A bill to amend the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to authorize advances from Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days to enter their remarks into the Record on this topic of the gulf oil spill.

I appreciate the opportunity to anchor this special hour tonight. My name is Congresswoman Laura Richardson, and I represent California's 37th Congressional District which includes the cities of Long

Beach, Compton, Carson, and Signal Hill. It's adjacent to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the largest port complex in the United States and the third-largest in the world.

For starters tonight, I want to take a look at what we're going to talk about in the report that I've prepared to present to the American people. As a Member of Congress, I'm a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, and I'm the subcommittee chair of Emergency Communications, Preparedness and Response, and so because of that, I felt it was important to share with the American people the information and the observations of what I'm now calling the people's Congress.

I'm here tonight to present to the United States Congress and the American people my report, my observations, and my recommendations regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It includes the responses that have been taken and the recovery that's needed for us to move forward.

So let's start with what happened back on April 20 at 10 p.m. Tragedy struck in the Gulf of Mexico. Just 42 miles from the population of the people in Venice, Louisiana, there was a fire, there was an explosion, and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig began to be engulfed in flames. After trying to quench the flames, people came from all over the country, even Holland, attempting to figure out how to put the fire out on this rig. After spending much time and much energy, 115 crewmembers were rescued and evacuated.

Eleven crewmembers, unfortunately, tragically died. These eleven men lost their lives: Jason Anderson, Dale Burkeen, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Gordon Jones, Roy Wyatt Kemp, Karl Kleppinger, Blair Manual, Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto and Adam Weise. These 11 gentlemen were men. They were men who were fathers, brothers, sons, and uncles, and on behalf of myself and the House of Representatives and Americans, we express our prayers to their families and friends and commit to study the situation and not to repeat it again in the future.

So, in order for us to do that, we first have to understand what is the magnitude of this problem. Throughout the evening on April 20 and into the next day, gallant efforts were made, as I mentioned, to still save, even into the second and third day, the 11 missing men and to put out the fire that could be seen for miles. The men who were coming to put out this fire, they could see the fire on this rig for 2 hours prior to getting to the actual site. That's how large it was. Some say the fire was as high as 200 feet into the air.

So 2 days later, after they made very many attempts to be able to put the fire out, the heat was just entirely too hot and the metal began to collapse, and the platform and the rig collapsed, 5,000 feet to the floor of the ocean.

As the fire began to subside on April 24, just two short days later, it was reported that oil was flowing into the ocean at a rate of at least 5,000 barrels per day. The United States has over 63,000 Federal onshore oil and gas wells. Having leaks and spills is also not something new to our country, but what is is the size and the magnitude.

Since 1990, there have been a total of 5,601 major pipeline incidences reported. That represents over $4 billion in damage. Previously reported, the worst spill was in 1989 by the Exxon Valdez in Bligh Reef, in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The flow rate technical group of the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Exxon Valdez spilled approximately 750,000 barrels of oil. Now, let's put that in perspective.

The oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon has continued for over 80 days, although it has passed at this point, and it is believed that the Deepwater Horizon will supersede the Valdez by several times. How could that be? If the Deepwater Horizon is leaking at anywhere between 10,000, as has been reported, and as high as 65,000 barrels a day, and if you multiply that by a minimum of 80 days, you're talking about a range of 800,000 to 4.8 million barrels of oil.

Now, the Deepwater spill took place 42 miles from Venice, Louisiana, which has 572 miles affected out of 7,721 miles. Those are shoreline miles, and so what that's saying is the impacted area is approximately 7.4 percent. In Mississippi, they have over 108 miles that are affected out of 359 total tidal shoreline miles, which brings it at approximately 30 percent. Alabama has over 67 miles of coastline affected out of 607 total tidal shoreline miles, approximately 11 percent. And Florida has over 69 miles affected out of 5,095 total tidal shoreline miles, approximately 1 percent.

So when we consider the damages that have happened so far with this Deepwater Horizon spill, some of the damages that are caused are to the beaches that we will talk about tonight, to fish, to birds, the environment, other wildlife, the ecosystem, tourism and the economy, marine life, livelihoods, jobs, lost productivity, and let's not forget public health.

In light of the loss of life, the unusual depth of drilling, and the immediate disaster implication, responses from all levels were immediately activated. President Obama and the administration, through working with the U.S. Coast Guard, is historically the primary responder to U.S. coastal waters. The U.S. Coast Guard responded to the BP oil spill within hours. The Coast Guard began immediately operating an emergency search-and-rescue mission.

Leadership was established on April 21, less than 1 day later. On April 21, a day after the explosion, pursuant to the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan, Rear Admiral Mary Landry was made Federal on-scene coordinator.

On April 22, less than 2 days later, after the explosion, the national response team, led by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, was activated along with additional regional response teams. These regional response teams are formed for many reasons. The teams typically include a United States Coast Guard representative, someone from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior and State and local representatives. The purpose of these regional response teams is to coordinate, to partner, to communicate, and to respond.

The regional response teams began developing plans, providing technical assistance and access to resources and equipment from its member agencies, as well as overseeing BP's response. Some workers, like Jay Harper from the Department of Homeland Security, have been working since day one, which is now 91 days straight, in response to the Deepwater Horizon spill. In this picture you see Jay and I viewing the source site, and he's pointing out information to me of where the actual source is, where the burns are taking place, and the whole aspect of what we could view from the plane.

On April 23, an incident command system stood up and was in accordance with the national response framework and the NCP. The purpose of the incident command system is to provide a common method for developing and implementing tactical plans to efficiently and effectively manage a multiagency response, and certainly this was it. The ICS organization for this response included incident command posts and unified commands at the local level, as well as a unified command at the regional level.

The next step was on April 29, just 9 days from the explosion, Secretary Napolitano designated the oil spill as a spill of national significance. This designation enabled Secretary Napolitano to appoint then U.S. Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen to serve as the National Incident Commander, the lead national coordinator in charge of Federal efforts.

On May 21, 2010, President Obama issued an Executive order creating the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling to respond to this spill. Further, President Barack Obama simultaneously has made four trips to the gulf to oversee the spill and to supervise the cleanup efforts.

On June 9, The New York Times reported that Rear Admiral James A. Watson, the on-scene coordinator of the Unified Command overseeing the response effort, wrote to British Petroleum, giving the company 3 days to provide plans. Among the requirements are that any new method, most importantly, that would contain the leak would be devised to reduce disruptions from a potential hurricane, which we are now approaching that season.

The letter came amid continuing questions about how much of the leaking oil was being captured by BP's latest containment effort, what we now know to be called the top hat. Also, there were questions of whether the company could be collecting more and what other processes could be used.

Finally, there were concerns about whether BP had failed to provide enough surface equipment. So when I had an opportunity to go to the gulf, and having read all of this, these were the things that I wanted to see. When you look at the source site of the Deepwater Horizon spill, what you will notice is there are multiple platforms, multiple vessels that are used to all coordinate in one sync to eliminate the gushing of oil that was coming into the gulf. And this was the scene that I saw just 1 week ago.

So when Rear Admiral Watson directed his letter, the things that he wanted to make sure that we were considering is incorporating the hurricanes, because the gulf is very much an area--as you can see, the waters are very calm here, but given very high winds and higher seas, these platforms and these vessels could easily be submerged as well.

When we talk about some of the things that have been done and when we look at the cleanup, 5.4 billion barrels were spilled into the gulf it is potentially believed; 2.6 million barrels were either evaporated or degraded; 823,000 barrels have been siphoned, and these are some of the various devices that helped to do this; and 262,000 barrels have been burned off, which is what you see of this flame. This is not the rig on fire. The rig had already collapsed into the ocean. This is to be able to pull the oil and to be able to burn the excess area, and 100,000 barrels have been skimmed.

Now, when we go to June 15, 2010, President Obama used his first Oval Office speech to address the Nation for 18 minutes and to talk about the oil spill that was carried on prime-time television to many TV networks. President Obama emphasized that we will fight the spill with everything we have got for as long as it takes.

When I participated in a hearing just a couple weeks ago, that was the question that the mayor asked us, Will you be here for as long as it takes? President Obama also said that he wanted to make sure that BP paid for the damages that had been caused, and he also stated that whatever was necessary to help the gulf coast and its people recover from this tragedy, we would do.

On June 16, 2010, BP agreed to create an independent $20 billion fund to pay the claims arising from the oil spill. The company also said it would suspend paying dividends to its shareholders for the rest of the year and would compensate workers for their lost wages.

Now, let's talk about the congressional action and the things we have done in this House in relation to the Deepwater oil spill. In relation to the administration's response, Mr. Speaker, Congress has taken significant actions since the oil spill to respond to this crisis.

Over the last 93 days, the U.S. Congress and the Senate have conducted over 24 Washington, D.C. hearings. We have conducted two field hearings, 75 on-site Member of Congress or Senate visits. H.R. 5503, the SPILL Act, last month was passed by the House, and it was passed in order to reform maritime liability laws.

Those laws were impacted by the Death on High Seas Act, the Jones Act, which we have heard much discussion about, and the Limitation on Liability Act. This bill is intended to ensure that the families of those who were killed or injured in the BP spill and other such tragedies are justly compensated for their losses.

On July 1, this House passed the 2010 supplemental appropriations bill, which includes aid measures requested by the Obama administration in response to this disaster. Included in this bill was funding for agencies that are working in the gulf to monitor the water, the air quality, the seafood safety, and worker health.

The bill also extends the time that the Secretary of the Interior would have to review an offshore drilling application. Current law only allows the Secretary 30 days to review the process, which is way too short of a time to complete a full review of increasingly complex drilling plans associated with deepwater drilling.

Then, H.R. 5481 was passed by this House to give subpoena power to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. This is a bipartisan commission that our President formed. It's chaired by former Senator Bob Graham of Florida and former EPA Administrator William Reilly, and it was established on May 22. Its task is providing recommendations on how we can prevent future spills from originating from offshore drilling and mitigate any impact.

Then we have gone to S. 3473, which is access to the trust fund, and it impacts the liability trust fund. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that we have the tools necessary to respond to the BP oil spill. Last month, Congress passed S. 3473 to permit the Coast Guard to obtain one or more advances from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to underwrite Federal responses and activities related to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Under the law, the Coast Guard can only withdraw up to $100 million from the fund to finance emergency response efforts. After an accident and that money has run out, that can become a problem.

The trust fund was created by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and is funded by an 8-cent fee that is paid by all of the oil companies on each barrel of oil. This legislation has been signed by the President.

Finally, the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. That act was passed and the House enabled it so that it would protect the coastal economies by ensuring that oil companies would pay to strengthen the solvency of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund instead of passing the buck onto the taxpayers. That measure will raise the fee of oil companies that they will pay per barrel and increase the current $1 billion cap on individual claims against the fund to $5 billion, and increase the $500 million cap on natural resource damages assessment to $2.5 billion. Currently the trust fund has a balance of roughly $1.6 billion.

Now, let's talk about my observations. We have talked about the tragedy that happened. We have talked about what the administration has done, and we have talked about what Congress has done in terms of legislation.

So now let's talk about some of the things that I've seen.

I've made two trips to the gulf. Both trips were with the jurisdiction of the Homeland Security Committee of Government Oversight and Emergency Preparedness and Response. After viewing the news updates, I'll be honest, I anticipated seeing thousands and thousands of miles of oiled water. I expected to see every marsh covered in oil. I expected to see birds everywhere covered in oil. I expected to see sandy beaches covered in oil. And I expected to see no fishermen allowed to fish, and certainly no New Orleans businesses.

Indeed, it is true, over 500 miles of oil has gone onto the beaches in the gulf. This is a picture that shows the work that was done on the beaches. Now, you can actually see the work area in that far right section. You can see the booms that have been laid out. You can even see the restroom for the workers to be able to use as they clean the beaches. So you can see the booms, the nets, and even on this farther picture, you can see where the previous oil had gone across on the beaches. There are 3,617 birds have been rescued, 2,333 birds died, thousands of fishermen have been without work. And an 83,927 mile area has been disallowed for fishing.

The destruction has been immense, and the final estimates are far from being in. However, many of the challenges involved in reporting and responding have been overcome in the last 40 days. That's why I wanted to speak today, because I've been watching the news on a regular basis, hearing every single night of the individual incidents that have occurred, but we've heard very little about what our government and our representatives and the people who have been working every day have been doing.

Typically what happens on a daily basis is the planes go out, they survey the area, and they look at their various radar to see where the oil spill locations are. Once they observe them from

the air, they send the boats out, which then move forward and put the various booms out to either do burning or skimming. And then you also have some of the things that many of the elected officials in the local area had asked for, and that was the dropping of the sandbags. You can see this area where the sandbags were put in to prevent the oil from coming into the marsh area. Also, if you look very closely here, you will see the booms that were set in order to prevent the oil from coming into this marsh area.

Men and women are working around the clock. The administration has authorized and deployed 17,500 National Guard troops of which 1,580 have been activated. Approximately 45,000 personnel are currently responding to protect the shoreline and the wildlife and cleanup of our vital coastlines. And while there have been delays in equipment supply, the Coast Guard and Federal Government have been diligent in working to get the equipment that we need.

More than 6,800 vessels have responded on site, including skimmers, tubs, barges, and recovery vessels, all set to assist in the containment and the cleanup effort. In addition, hundreds of aircraft make the trip daily, as I said, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units to be able to clean up the disparate oil that has hit our shores.

Currently, approximately 572 miles of the gulf coast shoreline has been affected directly by the oil spill; approximately 328 miles in Louisiana, 108 miles in Mississippi, 67 miles in Alabama, and 69 miles in Florida. What many hardworking people have done is to set up 17 staging areas to protect many of our sensitive shoreline areas. This is an area where you can see actual workers where they go out; they actually go into the marsh area. You can see the pattern of where the oil has come in and where they're working to actually remove the oil. You also can see at this point some of the different--this is a boom that they're using in this area, and you can see inside in the marsh area where there is a tremendous amount of oil that had been spilled, but on the inner part it is still green and we hope will still survive.

Approximately 83,927 square miles of Gulf of Mexico Federal waters remain closed to fishing in order to balance the economic and public health concerns. We hope that soon those areas will be open once we can validate that in fact the fish that are living there that would be fished will be safe for consumption for people to eat.

Now, what was interesting to me is that when I was watching all the news about the oil spill, I just simply didn't understand why they didn't just put a boom around the entire source site. It seemed to me it wasn't that big and it would have prevented the oil from going to all these other States that we've talked about. Well, this is why--and I had no idea, and this is why I wanted to be here tonight so we could educate the American public because we're not seeing this on the news of why just having more boom is not fixing the problem.

When you look at the boom here, you can see that just by a simple small wave of not even one foot actually goes over and covers the boom area. So that's why whether you have six miles of boom or 10 miles of boom, it can only cover so much. Now, here you have workers who were actually collecting the boom that has collected some of the oil, and we can see how it has worked. But unfortunately it takes a lot of boom, and it takes completely replacing it.

More than 3.2 million feet of containment boom and 6.6 million feet absorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill, and approximately 875,000 feet of containment boom remain. So as they watch where the oil is moving, they will have boom to move to that section.

One of the things I heard a lot about was something called ``the whale.'' They said it's large, it's from Taiwan, and it would be able to pick up all of the oil. This is a picture of the whale, as they call it. And as you can see here, here is some of the oil that the whale is picking up. Now, this whale is 1,150 feet long. It's quite an amazing site, but it's only one indication of the 20-plus international partners that we have had that the administration has been able to leverage with assets and skills from numerous foreign countries and international organizations as a part of this historic all-hands-on- deck response. Some of those countries are Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Spain, Tanzania, United Kingdom, United Nations International, and then some.

So let's talk a little bit more about some of the particular sites. You're seeing kind of the aerial view, but we had an opportunity to actually go to some of the parishes and to see some of the impacted areas in addition to the marsh area. One of the places we went to was St. Tammany Parish. I visited this area, and they already had an operating emergency operation center, and there I met Commander Dan Precourt. Commander Precourt is the parish liaison officer for St. Tammany Parish. His position is important because what we learned from Hurricane Katrina, one of those most important lessons, was that there simply was not enough communication between local officials and the public during that disaster. But at the St. Tammany Parish Emergency Operation Center, there is a Coast Guard liaison, there is Commander Precourt, as well as a representative from BP, and many other people who are working there, working together to talk about how the agencies can solve this problem.

The public liaisons are meeting with someone face to face so that they can respond to their problem or can direct them to someone who can. Support is coming from California, Alaska, Massachusetts, and many other States. What I found interesting that we don't hear so much about with this whole spill situation is that these people are working 7 days a week, oftentimes coming in at 6 a.m., leaving anywhere between 9 and 10 p.m., and many of them actually worked on Father's Day.

I was there on Sunday evening at about 8 o'clock, and there were still over 10 people there, working.

Tammany Parish is not one of the centers of the oil spill. In fact, it was particularly alarming to me, because I have friends and know people from Louisiana, when I heard that oil was found at Lake Pontchartrain. I thought, ``Oh, no.'' Most people know and enjoy the area of Lake Pontchartrain, but fortunately and actually--and what wasn't told and why we wanted to talk about this tonight--oil was discovered at the initial pass, which is called Rigolets Pass. At this time, the lake is fishable. We want people to know that. They are fishing in Lake Pontchartrain, and no oil has been found west of the I- 10 bridge.

Thousands of men and women depend upon fishing for their livelihoods. As was said in one of the local shows this morning, we have to make sure that people know that people are still fishing, that people are still living, that people are still eating, and that they are still vacationing on the coast. The Coast Guard is trying every feasible option available to stop this spill.

Next slide, please.

Now, before I visited and when I looked at some of the things that had been said, one of the things we heard people talking about were the impacts on wildlife and the environment. I had an opportunity to go to the wildlife fisheries with representatives both from the State of Louisiana and the United States, and we got a chance to see where they had taken many of the birds so they could be cleaned and could get extra help.

This picture is of a very dedicated veterinarian who had worked very long hours to help aid and assist the birds. This is the team that actually put up this system, which was pretty much out of wire and 2 by 4s. I mean it really was a very, what I would say, kind of archaic system, but it was working to help with the birds.

You see me there. We are talking about the pelicans that have been cleaned, how they are recovering and how soon we expect them to be returned to the wild.

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Some of the beauties of the Gulf of Mexico are the marshes, the wildlife, and all the incredible things that you see. This is one of the dedicated gentlemen whom I mentioned who works for U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Jack Bohannon. He is on the water boat, and this is what they do. They survey the marsh

area to see if oil has gone into that section so they know where to put the boom or where to make replacements.

Here you see the Coast Guard commander of this particular area. It was the protected area, the marsh section called Pass a Loutre. This is Commander Claudia Gelzer, and she has been working very hard to keep the oil out and to minimize the damage to this much protected area.

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It is somewhat hard to imagine, when you think of the oil coming in, how you would possibly stop it, or as I would kind of say, ``corral it,'' to be able to put it into a section where it could be safely burned and evaporated. This is an example of where you see a marsh area where the boom has been laid. They went out, and they found out there was an area where oil existed. They corralled it, brought it into the section. Then this is how they were able to safely set it afire.

This is another example of what I wanted to show of how you have the boom area protecting the local coast section. Very low down here, you can see where some of the oil had initially come, and that is why they have the boom area protecting this section, which is to keep the oil out.

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Now, to talk about Pass a Loutre, not only is it an incredible area in terms of marshland, of over 115,000 acres of marshland, what is also particularly important about this is that it is a preserve area as well. Unfortunately, it was right in the eye of the storm of the Deepwater Horizon, and for the oil that came out, this was one of the first spots that it came to.

What we are showing you here are the first initial marsh areas. What I want the people to see is that not all of the marsh areas, not all of the 115,000 acres, are filled with oil. That is something that I didn't particularly understand as I was watching some of the news results. You look at our going out to the boat area. You see some of the low areas where some of the oil has come. Here you see it a little bit higher. Then, in this area, you see where oil very severely came in and impacted the marsh area.

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This area is characterized by river channels with attendant channel banks, natural bayous, and manmade canals, which are interspersed with intermediate fresh marshes. Hurricane damage and subsidence have contributed to a major part of the vegetation and the marshes not being as strong as they had been in the past.

So, in this area here, I found this interesting. I rode on a helicopter for about 45 minutes and then on a boat for about 30 minutes to be able to finally get to the spot where the worst amount of the oil impacting the marshes had taken place.

So the message of what I want to say tonight is, yes, a horrible thing has happened, yes, to many areas that we love, have gone to for generations, and have cherished. But the important thing to remember is that it is not in a position where we cannot fix it with the work and the commitment to do so.

So what you see here is I'm reaching in and touching some of the oil that has accumulated here in this section. Then, on this portion here, is the actual entrance into one of the marsh canals. You can see literally where the oil just kind of traveled inside, came in and basically accumulated in this section here of what you see.

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So we look at these marsh areas and what we can do to fix them. Some of the complaints that were made were: Why didn't we have enough boom? How come we couldn't get the boom out there quickly enough? This is what is very important for people to see.

Here you can see the boom is normally a yellow color. This is where oil has come over, and you can see it only takes about half of a foot of a wave or a foot of a wave to be able to go in. Here is where they are replacing it and putting new ones out and trying to keep it out, and then, of course, they are using the booms farther out in the area.

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This, I think, was important to show in that, as the booms are collecting oil, they become filled with it. Then you have to go back out and remove them and place more in their place. So here you can see a tremendous amount of oil that had accumulated. It has been absorbed in these booms, and then they will be going out to these areas to place new ones.

Then one of the things that is also important to understand as to why the booms alone are not the answer is that, with the wind and with the waves, it begins to move them into the marsh areas, so it actually moves them out from protecting the outer area. So that's why the booms are not the permanent solution to this problem.

Next slide, please.

As I prepared this report, what I call ``the people's Congress,'' I would be wrong not to acknowledge the efforts of Secretary Napolitano and Chairman Thompson for providing the access, for demonstrating transparency, and for showing a willingness to consider all of the options on the table for the betterment of America and for the American people.

In order to improve even further, here are some of the lessons that I learned from some of the things that I've shown you tonight:

Elected officials in the local area talked about the fact that we have had past exercises. We have had national exercises in the gulf regions, and so you would ask the question: Why were there some of the problems we experienced?

Some of the things they talked about were their still not being connected on the calls, the daily calls, until a couple of weeks into the situation, and the impact on the local economy, when many of the areas really were not having an extensive amount of oil. You also had people sounding the alarm, expressing their concerns of how were we going to pay for all of the recovery that was going to be required. You had others who said we weren't moving fast enough and that we needed to do more. Still others said the teams should be changed.

Though I want to talk about another area that also became very clear to me, a lesson learned.

One of the recommendations I made when we had our hearing was to say to the Coast Guard and to the Department of Homeland Security that we need to also have our own message, which is why I am here tonight. We need to make sure that we are showing the American people, as they also have an opportunity to watch, that, yes, many marsh areas have been damaged. Yes, beaches have had oil come upon them. But yes, there are many other areas where they can still come, where they can enjoy, and where we hope that our marshes will survive.

When you look at some of the reports and when you look at the current state of the situation--and even in the hearing they acknowledged-- things have gotten better. A lot of that is due to now being included in those calls, it is due to the transparency of what has been happening, and to the daily updates from Rear Admiral Allen. One of the key things they talked about was having a message that was understandable and in layman's terms.

So that is why I came here tonight, because what the public had been asking for and what some of the elected officials had been asking for is just to show us what you are seeing and what we are doing in just regular terms. It is something very simple, but it basically conveys the message of what has happened.

When you also look at some of the improvements and what we've learned and with being the subcommittee chair of Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response, and it's very important to look at these things. How soon was the 1-800 number up? How many claims have been filled? You look at where did the boom come from? How long did it take it to get there? How much did we already have? How many skimmers did we have? How many do we still need?

These are all the things that we have now learned and we've learned in previous spills, as well, that we need to do to be prepared for a spill, unfortunately, of this size.

Now, when we talk about layman's terms, one of the key things that I think is important to acknowledge is the Gulf of Mexico. This is a picture of a very sensitive area. You can see that the marsh is not very deep, but it's pretty much covered all the way around with boom. It's green. The

water is blue. But we are fighting on a daily basis to keep it that way, and we have 45,000 personnel who are working to fix the problem.

So when we talk about the clear lessons, some of the other things that I think that should be considered are: one, we need to make sure that as we consider how we respond to a spill, that we're prepared to make the adjustments in a hurricane season as well.

I showed you pictures of the bird estuary and where they were cleaning up the birds. They are actually in the process of moving from that area because it's not stable enough. So if, in fact, a hurricane were to come, we would lose many birds as well from that experience. So we have to be including different agencies in that emergency process and to ensure that those places are set up throughout the region so that they're ready if something like this crisis does, in fact, occur.

Another thing that we also have learned is that when we talk about communication, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an active to extremely active hurricane season for 2010, with a chance, 70 percent chance for 14 to 23 named storms. So the clock is ticking, and that's why people are working so hard to be ready.

Another key point that is very important to consider has to do with legislation. Now, I mentioned earlier some of the legislation that the House has already passed, but there are other suggestions that should be considered as well.

One of the things that we found, in terms of response and who's in charge, is that when you looked at the marsh area, the Louisiana Wildlife individual felt that if you had oil in the marsh, that you should leave it there and allow it to eventually work its way out. The United States, at the Federal level, said it's better to go in to cut it open, to flush some water to go through to remove the oil and to get it out from just sitting there. So they were having to make those decisions.

And I would venture to say that we should actually have those kinds of plans in advance. We should know that for certain parts of our country, we have marsh areas and that if, in the event there are oil spills, and I already mentioned to you that there's been 6,000 in our period of time here in the United States, that we should already have an adopted policy that we agree to of how we get the oil out of the marsh. Do we leave the oil in or do we open it up to be able to flush clear water through? That was one of the things that I asked at the hearing that we had.

Another important thing to consider with legislation is to make sure that it would have proper mitigation, and that's what I'm talking about with the marsh. We should already determine what the potential costs are. We shouldn't be waiting until something unfortunately happens and then we're trying to guesstimate.

We should also make sure that mitigation includes natural resource restoration. When you look at mitigation, it's loss of life, loss of limb, loss of property. But it's also, we have grown to know, it's a loss of our natural ecosystem as well. So when we consider funding that's available for mitigation, we need to make sure enough is there for that restoration as well.

We also need to make sure that we have adequate information that's prepared independently, not of a particular independent private source, that will actually provide us the information and say what would be required to restore our ecosystem to its natural level.

Sensitive natural resource areas can be identified early, and they can be done so to adequately protect them from an oil spill and also help with associated cleanup operations. The damage impact assessment should be thorough and it should be accurate and it doesn't have to be late. Habitat restoration is the preferred method to mitigate for impacts of natural resources from an oil spill and associated cleanup activities. A detailed mitigation plan should be prepared.

These are the things that I saw and that I learned that I plan on bringing forward with my colleagues to consider on this very floor.

When you talk about adequate funding for restoration activities, it should be provided based upon the actual cost and not what we think it might be. We should have to have time lines. There should be strict penalties, feasible objectives. There should be separate oversight from the initiators and the implementers, and, certainly, there should be periodic updates.

So when you look at the Oil and Fuel Spill Readiness Act, another piece of legislation that I think this House should consider, we shouldn't have to, when we have a spill, scramble for a couple of weeks and try and get enough boom and try and get enough skimmers and try and get enough of everything to deal with an incredible disaster. These are things based upon the depth and the amount of oil that's being pulled from the ocean floor that we should be able to consider what would be needed if, in the event, a disaster were to occur.

A readiness act would be able to have lessons learned from this Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It should include objective academic minds and expertise. It should include standards and require all emergency planning. And it should also include, as I've said, environment and wildlife as well.

Now, as we talk about what I call the people's Congress, this House is one where we have an opportunity to represent approximately 650,000 Americans, and I happen to be fortunate enough to be one of those people. And so, as I rise today and I talk about this Special Order, one of the things you find quickly being a Member of Congress is that it's your area that you represent, but you also represent--you're a United States Representative, which means you're not only looking for your district but for other districts as well.

And so when this incident happened and it fell within the committee of jurisdiction of my particular area, I felt, really, it was a responsibility because we have oil wells and pipelines in my area as well. And what happened in Louisiana could happen in any coastline in this country, and so it behooves us to be prepared and to learn our lessons.

As I've explained tonight, we can start looking forward in a constructive way. We can work together with Federal, State, and local elected officials and agencies and private partners on solving these problems. Millions of people depend upon the gulf for their livelihood, for family history, and it is home to valuable animals as a part of their families, plants, and environments.

I am optimistic. And while this is certainly one of the biggest challenges this Nation has ever faced, one thing we know for sure about the United States is that we're always ready to rebound. We don't see things as insurmountable, and we do believe that they can be made right.

The last slide I am showing you tonight is not the marsh area before the oil spill. In fact, it's after. What you see in this marsh area is that it is in its full and beautiful state. It's perfectly green. You see the canals that are there supporting it. As we continue to work to respond to this oil spill and we put the recovery things in place, we can ensure that the rest of the 115,000 acres can look again like this particular section does as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to be able to share my thoughts, kind of a testimony of what I saw in the gulf, painting a picture for the American people of what is really happening and what so many incredible people are doing to really restore and to fix something that was originally a disaster that I think can come back to look like this particular slide does.

With that, I am appreciative for all of the efforts, as I said, of Chairman Thompson on our committee, Secretary Napolitano, of her working with all the Members of Congress and Senate to visit the gulf. We look forward to continuing to work, to do our lessons learned, and to put better systems in place so that we won't repeat the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Mr. Speaker, in the United States right now we are experiencing an environmental catastrophe. We are experiencing with the BP oil rig the largest single oil spill in American history. It's a little hard to contemplate just how big this oil spill is; 21 million to 44 million gallons of oil--four times the oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster--have so far spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day--that's a million gallons a day--are spilling, a rate 12 to 25 times higher than BP's original highest estimate of 4,600 gallons a day. The biggest oil spill in American history.

If we want to know just how big that is, this is the extent of the oil spill today in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the equivalent in terms of size of Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined. Think of that geography. Hundreds of square miles. That's what this is.

Just recently it was announced that underwater plumes, not just the surface plume depicted here, have been detected 150 miles away in distance from the original site of the oil spill.

Locally what that means is essentially we have an oil spill, a surface oil spill that covers the territory that would be the equivalent of the distance between Washington, D.C., and New York City. That's as of today. In my 11th Congressional District of Virginia, that would mean starting in Dale City near Manassas in Prince William County and going as far as Wilmington, Delaware. That's the thick oil spill.

The broader oil spill, as I said, would go all the way to New York City. That's an extraordinary stretch in terms of this oil spill.

This oil spill could have been prevented.

In 1969, an oil well spilled 200,000 gallons of crude oil on the California coast. In response, like this and other environmental issues, like the burning of the Cuyahoga River, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA, in 1969.

NEPA requires companies to plan to avoid environmental disasters like that 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill by conducting simple environmental impact statements. Ironically, the Minerals Management Service, known as the MMS, granted the Deepwater Horizon rig a categorical exclusion from this process so it did not have to conduct an environmental impact statement based on research in 2007 in which the MMS, the regulator, decided that a deepwater spill would not exceed 4,600 barrels and would never reach the shoreline. What a tragic, ironic twist of fate. None of that turned out to be true.

Congressional Republican majorities and the Bush administration even directed agencies to use categorical exclusions for oil development. Action by the Secretary of the Interior in managing the public lands, it said, or the Secretary of Agriculture in managing national forest systems lands with respect to any of the activities described in subsection B shall be subject to a rebuttable presumption that the use of categorical exclusion under the NEPA of 1969 would apply if the activity is conducted pursuant to the Mineral Leasing Act for the purpose of exploration or development of oil or gas. An explicit exemption made for oil drilling in America by the previous administration. Just following the NEPA process could have led to a review that would have resulted in better safety equipment. Might have even resulted in an inspection that might have caught early the flaws in this design.

The 2009 Government Accountability Office report said that during the previous administration categorical exclusions were issued far too frequently and it could lead to serious problems. Well, indeed, it did. I find this particularly ironical because, in my district, we have been fighting for a long time to get rail to Dulles, an extension of the rail system here in metropolitan Washington to Dulles International Airport. We finally got that process approved last year, but that process required a NEPA review. This is a public transit project, but it had to go through a 2-year environmental review that cost millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded money for a public project. But ironically, a private oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was excluded from that process. It didn't have to do it.

I see on the floor my friend from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer). I yield to the gentleman.

I thank my colleague, and I think his point is a very cogent one, and it's even worse than we're discussing because not only did we consciously decide during the Bush administration and by previous Congresses, frankly controlled by our friends on the other side, consciously to exclude such oil drilling from the regular environmental review that could have detected problems, but it was worse than that.

Let me give an example in terms of what measures that at least could have mitigated the impact of this disaster. Canada, as my friend from Oregon knows, requires deepwater rigs to have contingency plans for offshore oil drilling, including the capability to drill relief wells soon after constructing primary wells. If this well, this Deepwater Horizon well, had predrilled such relief wells, it would have allowed the closing of the leak weeks ago, but they weren't required to do so.

Norway and Brazil require something called acoustic valves which are

backup devices for closing the pipe of a blowout preventer. In 2003, under the Bush administration, the Minerals Management Service concluded that the $550,000 acoustic system is not recommended because it tends to be very costly. I would say to my friend from Oregon, as he knows, as of June 7, the response to this oil spill cost $1.25 billion and climbing. That $550,000 investment in an acoustic valve could have saved billions of dollars and could have saved an ecosystem now at incredible jeopardy.

I yield again to my friend from Oregon.

Again, I agree with my friend from Oregon completely, and as he points out, this didn't happen by an act of God. This happened because of lax or no regulation, regulation we knew was necessary and we took a chance. We took a chance. And we took a chance, why? Because of the almighty dollar. We took a chance because of Big Oil money, making sure that it influenced the process and made sure that it was exempted from normal regulatory review. And you have to ask yourself in those kinds of circumstances, well, what could go wrong?

Let me enumerate a little bit what has gone wrong: 200,000 commercial fishing, processing, and retail jobs in the gulf for fishing and seafood on ice; $659 million in annual value on 1.27 billion pounds of seafood caught in the gulf, the largest source of seafood in America, not including the value of fish processing or retail or people's salaries, in jeopardy; $5.5 billion annual value of commercial fishing industry in the gulf coast, including the value of fish harvest processing and retail, in jeopardy; $12 billion of expenditures for 25.4 million recreational trips in the Gulf of Mexico at risk; $9 billion in wages for tourism-related industries in the Gulf of Mexico, employing 600,000 people.

That's what's at risk for a mindless, ``drill, Baby, drill'' approach, instead of a thoughtful, careful approach that balances this kind of sourcing of oil with the readily available alternative energy sources that we should have, could have been investing in as well.

Since this oil spill, over 27,000 claims have been filed by people and businesses whose livelihoods have been harmed or lost entirely. They've filed claims for damages with BP. Through June, BP will have paid $84 million in lost income claims to people whose jobs already have been lost in the gulf. Over 78,000 square miles of the gulf are closed to fishing today because of this spill because it's not safe. The University of Central Florida estimates that the oil spill could cut Florida tourism in half, the largest single source of revenue for the State of Florida, eliminating 195,000 tourism-related jobs and eliminating $10.9 billion of tourist-generated economic activity in Florida alone.

I see our colleague from Colorado (Mr. Polis) is on the floor, and I now yield to him.

I thank my colleague from Colorado.

I yield again to our friend from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

I, again, am in complete concurrence. This didn't happen somehow by happenstance. This happened by virtue of a conscious decision, by Congress' control, by our friends on the other side, and by the Bush administration to find all kinds of waivers and exemptions from normal regulatory review and from simple commonsense protections in the event something did go wrong, all at the altar of oil exploration and fossil fuel energy dependence, quite frankly. It could have been prevented and it could have been mitigated.

There was another one of our colleagues who, during the campaign of 2008, accused the Democratic Congress that came into power after the elections of 2006 of being the drill-nothing Congress, and she called on Mr. McCain to open up ANWR and both the east and west coast to unrestrained oil drilling for the sake of energy independence, a worthy goal. But that's not the only answer, and we have to weigh the costs and the benefits when we open up unrestricted oil drilling on pristine coasts.

Let me talk, if I may, just about my own home State of Virginia, what could go wrong in Virginia. I am a member of the Virginia delegation who has opposed unrestricted opening up of our shores to oil drilling because of the feared consequences if something went wrong.

What's at stake? Tourism in Virginia Beach alone in Virginia generates $1.4 billion annually in economic activity. Tourism in Virginia Beach alone supports 15,000 jobs. Virginia has the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier islands on the east coast, irreplaceable habitat for birds in the east coast flyaway.

All of these resources would be lost to an oil spill off Virginia's coast if it were comparable to the oil spill that has hit the gulf coast. In fact, closer to home, the entire Chesapeake Bay would be covered by a film of oil today if that oil spill had occurred here instead of occurring in the gulf coast.

In addition, unrestricted oil drilling threatens the presence of the United States Navy in Virginia, terribly important in terms of military investment in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Deputy Secretary of Defense for Readiness issued a report in May that stated explicitly that offshore oil development would impair Navy operations in 78 percent of the area, in a recently proposed lease sale, to 20.

The Department of Defense said that all development could preclude live ordnance testing, aircraft carrier movement, shipping trials, and other surface and subsurface training. Offshore oil development could result in the Navy moving an aircraft carrier out of Norfolk, reducing job opportunities and contractors in Virginia.

We have a lot at stake economically in my State. There's the environmental consequences, but there is also the presence of the Navy that could be jeopardized if we moved to the ``drill, baby, drill'' philosophy of offshore oil drilling.

Yes, we need to clean up the mess we inherited from previous Congresses and, frankly, from the previous administration. Today, for example, the House passed S. 3473, which increases advanced cleanup funding paid for by BP so that the Coast Guard can use those funds for oil cleanup.

I have introduced a bill just tonight that would prevent the evasion of the NEPA process; moving forward, no more categorical exclusions for deepwater oil drilling. They have to pass the NEPA review process, just like my transit system and rail to Dulles did in a public project.

H.R. 5214, the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act, introduced by our colleague, Mr. Holt from New Jersey, would raise the oil liability cap from $75 million to $10 billion so the taxpayers aren't left holding the bag because of an accident caused by the negligence of an oil company such as BP.

Our colleague from the State of Washington (Mr. Inslee) is introducing legislation to require oil wells to use the best available safety technology, which might borrow from technology that's already available and being used by countries like Canada, Brazil, and Norway. Of course, you, Mr. Blumenauer, have or will soon introduce legislation to repeal the oil and gas tax loopholes and direct funds to clean energy.

The ultimate solution is to get off fossil fuel dependence and look to, in a meaningful way, those alternative sources of energy that could really help lessen our dependence, if not wean us entirely off, the dependence on foreign oil.

In my own home State of Virginia, the potential offshore wind power is enormous, dwarfing the potential for offshore oil.

For all of the sturm und drang in my State about whether we should drill, baby, drill off the shores of Virginia, the entire estimate of reserves, maximum, off the shore of Virginia, with the largest coastline, barrier island coastline on the east coast, is the equivalent of no more than 6 days of oil supply.

Do we really want to risk the tourism industry, our environment, perhaps permanently, and the presence of the Navy in a State that has always been home to the United States Navy for 6 days' worth of supply? I think not.

So the Democrats in this House have, in fact, introduced legislation that will address and remedy this situation and make sure that never again are American citizens put at risk by the negligent behavior and the unregulated behavior of Big Oil offshore oil drilling.

I thank you for your courtesy and graciousness, but I would say that clearly my colleague from Oregon is a model for all of us, especially those of us new here to the Congress, for his environmental leadership and for his legislative legerdemain.

I thank you so much.

I think our colleague from Oregon has done such an incredible job in this body on so many environmental fronts, not least of which, of course, the livable community initiative that he made reference to.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

I see our friend from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) is here, and I now yield to Mr. Holt.

I thank our friend from New Jersey and thank him for his leadership as well.

Let me close by pointing out that there is a danger to bumper-sticker public policy making. Those who lived by ``drill, baby, drill'' now have to examine not only their consciences but the consequences of the actions that flowed from that strident call. ``Drill, baby, drill'' has now become ``spill, baby, spill.''

The Governor of Louisiana today, Bobby Jindal, when he was in this body in 2005 said the following: ``We have a choice. Many of my colleagues do not want us drilling for oil off the coast of Florida and do not want us to drill for oil off the coast of California. I would ask those colleagues to join with me in

providing incentives so that we can drill for oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The people of Louisiana,'' he said, ``welcome this production. We know it is good for our State, our country, and our economy.''

I wonder if the Governor of Louisiana might pause today in calling for the government's assistance to clean up the worst oil spill, and arguably one of the worst environmental disasters ever to descend on our country, to consider whether that public policy statement made sense then and whether it makes sense now.

The consequences of that philosophy of unrestricted oil drilling, irrespective of the environmental concerns, irrespective of the need for reasonable and prudent regulatory oversight to protect the public from precisely this kind of unmitigated disaster, have now actually happened because a whole bunch of people in a position to know better put oil ahead of everything else, including the public interests.

I yield to my friend from New Jersey.

I thank my colleague from New Jersey. Again, I thank him so much for his participation tonight and for his leadership, especially in leading us in a legislative remedy.

I want to end with this: on June 10, 2008, one of our colleagues actually said the following:

There are 3,200 oil rigs off the coast of Louisiana. During Katrina, not a single drop was spilled. Actually, 600,000 gallons were spilled, but more than 7 billion barrels have been pumped from these wells over the past quarter century. Yet only 1-1/1000th of 1 percent was spilled. We would suggest that John McCain revisit his reservations about ANWR and run against the ``drill nothing'' Congress. Energy development and the environment are not mutually exclusive. In fact, this Republican colleague said, we would suggest that the first joint town hall meeting with Barack Obama, proposed by McCain, be held on one of those offshore Louisiana rigs.

Surely, I hope our colleague did not mean this rig, the one that blew up, caught on fire, cost a number of lives, and led to the largest environmental disaster in American history.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

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

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, this is an emergency situation, and it requires emergency action by the House of Representatives.

The United States Senate, the other body, has acted and sent us S. 3743, which will allow us to expand some of the use of the funds that have been accumulated in the national Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund on an emergency basis. I am pleased that the other body acted. This is a unique and very difficult situation dealing with a very unique and difficult national disaster.

First, I would be remiss if I didn't remember today those families who will be in Washington visiting with President Obama. Eleven individuals lost their lives when the oil rig, the Horizon, exploded in April. I know the President will be meeting with them. And, on behalf of all the Members of Congress, we extend our condolences for that loss of life.

Right now we are dealing with the results of that disaster. This disaster and explosion, sinking of the rig and the uncontrolled oil spill--fortunately, there has been some progress in that regard, but incredible amounts of oil have spilt into the gulf and now endangers the shores of at least four of our States.

In 1990, we set up an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, and that was after the Exxon Valdez. That fund has in it $1.6 billion, a substantial amount of money.

Now, that fund was not set up to relieve anyone of responsibility if they are negligent, and it was also not a fund to pay for cleanup costs that are clearly assigned, clearly identifiable. A lot of it was intended for what they call an ``orphan spill,'' or a spill where you don't know where the oil came from, the polluting substance came from.

Within that $1.6 billion trust fund for oil spills that we created, we have an emergency fund of $150 million that can be expended immediately. Now, what has taken place is that fund, the 150 million emergency dollars that can be spent--right now Thad Allen is doing a great job in leading the effort for the United States--and, as you know, he just retired from the Coast Guard--doing a wonderful job, but he has the responsibility of reacting now and immediately.

It took some time for the administration to get him in place and also to declare this a spill of national significance, but he is on the job and he needs the resources.

Now, the resources are running out. We do have a letter, which I will submit for the Record and to the Congress at this time. This is to the Speaker of the House, and it is from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

And he says, ``All the costs of this fund also that are being expended at this point must be repaid. But, at this current time, in just a matter of days, the emergency fund will run out.'' So we have documentation of the need from OMB.

And just a few minutes ago, we received from the Federal on-scene coordinator the statement that their requirements to support the continuing ongoing effort will bring the emergency fund to a critically low level over the next 7 days.

So we can't have the cleanup efforts come to a halt. We must act. Now, I saw the need for this yesterday and met with colleagues on my side of the aisle. We had a hearing in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mr. Oberstar and I agreed that we must act. The Senate has acted.

We have before us S. 3473. This morning, myself and other colleagues in Congress introduced H.R. 5499. That's mirror legislation. So both the Republican and Democrat House and Senate agree on the provisions of this legislation, which will allow in $100 million increments the expansion of the emergency fund.

Now let me make this very clear: the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund is not going to be a piggy bank for BP or for other responsible parties. This money must, should, and will be repaid. This is only a temporary measure. It is only a temporary measure, too, because the money that they are repaying goes back into that larger fund, not into the emergency fund. This legislation will correct, again, the inability of accessing a larger amount of money on a needed basis.

So we have introduced mirror legislation today. This is a cooperative and bipartisan effort. However, this is a terrible disaster, and questions need to be raised about what has caused us to get to this situation. Quite frankly, I'm quite baffled about some of the administration's positions on deepwater offshore drilling.

In the beginning of this year, in February, we received the budget from the President of the United States and the administration. In this budget, they proposed cuts to the Coast Guard of more than 1,000 positions. They also proposed cuts to and proposed the decommissioning of some of the ships, the helicopters and the planes that we see now involved in this very important mission. Not only did they propose cuts to the Coast Guard, our first responder, but in February they also proposed cuts to the Department of the Interior--and look this up, if you will--and to the Minerals Management Service, which is responsible for environmental reviews. This is what they proposed in February.

Then in March they proposed the expansion of drilling in the gulf. I remember I and Frank LoBiondo, the ranking member, sent out a press release when we read about these cuts within the Coast Guard, and we said that this was a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, those cuts have not been enacted; and I believe, even before this oil spill, there was bipartisan support not to enact those cuts that were recommended.

In light of the administration's policy to expand drilling in the gulf, some people say I've been too tough on the Obama administration. I think the Obama administration does have a responsibility in this. They did issue the permit that allowed the drilling, and I have the 1- page permit.

Here is the 1-page approval: April 6, 2009, approval for deepwater drilling at 5,000 feet.

I have what I call the ``deficient plan'' that they approved that was submitted by BP in March. So in less days than it took in some instances to approve now of a cleanup of proposals, they rubber-stamped and gave carte blanche approval.

Let me say that I also criticized the Bush administration, but I went back and looked at what the Bush administration did with the agency that was responsible for issuing these permits. This is a memorandum from the Office of Inspector General, and it is dated September 9, 2008, which was during the Bush administration. This is what the Bush administration did in that agency that issued this permit under this new administration.

This memo conveys the results of three separate Office of Inspector General investigations into allegations against more than a dozen current and former Minerals Management Service employees. I went on to read what else the Bush administration did with regard to this agency that was responsible for issuing these permits.

Listen to this: Collectively, our recent work in the Minerals Management Service has taken well over 2 years. They investigated these folks. It also involved the OIG, Office of Inspector General, and Human Resources. There was an expenditure of nearly $5.3 million in OIG funds. There were 233 witnesses and subjects who were interviewed, many of them multiple times. Roughly 470,000 pages of documents were reviewed, and people were prosecuted, under the former administration, in this agency.

Now, the latest reports I have, which I discussed yesterday at the hearing, were that, in fact, we have reports of inspections by this agency, the Minerals Management Service, which were supposed to be done by these officers of that Federal agency. They were actually penciled in, we believe, and those are the reports we have by oil workers, which were then inked over by these folks. It is nice for this administration to have spent time rewarding BP with safety awards in the prior year. It is nice for them to have a good working relationship with those folks who are responsible for issuing the permits, but I think we need to take a closer look at how we got ourselves into this situation.

What brings us to this day when we've expended the emergency fund for cleanup that we have to take an emergency step like this?

Now, I support this measure, but I'm telling you that every penny needs to be paid back. This fund, this Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that was put in place, shall not and cannot be used, as I said before, as a piggy bank for BP or for any responsible parties.

Where is the money? Where is the billing?

In the private sector, if you have a bill due, you pay it. As of yesterday, the staff told me that BP has been billed $69 million. As of yesterday, the information that we had is that they hadn't paid the bill. If they paid the bill, we still probably would have to be here because of the terms of the current legislation to allow access to additional money, but that money needs to go back into the trust fund, and it needs to be paid for by the responsible parties.

Executive Office of the President, Office of Management

and Budget,

Washington, DC, June 7, 2010.

Hon. Nancy Pelosi,

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Madam Speaker: I am writing to urge the Congress to

move quickly in enacting the FY 2010 Supplemental request. On

June 4, 2010, Secretary Napolitano announced that the Coast

Guard believes that within the next two weeks funding levels

in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund's expenditure account

will drop to levels that will force the Federal On-Scene

Coordinator to begin to cut back Federal Deepwater Horizon

response activities. We cannot allow the lack of funding to

hamstring our Federal response to this national catastrophe.

On May 12, the Administration proposed legislation to

support the BP/Deepwater Horizon response and speed

assistance to people in need. Included in this package was a

provision that would permit the Coast Guard and its National

Pollution Funds Center to move funds from the Oil Spill

Liability Trust Fund to the Emergency Fund so that the

Federal response effort can continue without interruption.

Specifically, the legislative changes would permit the Coast

Guard to obtain additional advances in tranches of $100

million up to the incident cap for the Oil Spill Liability

Trust Fund. All of these costs are being billed to the

responsible parties and the receipts will be deposited in the

Trust Fund.

The President has ordered Federal agencies to bring all

available and appropriate resources to bear in response to

this disaster. Without legislative authorization, however,

the Coast Guard cannot access the additional emergency fund

resources necessary to pay for the Federal agencies' response

to this tragic oil spill.

We appreciate your support in moving this critical

legislation forward in the coming days.

Sincerely,

Peter R. Orszag,

Director.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Cao), also a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble), also a senior member of the T and I Committee.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I will summarize for our side.

First of all, again, this is an emergency situation. We have to act, we must act, and we will act. Let me make it clear, and I'm glad everyone on the other side has made it very clear, that BP's feet will be held to the fire to repay this money.

Now, it's good to come out here and hear that BP has called the other side and told them that they're going to pay, the check is in the mail, and that's all well, fine, and good. But I'd be glad to send somebody down to OMB and show them how they can send a rapid request for payment to BP as this thing moved forward because, again, the taxpayer shouldn't be left on the hook nor should this fund be left on the hook in any way for responsibility for this cleanup.

Finally, just a couple of points. It was mentioned that the Bush administration gave 4,200 leases--I think that was the figure--and that is true. It's also true, and the Democrat staff did an excellent job--I complimented them yesterday--in getting a list of the current drilling and production activities in the Gulf of Mexico, and I'll submit this to the Record. But if you look, there are about 3,500, 3,492 wells in relatively shallow water, 200 meters, about 600 feet up to the surface. There are only 25 a thousand meters below.

The Obama administration, coming into office, issued--these are deepwater, 1,000 feet to 8,000 feet--more than two dozen. We'll also submit that to the Record.

Now, if they knew this was a management problem in the Minerals Management Service, and I just cited the Bush administration investigated that agency for 2 years and conducted a very thorough review of what was going on, they must have known there was a management problem when they inherited it.

Instead, what did they do? Faster than BP can pay their bill, they took the proposal from BP in deepwater, some of the deepest water drill--here are the number of ones that the committee found that there's deepwater drilling in--and they carte blanche, rubber-stamped approval of this outline that BP gave them. One page, April 6. Those are the facts.

Will the gentleman yield?

Well, maybe you could explain, for the benefit of this side of the aisle in the House, what the changes would be.

I did have several changes that I would have liked to have addressed. I believe this particular legislation just deals with this spill. I would have hoped that we could have modified this so that, in the future, we wouldn't have to come back on an individual-spill basis to do what we are doing here today.

And also, because this is a unique circumstance, we have not found ourselves in this situation before, we could make some additional changes to the measure that would, in fact, sort of, clean up the statute.

But, again, I am not sure what particular parliamentary or minor technical changes the majority is prepared to make in the legislation at this time. We do want to be agreeable and move the process forward. Maybe, now, with those questions, you might respond.

I thank the gentleman.

I yield the gentleman from Florida, my colleague from Florida, 30 seconds of my time.

Madam Speaker, I guess as we conclude the extended time of debate on this measure to again revise some of the provisions of the emergency portion, $150 million emergency

fund within the $1.6 billion Oil Liability Trust Fund, I understand that there has been identified a minor technical glitch in the legislation as it came from the other body.

As a great American, former United States Senator Bob Dole, he used to say that his body, the U.S. Senate, is a great place if you like to see paint dry and grass grow, as far as the speed in which things are done.

However, here they have acted with due diligence and great speed and, in that speed, have made a minor technical error. And I am not going to tell anyone about it. And because this is a situation in which we must proceed on an emergency basis, I am going to overlook it, in fairness.

I would also like to yield to the gentleman, our honorable chairman of the T&I Committee, my partner, Mr. Oberstar.

Reclaiming the time, also keep in mind the time that I yielded to the other side when they ran out of time, Madam Speaker.

But to conclude debate, again, I thank everyone for this bipartisan effort. Even though, again, we have a minor technical glitch, we want to move the legislation forward; so I urge my colleagues to pass the measure.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 3473) to amend the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to authorize advances from Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on S. 3473.

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

First, I am grateful for the indulgence of our colleague on the committee, our ranking member and senior Republican, Mr. Mica, for responding so quickly to the action of the other body.

We are unaccustomed to such prompt unanimous action in the other body, but they did pass, by unanimous consent, the bill before us now, S. 3473, in response to requests of the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Napolitano, and Admiral Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander, following up on the May 12 request of the administration for legislative changes to, quote, ``speed assistance to people in need,'' close quote, in response to the BP-Deepwater Horizon tragedy.

The request further asks the Congress to, quote, ``act immediately on return from recess,'' close quote. And that is exactly what we are doing, but preceded by a hearing the committee held yesterday on the many aspects of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund and payment from responsible parties and the need for future legislation.

And the gentleman from Florida had several instructive and thoughtful suggestions that we in the committee will be acting upon per our previous agreement.

I want to lay out the specifics.

First of all, the request: Quoting again from the Homeland Security Department letter, ``Congress needs to act now to permit movement of moneys from the principal fund to the emergency fund. At the current pace of BP-Deepwater Horizon response operations, funding available in the emergency fund will be insufficient to sustain Federal response operations within 2 weeks.'' That's from June 4.

``At that point, the Federal on-scene coordinator would not be able to commit sufficient funds to the agencies involved in the Federal response, including National Guard, Department of Defense, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Interior, and Department of Agriculture, to continue to provide critical response services, including logistical support, such as moving boom from Alaska and California to Louisiana; scientific support, such as evaluating the environmental impact of the spill and the response; and public health support, such as ensuring seafood from the gulf region is safe and monitoring fumes that might be a public health issue.

``Additional transfers from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund principal fund to the emergency fund are needed to fulfill the President's order to bring all available and appropriate resources to bear in response to this disaster. Furthermore, depleting all currently available funds puts at risk the Nation's ability to address any new spills unrelated to the BP-Deepwater Horizon.''

Second, I must note and affirm, as was done in our hearing yesterday, that any moneys advanced from the trust fund will be repaid by the responsible party--in this case, BP.

I was part of crafting OPA 90 and its predecessors in my previous service on the now-dissolved Merchant Marine Fisheries Committee, which jurisdiction transfers to our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The whole concept of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was from previous experience that there needed to be an immediate response by government agencies on scene to lay out funds, as was already spelled out in the letter from Homeland Security, without having to wait for negotiations with the responsible party.

In those years, up through the 1990s, all the attention was turned to spills from tankers, oceangoing vessels, bulk carriage of crude oil, principally, but other product as well.

The requirement was to get on the scene quickly, corral the oil, and contain the spill. The government needed to act quickly. The Coast Guard had the capability to do that. But we didn't want--and we had experience with Torrey Canyon and the Amoco Cadiz that there were long waits for the responsible party to make payments to government agencies responding in the case of France and the U.K. and in the case of U.S. Government agencies.

So the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was established to have a financial resource for government agencies to respond quickly and then bill the responsible party. That has been done in the case of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

At our hearing yesterday, Craig Bennett, director of the National Pollution Funds Center, said, ``All funds expended will be billed to BP and ultimately recovered. These funds are deposited into the principal fund, not the emergency fund. As of June 1, 2010, obligations against the emergency fund for Federal response efforts totaled $93 million.''

That figure has now grown to $114 million. So it's bumping up against the limit of $150 million--the $100 million, plus the baseline $50 million for emergency response.

``At the current pace of operations, funding available,'' continuing with Director Bennett, ``in the emergency fund will be insufficient to sustain Federal response operations within 2 weeks.'' And we're very close to that number now.

The Coast Guard has, according to information supplied by the Coast Guard, billed BP $69 million. That billing, when responded to by BP, will be deposited in the general fund of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to replenish the fund. And additional expenditures will be billed against BP for deposit in the fund.

I further note that the Senate's bill amends section 6002 of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and provides for, quote, ``one or more advances from the fund, as needed, up to a maximum of $100 million for each advance, with the total amount of all advances not to exceed amounts available in section 9509(c)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986''--that deals with the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund--``and within 7 days of each advance''--7 days' notice--``shall notify Congress of the amount advanced and the facts and circumstances necessitating the advance.''

Now, that language will come after the end of the period of section 6002(b) and will supplement, but not displace, the 30-day notice requirement of the basic law.

Congress will be notified when the Coast Guard needs to borrow from the trust fund up to the maximum of $100 million for each advance it requests within 7 days. And we will receive all the information: the amount they're requesting, the facts, and the circumstances justifying the request for an advance.

I think this language parallels language that the House has included in our supplemental appropriations bill but not yet passed. It's important to take this action now.

This language clearly needs refinement, as was evident in the hearing we held yesterday, and I think the gentleman from Florida will agree. He has some very thoughtful ideas. We will merge those with other testimony submitted at yesterday's hearing and proceed with a legislative package in the coming 2 weeks.

Again, I thank the gentleman from Florida for participating in yesterday's hearing and for a response today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself 1 minute.

I completely agree with the gentleman. As the gentleman from Florida and I discussed in our hearing yesterday, the purpose of the trust fund is not to relieve anyone of responsibility.

I was part of crafting that legislation in 1990 and its predecessors. It was

clearly our intent that this should be a fund to give the government the authority to move quickly, to get on the scene, to begin cleanup before industry responds, to bill the industry in order to make them pay into the trust fund, and to keep the industry responsible.

Secondly, the gentleman included orphan sites in his commentary. The legislation is not exclusively limited to orphan sites.

I yield myself an additional minute.

An orphan site is one of the issues to be addressed, as we do under the Superfund Act. Yet the order of priority for response under the law, its first responsibility, is for the responsible party to act to the limit of its liability under the Oil Spill Act. We have to address that limit of liability. The hearing yesterday explored the range of dollar amounts of liability from the current $75 million to some greater number, including unlimited liability. That is something we are going to have to discuss in committee.

So far, BP has, as the responsible party, spent $1 billion, and they are responding. Yesterday, when I made the announcement at our committee hearing that the Coast Guard had billed BP for $69 million, we still do not have a response on what the status is of repayment by BP into the trust fund, but we will have that information.

Thirdly, I agree with the gentleman that the trust fund is not a piggy bank for BP.

I yield myself an additional minute.

We are going to hold them accountable. The Coast Guard will hold them accountable. I do want to point out that the emergency fund is an account within the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. It is not a separate fund of its own.

Further, as the gentleman was critical of the administration's budget and properly said this is bipartisan criticism, our committee budget, in response to that of the administration, rejected their proposed cuts for the Coast Guard. We understand there is no daylight between us.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

I would also point out that the previous administration of 2005, six, seven, and eight approved 4,120 offshore leases, including for this particular MMS lease sale--or 206--an exemption from a ``blow-out scenario requirement'' for Outer Continental Shelf actions in the gulf. BP's exploration plan for Deepwater Horizon did not therefore include an analysis or a response plan for a blow-out at the wellhead.

Now I yield 3 minutes to the chair of the Coast Guard Subcommittee, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Again, I'm greatly appreciative of the partnership in our committee with the gentleman from Florida and for working so expeditiously under minimal notice that both of us had to bring this unexpected but welcome legislation from the other body so quickly to the floor. I would hope that this and other measures that we will enact will be seen as a testimonial to the victims of that explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.

And as the gentleman from Florida said, I join him in commending the President for welcoming the families and consoling with them, and join in assurances to those families that Congress will continue to do everything right so that their lives will not have been lost in vain.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to extend the debate time by 5 minutes on each side.

The purpose for this request is that we may resolve a technical problem that the Senate notified us of in the drafting of the language of the bill and in the reference to the appropriate section of the Internal Revenue Code, and we need to spend just a few minutes and get the parliamentary language correct, and that will take a few more minutes to resolve.

I ask the gentleman from Florida to designate his staff to participate with ours and with the Parliamentarian in assuring that we have the language properly crafted.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Certainly. And I thank the gentleman. And I share that concern.

In the hearing yesterday, I made it very clear that the committee would move forward with the broader changes that the gentleman just discussed, Madam Speaker, so that the Coast Guard will have authority to draw larger sums, in hundred-million-dollar increments, with proper notification to Congress, without having to come back and legislate each time.

But that is beyond the scope of the pending bill. And the technical changes notified to us are of a truly technical nature. Expanding into the broader question that we are now discussing would require new legislation.

And I commit to the gentleman that that will be part of our bipartisan work in committee, and we will craft the appropriate language.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).

I yield the gentleman an additional 20 seconds.

Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman for yielding.

We have agreed that the technical issue raised by representatives of the other body is of a nature that can be resolved by the administration upon passage of this bill. It is better for us to pass this bill now to address the substantive issue, release of funds from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, and not delay progress in cleanup.

For that reason, we will pass the bill intact and let the administration deal with whatever issue comes up. Should any additional change be necessary of a technical nature, it can be dealt with at a later time.

I thank the gentleman for his understanding, for his patience, and for yielding me the time.

Executive Office of the President, Office of Management

and Budget,

Washington, DC, June 7, 2010.

Hon. Nancy Pelosi,

Speaker, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Madam Speaker: I am writing to urge the Congress to

move quickly in enacting the FY 2010 Supplemental request. On

June 4, 2010, Secretary Napolitano announced that the Coast

Guard believes that within the next two weeks funding levels

in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund's expenditure account

will drop to levels that will force the Federal On-Scene

Coordinator to begin to cut back Federal Deepwater Horizon

response activities. We cannot allow the lack of funding to

hamstring our Federal response to this national catastrophe.

On May 12, the Administration proposed legislation to

support the BP/Deepwater Horizon response and speed

assistance to people in need. Included in this package was a

provision that would permit the Coast Guard and its National

Pollution Funds Center to move funds from the Oil Spill

Liability Trust Fund to the Emergency Fund so that the

Federal response effort can continue without interruption.

Specifically, the legislative changes would permit the Coast

Guard to obtain additional advances in tranches of $100

million up to the incident cap for the Oil Spill Liability

Trust Fund. All of these costs are being billed to the

responsible parties and the receipts will be deposited in the

Trust Fund.

The President has ordered Federal agencies to bring all

available and appropriate resources to bear in response to

this disaster. Without legislative authorization, however,

the Coast Guard cannot access the additional emergency fund

resources necessary to pay for the Federal agencies' response

to this tragic oil spill.

We appreciate your support in moving this critical

legislation forward in the coming days.

Sincerely,

Peter R. Orszag,

Director.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition.

I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, there were several aspects of the debate over housing during the period that led up to the crisis. Part of it was over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but an even bigger part--because it involved Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--was over sub-prime loans being made largely, although not entirely, on the unregulated banking system, and there were those who defended that. There were those who opposed efforts to rein it in.

In fact, with regard to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I changed my own position with regard to them when in 2004 the administration, without congressional input, ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy more loans from people below the median income. We tried, many of us, during the period of 2004, 2005, and 2006 to get legislation adopted to ban sub-prime loans being granted imprudently. We had, the Congress, given the Federal Reserve the authority to do that in 1994, but Mr. Greenspan refused to do that. He since has apologized for that error.

So the question was not whether or not there was a general lack of discipline but whether there was a particular lack of discipline in containing sub-prime mortgages. The relevance of that is that the FHA doesn't do that. In fact, at a time of general ideological opposition of regulation of the mortgage market outside the banking system, there was very little regulation of sub-prime mortgages being granted to people who couldn't afford them, who made no down payment, who didn't have to document their income. Because of all that, we ran into these problems, and the FHA's percentage went down. That's a major reason why the FHA went down. The FHA has never been guilty of that laxity of practice.

So, part of the reason for the increase in the FHA share is that we have been able finally to cut back on the sub-prime mortgages being granted imprudently, and the FHA has much stricter standards. Yet, I want to stress--and this is a major cause of the Fannie and Freddie problem is that they were pushed into buying sub-

prime mortgages that never should have been given in the first place. That's not the FHA.

It's also the case that the FHA has stepped up in recent years, probably at congressional urging. The down payment has gone up. The up- front fee has gone up. The FHA has power now to go up to a 10 percent and has done this, a 10 percent down payment for people with a weak credit score. That's already part of the FHA's proposal.

The gentlewoman from Illinois' amendment just adopted makes it clear they can do even more, but to go beyond that, to the degree the gentleman from New Jersey wants to do, would undercut the ability of people who are capable of paying their mortgages from getting mortgage loans. That's why we have an unusual coalition opposing this amendment. It actually included a majority of the Republicans on the Committee on Financial Services who voted against this amendment, but it includes people on all sides of the housing market.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

We have the Consumer Federation, the Center for Responsible Lending, the people who have distinguished themselves by being opposed to sub- prime lending when others in this Chamber didn't want any restriction, and the Realtors and the home builders, those who are in the business of providing housing, those who are advocates for consumers come together to say this goes too far and would go beyond what is needed for responsible lending.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have the right to close.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time remains?

First, Mr. Chairman, let me be clear, the FHA has gone beyond the gentleman from New Jersey with regard to borrowers who are risky. For borrowers with a 580 or below credit score, the FHA has already used the authority we have given them to raise the downpayment to 10 percent, so we are talking about people above the 580 credit score.

Secondly, there was a total misreading of history with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yes, some of us thought earlier there wasn't a problem. After it was in order by the Bush administration in 2004 for them to get to more than 50 percent of purchases or mortgages for people below the median income, many of us changed our position and pushed for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen, because of a dispute between the Republican House and the Republican Senate, until 2007, when this House took the lead and finally got it done in 2008. But the problem was that throughout that, we had ideological opposition from the deregulators against restricting subprime loans of the sort that led to trouble, and the FHA doesn't do that.

Mr. Speaker, I would submit for the Record letters from the Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Home Builders, National Association of REALTORS, Centers for Responsible Lending, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Council of La Raza, Consumer Federation of America who point out not that we don't need restriction but that the FHA already has them. Again, to confuse this with the situation in which ideological opposition to sensible regulation allowed subprime loans to predominate outside the FHA is a confusion of the reality.

June 9, 2010.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chair, House Committee on Financial Services, Rayburn House

Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Frank: The Federal Housing

Administration's mortgage insurance program has never been

more important to our housing markets than it is today.

During this period of prolonged stress in our markets,

Congress should avoid making any program changes that would

further harm consumers and stall our economic recovery. The

organizations listed below strongly oppose amendments to H.R.

5072, the FHA Reform Act, which would increase FHA's

downpayment requirement, decrease FHA's loan limits, or

otherwise limit FHA's ability to insure loans.

Raising FHA's downpayment requirement will do little to

strengthen FHA's capital reserve ratio. Rather, it will put

homeownership out of reach for many families and for others

could deplete their cash reserves for home and other

emergencies. Increasing FHA's downpayment could

disenfranchise more than 300,000 responsible homeowners. We

strongly oppose this amendment offered by Rep. Garrett (R-

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

First, I do note a certain irony. I am glad to see my colleagues, the gentleman from New Jersey, the gentleman from Georgia, praise the gentlewoman from West Virginia for a bill which they apparently found severely lacking.

I do note the gentlewoman from West Virginia voted against the prior amendment from the gentleman from New Jersey. I don't know where she is on this one, but it wasn't in the bill that I think she introduced, and for very good reason: A 10 percent cap is wholly arbitrary.

Now, the gentleman says it's going to crowd out the private market, but the leading participants in the private housing market oppose this amendment, including the Mortgage Bankers, as well as Realtors and Home Builders, as well as all consumer groups.

Beyond that, the reason the FHA went down so far from 2001 to 2007-- interesting group of years; guess what was happening during that time?--was that there was a resistance to regulation of the subprime market.

The Federal Reserve was ignoring legislation Congress gave it in 1994 to regulate subprime lending. The Bush administration, in 2004, ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase the subprime loans they bought, which is one reason why I changed my position on the need to be tougher in the regulatory field. And the FHA lost out because these imprudent mortgages were being given without regulation. The FHA doesn't do the kind of mortgages that led to problems.

Beyond that, in recent years, towards the end of the Bush administration and with even greater force during the Obama administration, the FHA has been improving. The FHA has on its own said, if you've got a 580 credit score or below, it's a 10 percent downpayment. We mandated that they go from 3 to 3.5 percent downpayment and increase the upfront fees.

In this bill--and the gentlewoman from West Virginia deserves a great deal of credit, along with our colleague, the gentlewoman from California--the FHA is given credit to require lenders who get loans placed with the FHA in violation of the guidelines to take back those loans. So it wouldn't be the taxpayer that would be on the hook for those loans that shouldn't have been granted and that violated the good guidelines of the FHA; it will be the lender.

It also gives them the power to debar people who have a bad record, which is something they haven't had before.

So we are not talking about the old FHA; we are talking about an improved one. And we are talking about an FHA that stands in great contrast to the unregulated subprime market.

Finally, the gentleman says, ``Well, it doesn't take effect until 2012.'' Neither he nor I knows what the housing market will look like in 2012. And if there's a reason not to do it now, that might also be there in 2012. No one can predict whether the housing--and maybe in 2015 it will be back again into trouble.

The housing market we don't believe is going to crash like it did before, but the basic point is this: The FHA has been the alternative to the kind of unregulated, irresponsible subprime mortgages that many of my friends on the other side protected, the kind of mortgages which they prevented us from regulating until 2007 when we were able to pass a bill in the House, over the objection of many of those who have spoken already, to regulate subprime mortgages. And because we did that, the Federal Reserve finally used its authority.

I hope the amendment is defeated.

I rise to speak on the motion.

I don't know yet.

Well, I was disappointed that my colleague on the Financial Services Committee wouldn't observe the tradition that we have of yielding to each other. If he had, I could have saved the Members a lot of time because I am going to urge people to vote for it.

I will say that it might need a word or two of improvement. If it had, in fact, been offered at the Financial Services Committee, either provision, we could have accepted it then, but then Members wouldn't have had a chance to make dramatic speeches on the floor, so I suppose that explains why we had to go through this.

I urge adoption of the amendment of the recommittal motion, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House in the motion to recommit, I report the bill, H.R. 5072, back to the House with an amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.