look forward and discover a comprehensive strategy for children and emergencies that may happen such as pandemic flu or a terrorist attack or a major earthquake. A national commission is imperative to making progress.

This commission will solidify some of the already good work that other organizations are doing and provide recommendations for better coordination at the local, State, and Federal levels.

I also would like to thank organizations who have supported this bill. I want to recognize the crucial support of Mark Shriver from Save the Children who has led the coalition of children's advocate groups.

Mr. Speaker, I will insert the list of groups into the Record at this point, and I encourage my colleagues to support H.R. 3495, the KIDS WiSH Act.

Save the Children, Allergy and Asthma Network Mothers of

Asthmatics, American Association of School Administrators,

American Red Cross, Association of Maternal and Child Health

Programs, Catholic Charities USA, Child Welfare League of

America, Children's Health Fund, Habitat for Humanity, March

of Dimes, The Midwives Alliance of North America, National

Assembly on School-Based Healthcare, National Association of

Children's Hospitals, National Association of Emergency

Medical Technicians, National Association of Certified

Professional Midwives, National Association of School Nurses,

National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia

University, Safermaternity.org, and White Ribbon Alliance.

Mr. Speaker, the President's veto of the Water Resources Development Act was pointless and unnecessary.

This legislation, which authorizes project authorizations, modifications, and studies for the breadth of authorities for the United States Army Corps of Engineers and for the entirety of the United States, represents a culmination of seven years of bipartisan, bicameral consensus to invest in our nation's future.

The Water Resources Development Act is vital for our nation's economic growth.

It is essential to maintaining the nation's competitiveness in the international marketplace.

It is necessary for the lives of our families, our neighbors, and our nation through the authorization of flood control structures, and hurricane and storm damage reduction projects throughout the country-- but most notably for those living in the Gulf Coast region.

It is necessary for crucial navigation projects and studies, including the modernization of a portion of the largest inland waterway system in the United States--the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway System.

It is prudent for sustaining economic growth in our nation's industries--such as the revitalized iron ore and steel industries of the Great Lakes.

Finally, it is critical for the long-term, environmental health of the nation's ecosystems, including fulfilling our commitment to restore the Florida Everglades.

Enactment of the Water Resources Development Act is also significant because it represents the culmination of many years of debate on programmatic changes to the economic and environmental policies of the Corps of Engineers.

These changes, which have colloquially been referred to as ``Corps reform'', are noteworthy because they signify what can be accomplished when industry and the environmental community sit down, talk through their concerns, and mutually agree upon a set of changes to the way the Corps of Engineers formulates and carries out projects and studies within its missions. These programmatic changes will result in better studies, better projects, and hopefully, less controversy over the final recommendations of the Chief of Engineers.

Mr. Speaker, the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 was approved by both bodies of Congress--the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate--with overwhelming, bipartisan consensus. How can this legislation merit a Presidential veto?

For six years, this administration has done nothing to assist in the passage of a water resources bill.

For six years, there have been no draft administration proposals for a water resources bill.

For six years, this administration has done nothing to advance of the cause of investment

in our nation's water related infrastructure--its navigation projects, its flood damage reduction projects, and its environmental restoration projects.

For six years, this administration has been entirely disengaged from the water resources development process. Yet, at this late hour, and espoused to a newfound, self-ordained fiscal conservatism, the President comes to Congress to veto this legislation? This veto is an affront to the needs of the American people.

During the years of consensus building in Congress, there has been no participation by this administration to craft legislation to address the water resources needs of the nation.

The President says ``[This] bill lacks fiscal discipline.'' Yet, the administration will have an opportunity to influence future funding of projects and studies contained in this legislation through the annual President's budget request to Congress.

The President says ``[This] bill does not set priorities.'' Yet, the conference report to accompany H.R. 1495 authorizes several, high- priority projects for investment and restoration of the nation's water resources needs.

First, for farmers and other agricultural industries, internationally disadvantaged by aging and inferior locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway System, this legislation authorizes the construction of seven new, 1,200-foot locks and other navigational improvements that will help move grains and other agricultural commodities to market faster and at a reduced cost.

For the environment, this legislation realizes the decades-long dream of restoring the Florida Everglades ecosystem by taking the first steps toward undoing the mistakes of the past and ensuring the vitality of this internationally recognized environmental treasure for generations to come.

For the communities devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this legislation is essential to fulfilling the President's commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast communities ``even better and stronger than before the storm.'' The Water Resources Development Act of 2007 authorizes the reconstruction of the flood walls and improvements to the interior drainage of the City of New Orleans, the closure of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (``MRGO''), and the initial steps to restore the coastal wetlands surrounding the Gulf Coast region.

For the Great Lakes region, this legislation is crucial to sustain and improve the movement of ores from the Iron Range of Minnesota through the Great Lakes to international markets. In addition, this legislation authorizes the construction of two barriers to halt the northward movement of the Asian Carp--one at the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the other at Lock and Dam 11 on the Upper Mississippi River System. These two barriers will help control the movements of this voracious fish, and sustain the fisheries of the Great Lakes communities.

This legislation also creates a rapid response authority for the Corps and other Federal agencies to control and prevent further spreading of viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or the VHS virus in the Great Lakes. VHS is an infectious viral disease of fish that has been linked to a multiplicity of fish kills. The virus has been a prolonged problem in Europe and Japan, and has now been confirmed in Lake Ontario, Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie, and the St. Lawrence River. Just this past January, it was detected in Lake Huron. With four different strains, the VHS virus spreads rapidly. However, it is unclear exactly how it spreads. We must study and attack this threat immediately, or else we face fish kills in the Great Lakes, a decline in the fishing industry, and economic repercussions.

Mr. Speaker, there are many national priorities in this legislation, as well as countless priorities for our local towns, communities, and constituents. Yet, why has the President chosen to veto this bill?

I can only surmise that the President has so far distanced himself from the water resources needs of this nation that he fails to recognize the importance of this legislation to the American people.

I urge my colleagues to quickly vote in support of this legislation, notwithstanding the Presidential veto, so that we may fulfill the commitments that the Federal Government has made to so many, and ensure the economic, environmental, and public health of this nation.