Water Rights Protection Act

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today with some humility because I rise in the footsteps of one of Maine's greatest Senators, Olympia Snowe. I am fortunate enough to succeed her in this seat. In the midst of the campaign a year or so ago, I also realized I was not only succeeding Olympia Snowe but George Mitchell and Ed Muskie, who are two of the greatest legislators of the 20th century. So it is with some trepidation to be standing on the shoulders of those great Members of this body.

Most speeches we hear in this Chamber are on a topic of the day-- taxation, gun control, fairness of the marketplace--but I think in order to understand the issues we are debating, the issues coming before us on a continuous basis, we have to have some context. We have to look back to the history of this body and the history of the country.

My favorite quote from Mark Twain--and there are lots of them, but my favorite is: History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes. And in this case I believe that is true.

Let's start with a very basic question: Why do we have government at all? Why are we here? Why do we have this grand edifice? Why do we have the rules and laws and this panoply of the Constitution?

Well, it is all about human nature. Unfortunately, part of human nature is conflict. Often it is conflict that is resolved by violence. Hobbes, the British philosopher, said: ``Life is nasty, brutish, and short.''

A few years ago, Bill Moyers, whom I believe is one of the wisest living Americans, spoke at the graduation of one of my sons. I was at the graduation because I wanted to see what $100,000 looked like all in one place at one time. Now it would be $200,000. But Moyers had a very profound observation, and he talked about the propensity of people to be mean to each other, to resolve disputes by violence. He used a phrase that has stayed with me, and I think it is very profound: ``Civilization,'' Moyers said, ``is an unnatural act.'' Civilization is an unnatural act. It takes work to maintain civilization from one generation to the next. The world around us today gives us evidence of this. All one has to do is open the paper: North Korea, the Middle East, and, Lord help us, the Boston Marathon or two little boys in a sandbox with one truck. Conflict is part of our human nature.

So the basic function, the basic necessity that brings forth any government throughout history is to provide security to our citizens, internal and external, and, of course, the Constitution says this in the Preamble: to ``ensure domestic tranquility''--that is Al Capone-- and ``provide for the common defense''--that is Hitler or al-Qaida. But, then, the paradox is once we create a government, we are handing over power to other people, and there is always the danger the government itself will become abusive, and that has been true throughout human history.

The ancient Latin quote is, ``Who will guard the guardians?'' Governments are about power--power we give up in order for governments to serve us. But, again, human nature raises its head. Lord Acton, the 19th century British philosopher, again had a very profound observation: ``Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'' That is true of all people in all times and in all places. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So these two questions--why have a government and how do we control the government once we create it--encompasses all one needs to know about political science. Our Constitution is the best answer ever provided to these two questions. It is the best answer, and the Framers knew exactly what they were doing.

Madison, in the 51st Federalist--and I have to apologize to my female Senator friends because Madison only talked in terms of men, but when we hear ``men,'' we think ``men and women.'' He meant that, he just didn't say it. But in the 51st Federalist, here is what he said: ``If men were angels, no government would be necessary.'' We wouldn't need it. Then he said:

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal

controls on the government would be necessary, either. In

framing a government which is to be administered by men over

men, however, the great difficulty lies in this: You must

first enable the government to control the governed; and in

the next place, oblige it to control itself.

That is the whole deal. That is what the Constitution is all about. How did it do it? I think the best analogy for the U.S. Constitution is the homely Vegematic. Remember Billy Mays: It slices, it dices, it purees. The Constitution is the Vegematic of power. It slices and dices. It lays it out. It divides it between the people and the government, between the Federal Government and the States and the localities, and within the branches of the Federal Government. Power is separated, and that was the theory of the Framers; that this division of power--ambition combating ambition--was the structural solution to the danger of the government abusing its own people.

Then, finally, they weren't satisfied, and in the ratification of the Constitution was adopted the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is nothing more than a sphere of protection around each of us as individuals that says even if the government follows all these arcane rules and all these Rube Goldberg procedures and a law comes out at the other end, if it violates free speech, it is no good. If it violates the right to bear arms, it isn't valid. If it violates people's right to be secure in their persons and possessions, it is off limits. So the Bill of Rights is the last sword, shield, and buckler that protects us from an abusive government.

The tension between effective government and controlling government has never been resolved in this society. Many of the arguments we are having now about gun control, the Federal budget, financial regulation, health care, climate change, and environmental policy are all manifestations of this age-old debate we keep having.

What I think is amazing is that the arguments and even the rhetoric-- the words themselves--always seem to be about the same. On the Federalist side, we always hear about the necessity of national solutions to national problems, universal principles, appeals to fairness. On the other side, we hear allegations of tyranny, nullification, references to Jefferson's famous quote, that ``occasionally the tree of Liberty

must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.'' The 10th amendment, States rights, and hints of secession, the rhetoric is the same. In fact, the current divisions in this Congress between traditional Democrats and a Republican Party largely driven by the anti-Federalist sentiments of the tea party is at least the 10th time this same issue has arisen in American history.

The American Revolution itself, No. 1, was a populist revolt against concentrated power far away. Second, the drafting of the Constitution arose out of the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. Many of us--all of us--sort of feel this government has been what it is forever. For 7 or 8 years, between the end of the Revolution and the drafting of the Constitution, we were governed by something called the Articles of Confederation, which was too weak. It didn't concentrate power enough, and that gave rise to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

Then, the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was itself a manifestation of this argument--the argument that the wonderful terms ``Federalist'' and ``anti-Federalist'' describe the division in the country which we are fighting over to this day. I think of Harry Reid and Dick Durbin as Hamilton and Adams and McConnell and Cornyn are the pre-1803 Jefferson and Madison. I say pre-1803 because Jefferson was the apostle of States rights, but he became President and somehow found in the Constitution the heretofore unknown right to buy Louisiana. We are glad he did.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1800, which were the PATRIOT Act of the day, passed by President John Adams to get at what they thought were seditious activities in the country. Jefferson, when he was Vice President, secretly wrote a resolution for the Kentucky legislature saying that the Alien and Sedition Acts were null and void in Kentucky and were a violation of the constitutional principles.

The tariff of 1828, known as the Tariff of Abominations, was a tariff that protected northern manufacturers, but it prejudiced the South and, lo and behold, South Carolina wanted to nullify it and, in fact, in 1832 voted to do so. The nullification crisis of 1832 was only averted by the election of Andrew Jackson and a compromise tariff that was passed in 1834.

That is five times already.

This is an interesting one. The fugitive slave laws in 1850 were passed by the Federal Government and it says if a slave escaped into your State, even if it was a free State, your legal enforcement community had to cooperate and return the slave to its master. The Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin in 1854 declared that law unconstitutional, void, and of null effect in the State of Wisconsin. Again, it was the tension between the power of the Federal Government to remedy national problems and the rights of the States and the people to make their own decisions.

Of course, tragically, the most dramatic manifestation of this was the Civil War, but the Civil War itself was about this very question. Wrapped up in States rights and slavery, it was a question of what are the powers of the Federal Government and what are the powers reserved to the States and to the people. We all know the tragedy of that event and what happened.

I think one of the most interesting results of the Civil War is a change in English usage of the term ``United States.'' Prior to the Civil War, people in the United States referred to the United States as a plural noun: the United States are; they are. The United States, they are doing this or that. In other words, they referred to themselves as a collective, as a group of States. After the Civil War, the usage which we have until today is that the United States is a singular noun, one country: It is. That is an amazing development. There was no law passed, but that showed how the people's view of what their country was all about changed.

In the early part of the last century, the New Deal and the two crises of depression and war--particularly the Great Depression--the issue then was fought out in the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court at first said the New Deal laws were unconstitutional. They went too far. The commerce clause wouldn't stretch that far. Then, of course, there was a lot of politics and discussion. The case went back--I believe it was the ``sick chicken'' case--and the Supreme Court said: Well, maybe the commerce clause does stretch that far. Historians refer to that as ``the switch in time that saved nine.''

The civil rights movement was happening as I was growing up, and States rights was the rhetoric again. What are the powers that we have in this city versus the communities and the States.

Here we are, No. 10: The tea party and the urge to shrink government. The resistance to the Affordable Care Act. I was always surprised that summer when people were getting red in the face about a health care bill. It wasn't the health care bill; it was the perception that Washington was somehow taking over something that should have been left to them.

Gun control is a classic example which we were debating last week, and the irony and the difficulty of gun control is the problem is largely local and particularly in urban areas, but the solution is national because the guns being misused in urban areas come from all over the country. That is why, in my opinion, we need national legislation; at a minimum background checks and trafficking regulation. Regulation itself is an expression of governmental power, and it is resisted in many parts of the country.

Budgets--finally, budgets. I shouldn't say finally. My wife says I say ``finally'' too much and it gets people's hopes up. Budgets. A budget fundamentally reflects policy. It fundamentally reflects what we believe about ourselves and about the government. The budget passed by the House--the so-called Ryan budget--is a classic political document. I don't mean that in a negative sense. It espouses a philosophy of what this government should be. It is one more step in this discussion.

I do not believe the Ryan budget is about debt and deficits. It is about shrinking government. That is what the policy is: to reduce the size of the government to a place where it is much smaller.

Federal spending is not out of control. Nondefense discretionary spending today is the lowest it has been in 50 years. Defense is about the same. What is out of control is all of our spending on health care. That is what is driving the Federal deficit. It is not about debt and deficits, it is about shrinking government.

So where does this leave us? An interesting history lesson.

I hope something more.

First, I think it provides us with a way of understanding what separates us. If we understand what is going on here in this Chamber, I think it helps us.

Second, I think it is important, for me anyway, to believe there is no right answer to this question. There is no right answer. It cannot be all one or the other. Neither side has exactly the right response. We should not be an uncontrolled, central government, and we should not be a government that is so dispersed that we cannot do anything. The tension is hard-wired into our system, but I think it helps us find balanced policy.

We need a national government--we need a strong national government-- for the same reasons as in 1789: to solve national problems, problems that cannot be solved at the local level either because of the scope of the problem itself--global terrorism: I am sorry, the Brunswick Police Department cannot deal with all the terrorism--or because piecemeal solutions will not work. Environmental protection has to be done locally, but it also has to be done nationally. Air moves. Polluted water moves.

Or immigration. It has to be a national solution.

I am sorry, but strangling government in the bathtub is even less feasible today than it was in 1789.

Gridlock, which is, if you think about it, gridlock is total victory for the anti-Federalists. Gridlock is not the answer. The Framers knew the government had to work. It may be slow and cumbersome, but, ultimately, it had to be functional. Madison recognized this, and so did the preamble: ``to form a more perfect Union''--``a more perfect Union''--than that which had been formed by the Articles of Confederation.

On the other hand, on the other side of this argument, though, Federal solutions all the time are not the answer either.

There is a grave danger that we all face because our job here is making laws; and the problem is, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If the only tool we have is laws, then we are inclined to try to solve every problem. I believe States rights are important. I think States have an important role to play in our system, and I think they are the best places to solve a lot of the issues that are facing our country.

One of them is education. I remember sitting at home and watching the debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000, and they were arguing what size the classroom should be and how big the school should be, and I turned to my wife Mary and said: These guys think they are running for superintendent of schools.

This is not a Federal issue. The Federal Government has a responsibility in education: to fund, to do research, and to help, but not to guide.

Overreaching regulation, in my view, is a problem. I believe in structural solutions. I was not a Member of this body, but had I been, I suspect I would have opposed Dodd-Frank and supported the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act. I think that is a structural solution because regulatory solutions always end up being burdensome.

A friend of mine in Maine sent me a picture of him sitting next to a stack this high of regulations at a community bank as a result of Dodd- Frank that they are going to have to abide by. This is a community bank. Bangor Savings Bank did not cause the financial crisis of 2008, yet they are having to bear the burden of these regulations, which are expensive, which are drying up credit for their customers, and which I do not believe are going to contribute to a solution.

Another point on this, on the anti-Federalist side, is that deficits do matter. Deficits do matter. We cannot continue to burden our children with the costs of government.

In a hypercompetitive world, it seems to me that every tax dollar counts and every regulation must be smart and minimally intrusive. This is a new world we are in. We are competing not just with companies around this country but with companies all over the world, and they want our jobs.

Understanding these differences and this age-old argument, we have to understand that we cannot be enthralled to this debate. We cannot be locked into it. But we do have national challenges. They have to be met with national solutions. Challenges such as cyber threats, research, infrastructure, gun crime, terrorism--and, Boston, by the way, is an example of coordination between levels of government that I think worked very effectively.

Our failure to act is a disservice to those who built what we have inherited. Calls to cut government spending are fine, but they must be matched with specifics. You cannot just talk about government spending and not talk about FAA towers or our intelligence community or our defense capability.

We have to understand that each generation must meet its own challenges and redefine this question with its eyes open to practical effects, without blinders on of absolutism or ideology.

As I look back on history, the great accomplishments of the body, the great accomplishments of this government, have rarely if ever been victories for one side or the other. Instead, they have been based upon hard-fought battles and grudging compromise, recognition of national needs along with local interests, and a willingness to honor our most basic charge: to form a more perfect union.

I hope in a small way to contribute to this, to contribute to the search for solutions that are practical and effective. I am caucusing with the Democrats, but I agree with Enzi and Alexander on the Marketplace Fairness Act. I agree with Enzi and Alexander on the Marketplace Fairness Act, but with Blumenthal and Kaine on guns. I agree with Blumenthal and Kaine on guns, but I agree with Coburn on duplication and regulation. And I agree with Coburn on duplication and regulation, but I agree with Murray on the budget.

We face serious challenges--defense, budget, and constantly changing circumstances. We live in a time of accelerated change.

Almost exactly 150 years ago, our greatest President sent a message to Congress in the midst of the greatest crisis this country has ever faced. His message was about change and about how to deal with change and was to try to shake Congress out of the lethargy of politics as usual because we were in the midst of the Civil War.

I cannot argue that the crises we face today collectively or individually equal the Civil War, but they are pretty serious. I have been in hearings in the last 2 weeks in the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee, and every single one of the top professionals in both defense and intelligence have said this is the most dangerous and complicated period they have experienced in their 35, 40, or 50 years in this business. So we are facing some serious challenges.

I want to share with you what I believe is the most profound observation about how we deal with change that I have ever encountered. December 2, 1862, President Lincoln sent the message, and here is how it ended. Here is what Abraham Lincoln said:

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy

present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we

must rise--with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must

think anew, and act anew.

And here is the key line:

We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our

country.

We must disenthrall ourselves, think in new and different ways, and then we shall save our country.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I don't think it will take this long, but I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I come to the floor again to address climate change, particularly today the change that carbon pollution is wreaking in our oceans.

Water temperatures are increasing, sea level is rising, ocean water is growing more acidic, and powerful storms are becoming more frequent and more intense. It is time to wake up to the threat to our oceans and coasts posed by carbon pollution.

The rate at which carbon is now being dumped into the atmosphere and absorbed by our oceans is unprecedented. NOAA estimates almost 1 million tons of the carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere is absorbed into the oceans every hour--1 million tons every hour. We know with scientific certainty that carbon pollution causes the ocean to become more acidic. Indeed, we measure that carbon pollution has caused the global pH of the upper ocean to increase nearly 30 percent--by some measures nearly 40 percent--since preindustrial times.

In Rhode Island, the Ocean State, coastal activities define our heritage, our culture, and also our economy. Our coastal waters are spawning grounds, nurseries and shelters for fish and shellfish, which we enjoy and from which we profit. Our shores and coastal ponds are barriers that protect our coastal communities from ocean storms and that naturally improve water quality. Our oceans and coasts make coastal States such as ours who we are.

We will continue to take advantage of the ocean's bounty, as we should. We will trade, we will fish, and we will sail. We will dispose of waste, we will extract fuel and harness the wind. We will work our oceans. Navies and cruise ships, sailboats and supertankers will plow their surface. We cannot undo this part of our relationship with the sea. What we can change is what we do in return. If we use our best science and judgment to plan for the uses of our oceans, we will continue to reap the value they provide.

Carbon-driven changes to our planet will continue and will accelerate. The faster you are driving, the better your headlights need to be. Our headlights in this area are scientific research and planning. As we move ever faster into this uncharted territory, our headlights had better be working to preserve the valuable ecosystems upon which our communities and economies rely.

The National Ocean Policy, signed by President Obama in 2010, provides a commonsense framework for sensible research and planning and public-private cooperation, as we face the significant challenges bearing down on our oceans and coasts--on both our ecosystems and our industries.

Last week, the White House released the National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan, a blueprint for effective management of our oceans and the Great Lakes. It is not easy to balance the competing needs of commerce, conservation, culture, and recreation. More than 20 Federal agencies oversee our marine industries, governing everything from fisheries to oil and gas leasing. The implementation plan takes this on and moves us toward better and more collaborative management of ocean resources.

The implementation plan gathered the thoughts of a wide range of key stakeholders: maritime and energy industries, conservation and recreation interests, academic experts, and Federal, State, local, and tribal governments. The plan supports economic growth by streamlining permitting and approval processes, by improving mapping and ocean observing, and by providing greater access to data and information. The plan lays out specific actions and timelines to protect and restore coastal wetlands and reefs and to prevent economic losses and job losses due to degraded shores and degraded waters.

Our coasts need immediate attention, so the plan could not come too soon. It states:

Our nation lost nearly 60,000 acres of coastal wetlands

each year between 1998 and 2004. . . . Habitats are being

altered by invasive species that threaten native aquatic life

and cost billions of dollars per year in natural and

infrastructure damage.

The implementation process the administration is pursuing is all about local needs and concerns. So the National Ocean Policy establishes voluntary regional planning bodies. Local people can get together, layer together the relevant data, and promote greater and more responsible use of their region's ocean resources.

In New England, we have seen the value of this cooperative ocean planning. Rhode Island's Ocean Special Area Management Plan--a special area management plan is called a SAMP in the trade--has made ecosystem restoration and industry interests advance simultaneously. I recently spent time at the Northeast Regional Planning Body meeting in Rhode Island and I know our region is excited to move forward with a regional process.

So let's look at some of the practical results when you get the information and the affected people in the room together. In Rhode Island, the wind energy industry, with its vast potential for manufacturing and maintenance jobs, is rapidly developing wind farms off of our coasts. Thanks to the groundwork that was laid by the Rhode Island SAMP, wind developers moved fairly smoothly through the regulatory thicket and they have avoided interference with marine highways, critical fisheries, habitats, and naval training ranges.

There is actually quite a good report I commend to all my colleagues on the ocean SAMP published by the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan. It is a practitioner's guide, and it is a very effective document that shows how well this worked.

In this process, local people were listened to and they were heard. When the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced this wind energy area here off of the Rhode Island coast, there was an area named Coxes Ledge, and the fishermen were concerned. The floor of the ocean at Coxes Ledge made it particularly rich fishing grounds and they didn't want it interfered with by having that area put up for wind farm development. Sure enough, when the map came out, the curve of Coxes Ledge is going right through the middle of the wind farm area, protected for the fishermen. They were listened to and they were heard.

So much of this is simple common sense. In Massachusetts, the endangered North Atlantic right whale, a population of about 450 of them, feeds in the waters just off of Boston. The whale strikes between shipping and the

right whales were becoming a problem. And because the right whale is endangered, it was becoming a real risk for shipping going in and out of Boston Harbor. So they found data that showed where the whale strikes were likely to be and they mapped that data. When they mapped the data, they saw if they moved the shipping channel out of Boston Harbor up a little bit they could come through an area that was largely safe from whale strikes. The cost to the industry was somewhere between 9 and 22 minutes of extra transit time--virtually nothing--while the number of whale strikes has dropped significantly.

Here is another example from outside of Delaware. The green sort of neon-colored dots here track the signals coming off cargo ships going in and out of Delaware Bay. As you can see, there is a pretty solid track coming out of Delaware Bay right through here. When Delaware first proposed its wind energy areas, they proposed these light green blocks as wind energy areas. This one, as we can see here, was planned right on top of the main shipping channel heading southeast out of Delaware Bay.

Critics say these kinds of efforts to get the data and the people in the room together ``zone'' the ocean. That is just plain factually wrong. The policy brings together people who use our ocean. In this case, the case of Delaware Bay, simply putting everybody in the room allowed the wind energy areas to be modified to avoid the conflict. So the southeastern area comes out and the turbine areas are beside it and the problem has been solved. That is not zoning, that is what military officers would call situational awareness; what the military would call deconfliction. What it really is is common sense.

As Nancy Sutley, the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said:

With increasing demands on our ocean, we must improve how

we work together, share information, and plan smartly to grow

our economy, keep our ocean healthy and enjoy the highest

benefits from our ocean resources, now and in the future.

Our ocean and coastal economy is important. Shoreline counties in this country generate 41 percent of our gross domestic product. In 2010, 2.8 million jobs were supported by maritime economic activities; commercial ports supported 13 million jobs; energy and minerals production supported almost three-fourths of a million jobs. But all of this activity creates opportunities for conflict.

The National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan is a blueprint to resolve those wasteful conflicts, to ``deconflict'' intelligently, and to streamline efforts across the Federal Government to keep our oceans and our ocean economy thriving. And it lets each region go forward at its own pace.

Michael Keyworth, recent head of our Rhode Island Marine Trades Association, helped develop the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan, SAMP, said this:

The National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan will enable

regions like New England to move ahead with this smart ocean

planning by engaging people like me, who live and work on the

water every day, while not forcing planning on other regions

that do not currently want to engage in the process.

Climate change is upon us, and its effects will only accelerate as we continue to spew megatons of carbon into our atmosphere. Changes are occurring fast in the oceans. That fact makes it all the more important that Congress remain vigilant and that we put our full support behind the commonsense framework of the national ocean policy.

I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last month, the Senate approved a budget that included a blueprint for balanced and responsible deficit reduction. That budget was skillfully managed by our Budget Committee chairman, Senator Murray. It would complete the deficit reduction needed to stabilize our Nation's finances with a mix of smart spending cuts and revenue from closing wasteful tax loopholes. Top economists agree we need about $4 trillion of deficit reduction to make our finances sustainable, and our budget gets us there. Together with the deficit reduction enacted last Congress, the Senate budget would reduce the deficit by $4.3 trillion through a nearly 2-to-1 mix of spending cuts and revenue.

House Republicans took a very different approach with their budget, making only cuts--drastic cuts--to education, law enforcement, medical research, and even ending Medicare as we know it for future retirees. The House budget derives its deficit reduction from cuts that primarily hurt low-income and middle-class Americans, while refusing to touch a single tax giveaway to wealthy and well-connected special interests. Senate Democrats took a middle course; House Republicans produced an extremist tea party wish list.

In his own budget plan, President Obama included some smart provisions such as investments in infrastructure and the Buffett rule for tax fairness. I respect the President's outreach to a compromise with Republicans, but I cannot support the cuts to Social Security benefits in his plan. It is simply wrong to place the burden of deficit reduction on seniors and the disabled. Social Security--one of the fundamental pillars of the American middle class--has not contributed and will not contribute to our deficits. Social Security is fully funded by its participants through payroll taxes and cannot by law add to the deficit.

Under current payroll tax levels, Social Security will have the funds to pay 100 percent of benefits until 2033. It is true we do need to make some adjustments to ensure that full benefits can be paid beyond that date, but that task has nothing to do with deficit reduction. Even if Congress did nothing before 2033, the projected shortfall would force automatic benefit cuts, not deficit spending.

I do look forward to working with Senators of both parties to ensure that Social Security remains fully solvent for generations to come, but that discussion does not belong in the unrelated debate on our Nation's budget deficits.

The Social Security cuts the President has proposed are not just in the wrong discussion, they are wrong themselves. To reflect inflation, Social Security recipients each year get cost-of-living adjustments, what we call COLAs. The President's proposal changes the formula used to make that determination, shifting to something called the chained Consumer Price Index or chained CPI. It sounds innocuous, but make no mistake, it is a benefit cut cloaked in technical jargon.

The argument for a chained CPI is that it is a more accurate measure of inflation--that it takes into account real-world decisions consumers make to modify their buying habits as prices fluctuate. As the price of apples goes up, we buy more bananas, so the overall effect on our budget is moderated. The result is lower annual cost-of-living adjustments--about 0.3 percent each year. But let's take a look at how seniors fare under the existing COLA structure.

In 2010 and 2011, seniors received no cost-of-living adjustment whatsoever--0.0 percent in 2010, 0.0 percent in 2011. But according to the existing consumer price formula used by government accountants, prices didn't rise enough to justify COLAs. That is what the COLA formula says. But in real life, what did it look like?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seniors saw food prices rise 1.5 percent in 2010, medical costs increase 3.3 percent, and they saw their gas and home heating oil go up by more than 13 percent each, and the COLA covered zero percent.

The next year, 2011, these costs increased again. Food prices jumped 4.5 percent, medical care jumped 3.5 percent, gasoline jumped 9.9 percent, and fuel oil jumped 14.3 percent, and again the COLA for seniors was zero.

So 2010 and 2011 add together; they are not included in one another. So food and beverage is a total of 6 percent, plus, allowing for compounding, 6.8 percent for medical care, 23.7 percent for gasoline, and 27.8 percent for

fuel oil--all with a COLA of zero percent.

The numbers show what Rhode Island seniors know: The problem with the Social Security COLA is that it is too low, that it doesn't meet the real costs seniors experience in real life.

Why does this happen? The existing cost-of-living formula considers prices across the whole economy, including products seniors are not so likely to buy, such as flat-screen TVs and smart phones and sporting equipment. Their prices may have fallen, but seniors don't benefit much from those lower prices.

The problem is that the current system fails to account for seniors' true costs in these areas. So my position is that we should move on to a more accurate formula for seniors, one that focuses on food, medicine and heating oil and gas and the other things seniors actually buy. I have been proud to support legislation to change the Social Security COLA formula to one that is geared more toward seniors, and I will continue to fight for the adoption of that new formula.

Chained CPI takes us in the opposite direction. It assumes consumers will alter the types of goods they buy as prices rise. But seniors on fixed incomes have little ability to shift their buying habits away from these basic expenses, things such as food, medical care, gasoline, and fuel oil. It is hard to shift away from those. The lower COLAs that chained CPI would produce will only cut into seniors' already tight budgets, and force seniors to bear the burden of reducing deficits that Social Security had no part in creating. A 0.3-percent reduction each year might sound small, but over time the power of compound interest makes those benefit cuts significant.

For people currently nearing retirement, these cuts would amount to annual benefit reductions of $658 by the time they reach age 75, $1,147 by the time they reach age 85, and $1,622 by the time they reach age 95. That same power of compounding makes these cuts even larger for future generations of seniors. Perhaps $658 or $1,1622 doesn't sound like much money to some folks around here, but to a senior in Rhode Island living on Social Security, that is real money.

After getting no COLA for 2 years in a row, Bethany, a senior from Smithfield, RI, wrote to me:

My health is not the best and it's not easy trying to

survive on my Social Security and the increasing prices of

gas, food, etc. and co-pays for medical. . . . The COLA

calculation for Social Security doesn't work. We need an

increase yearly to stay even with rising premiums and

everyday expenses. Please continue to fight for Social

Security and Medicare.

Deanne from Coventry, RI, wrote to me in February:

I am 68 years old and retired. I cannot work even part time

because of severe Arthritis. My son lives with me who is

permanently disabled due to an accident when he was 9 years

old. He is now 44 years old. We just make ends meet with

Social Security as we have no other income. We wear sweat

shirts and pants to bed and coats in the house during the

winter because we can't pay the high prices of oil. If Social

Security gets cut, I don't know how we will make it. I have

worked all my adult life until the last two years. I NEED my

Social Security. . . . In the face of ever-increasing prices

for health care, home heating, prescription drugs and grocery

bills, asking seniors to give up more and more of their

Social Security benefit as they age when every dollar counts

is just plain wrong.

These are real-life experiences of people who are the kind of folks chained CPI would affect. Yes, we need to make additional sacrifices to complete the job of deficit reduction; no, those burdens should not fall on our elderly and disabled constituents. Our deficits come from unnecessary Bush-era tax cuts that virtually exclusively benefited the wealthy, they come from a decade of wars we didn't pay for, and they come from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They have nothing to do with Social Security, so don't take it out on the seniors.

As the Senate budget shows, we can complete the task of stabilizing our Nation's finances in smart ways, in fair ways, in balanced ways, in ways that don't put the burden on those who can least afford it.

When I ran for this office, I pledged to the people of Rhode Island that I would oppose cuts to Social Security, and I will keep that promise.

I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I thank the Senators from Illinois and Wyoming for their comments. Basically, the Senator from Illinois has said the bill is ready to be amended. It is here for that purpose. We encourage our colleagues to bring amendments if they have them.

We could have started the amendments on Monday if the opponents had agreed to that. But we were forced, through Senate procedure, to go through Monday and Tuesday and most of today in order to deal with the filibuster. But we are about to be ready to vote on amendments.

It was unfortunate; some people have said in a misleading way that this taxes the Internet. Of course, it does not. There is a Federal law against taxing the Internet. The Senator from Arkansas attempted to extend that ban on taxing the Internet for 10 years and one of the opponents to our legislation blocked that. He blocked even having a vote on that. That is unfortunate.

It is ironic that the Senator from Montana would object to the fact that this is an 11-page bill. I don't want to relitigate some of the other bills we have passed around here, but there was a big hue and cry when Senators got a 2,700-page bill that dealt with health care and it was complicated and hard to read. We have gone in a different direction. We have an 11-page bill that is the result of work that has gone on

since 2001 by the Senator from Wyoming, that was introduced in 2011 in substantially this form, on which there was a full hearing in the Commerce Committee in 2012 and a partial hearing in the Finance Committee in 2012. It has been introduced with exactly these 11 pages since February of this year. So everybody can read it. It is not complicated. It is plain and simple. It is about States rights. I think it is good that we have an uncomplicated 11-page bill we all can read and we have had plenty of time to read it.

Of course, we would have preferred to have it reported by the Finance Committee, but they would not report it. So the only choice we had was to bring it to the floor. Now it is open for amendment so I hope we will do that.

The only other point is it was said there is no benefit to an out-of- State seller from, say, selling into Tennessee, if someone from Wyoming is selling into Tennessee. Of course there is a benefit. We are buying that business's goods. All we want to be able to do is to have the right to say: Mr. Wyoming, if you want to sell into Tennessee, you are going to play by the same rules the Tennessee businesses have to play by. That is all we want to do. The equal protection clause of the Constitution guarantees we cannot do anything worse to you. But if you want to sell to us, you do what we do.

We think that is fair and we think that not allowing States to consider that is forcing States to play ``Mother May I'' with Members of Congress about matters which should be within their own sovereign jurisdiction and keeping States from doing what they think is fair.

I thank Senators Durbin and Enzi for their leadership.

Mr. President, I have enjoyed the discussion on the Marketplace Fairness Act. It is nice to have a good debate and I am looking forward to voting on amendments that are here.

I wish to address two or three points that have been made during the debate. The first is about what we call here regular order. What we mean by that is that the bill was introduced, it goes to a committee, and the committee reports it to the floor, and we bring it up on the floor, and we have a debate and then we vote on it. We want to see more of that around here.

Well, the problem with this bill is that the Finance Committee would not act on it. Let's be straightforward about it. This bill has been around a long time. The Finance Committee chairman is the only one who can schedule a hearing and cause it to be acted on. He did not want to do that, despite the fact that we asked him to do it. So as a result, the majority leader used a procedure that brings the bill to the floor.

To underscore that, let me ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a timeline for the Marketplace Fairness Act. It details the steps we have taken since 2001.

To summarize some of these steps, this began in the 107th Congress in 2001. Now Senator Enzi started even before that, I think, with Senator Dorgan. They introduced the Internet Tax Moratorium and Equity Act in 2000 and 2001. Then in 2003, the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Act was introduced by Senator Enzi. That is 10 years ago.

Then again in 2005 and 2006 Senator Enzi and Senator Dorgan. Then again in 2007 and 2008, Senator Enzi. In the 111th Congress no bill was introduced. But now we are getting to a little more recent history. Last Congress, 2011 and 2012, Senator Durbin introduced the Main Street Fairness Act. Senator Enzi joined him in that. It was referred to the Senate Finance Committee.

So for all of that time, the Finance Committee has had an opportunity to work on this legislation in the way

they thought it should be. There were hearings in the Senate Commerce Committee in August of 2012 on essentially the same 11-page bill that has been introduced here today and that we are acting on.

There was a partial hearing in the Senate Finance Committee during that year. But that was all. Then, in this year, in February, on Valentine's Day, Senator Enzi introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act we are debating here, this 11-page bill. There was a letter from 16 Senators, Republicans and Democrats, asking the Finance Committee to hold a hearing and to deal with it. But it has not.

I respect the decision of the chairman to be opposed to the bill and not to hold a hearing and not to report the bill to the floor. But if he does that, then I would suggest he should respect the right of the majority leader to bring the bill to the floor and allow the Senate to debate it.

As far as the regular order goes, a week should be long enough to consider this bill, which has been in one form or another around since 2001. We could have begun debating amendments on Monday. That is when the bill came to the floor. But the opponents filibustered it. This was not a Republican or a Democratic filibuster, it was both sides, from opponents. And what that deprived us of was an opportunity to vote and debate amendments on Monday and Tuesday.

Then we had another vote. So we have now had three votes, one during the budget session, one on cloture on the motion to proceed, and then one on the motion to proceed itself. We have gotten 74, 75 votes each time. It is a majority of the Democratic Senators, it is a majority of the Republican Senators. This does not happen all the time, that we have such strong majorities on each side of the aisle, saying in three successive votes of 74 and 75 votes: We favor an important piece of legislation.

I would hope the better course would be to come to some agreement that we can take the amendments we have here from Democrats and from Republicans, bring them up, table them, vote on them, debate them, and act on this and bring this to a conclusion this week.

Then there is substantial support in the House of Representatives for this. The bill could then go to the House. The House could do whatever the House wishes. There could be a conference and we could get a result. Every attempt has been made by the sponsors of this legislation since 2001 to bring this through the regular order, which means take it through the committee. The opponents of the idea have chosen first in the Finance Committee to not allow there to be a markup of the bill, and then on the floor to not allow us to debate amendments.

For example, some people say this legislation taxes the Internet. Of course, that is 100 percent wrong, because there is a Federal law banning State taxation of the Internet. Senator Pryor of Arkansas sought to extend that ban for 10 more years today. The opponents of the bill objected even to a vote on taxing the Internet. This is very disappointing. That is the information about the timeline I wanted to put in.

Here is some more information that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point.

These are letters from Senators to the leaders of the Finance Committee. The first letter is dated January 31, 2012, last year, at the beginning of the year. It was from five Democrats and five Republicans who introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act. It asks for a hearing, asks for the committee to act. That is the first letter.

The next letter came this year, on February 14, from 16 Senators, both parties, to the Finance Committee, asking the Finance Committee to act on the Marketplace Fairness Act.

Then there is a letter to the leaders of the Finance Committee from the National Governors Association, signed by the Democratic Governor of Washington and the Republican Governor of Tennessee, asking the Finance Committee, on behalf of the States, to consider this legislation and act on it. The Finance Committee elected not to do that.

This information will be part of the Record.

Finally, there is also a letter dated April 22 of this year from the National Governors Association urging Senators Reid and McConnell to pass this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Now, finally, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the names of the Governors and former Governors who support this legislation.

I do that with a little bit of obvious bias as a former Governor. I think it is important that the country know what the Governors think, because the legislation we are talking about today is a States rights bill. It is an 11-page bill. It is a very simple, straightforward bill. It simply says that Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, New Jersey, any State, has the right to decide for itself whether it wants to collect taxes that are already owed from some of the people who owe the taxes or all of the people who owe the taxes. That is it. That is it. That is all it does.

The Governors who supported it are the Governor of Alabama, Virginia, New Jersey, South Carolina, Nevada, Iowa, South Dakota, Maine, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Tennessee, Michigan, Governor Otter of Idaho, Arizona, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Hawaii.

I just read a bunch of Republican Governors. Now I am into the Democrats: Kentucky, Hawaii, Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut, Missouri, Massachusetts, Illinois and West Virginia. The former Governors include Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, and the former Democratic Governor of Washington.

Here we have a bill on the floor that we have voted on three times already that has a majority of the Democratic Senators and a majority of the Republican Senators, and 75 votes three times--74 one time, 75 twice. The bill also has the support of a long list of Republican Governors--actually more Republican than Democratic Governors. Yet we have got some people in Washington who say, we do not trust the States to make these decisions. I wonder if these people have ever read the Constitution of the United States? I wonder if they know what the 10th Amendment says? This was a very important part of the creation of this country.

Sovereign States had reserved to them their powers. They didn't expect to come to Washington and play ``Mother May I'' to a bunch of Senators and Congressmen who fly here on airplanes and think they are smarter than they were when they left Nashville, Memphis or wherever their hometown is. The purpose of this bill is to leave within the States the responsibility for making decisions.

Some people up here think they know best. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Tennessee doesn't have an income tax. I would like for every State not to have an income tax, but I am not going to impose that from Washington just because I am a Senator.

Tennessee has a right-to-work law. I would like for every State to have a right-to-work law, but I am not going to impose that from Washington. States have the right to be right, States have the right to be wrong, and Washington has no business telling sovereign States what its tax structure ought to be. Washington certainly has no business standing in the way of States stopping discrimination against taxpayers and businesses because that is exactly what we are doing if we don't act.

We are perpetuating discrimination. Most conservatives I know don't like picking and choosing between winners and losers.

They don't like treating one taxpayer one way and one in a similar situation another way, one business one way and another one another way. That is exactly what we are doing if we don't act.

We are discriminating against the shoestore in Wyoming, against the boot store in Nashville, and against the small store in Maryville, TN. We are saying collect the tax when you sell something, but if your competitor from outside your State sells it, he or she does not have to. That is discrimination.

That is why the leading conservatives such as the chairman of the American Conservative Union, William Buckley, before he died; and Art Laffer, the economist who helped President Reagan develop his ideas; and the Governors such as Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Bill Haslam, that is why these conservatives say they support the bill.

We are not even deciding whether States will collect taxes from out- of-State sellers. We are just saying States have the right to do it. Of course they have the right to do it.

That is why I am including this list of Governors. I think it is part of our job as Senators to respect the sovereign States from where we come, to respect the rights of the States to not think that just because we are in Washington we know better. Most Tennesseans don't like that.

I know when I was Governor nothing used to make me madder than a bunch of legislators coming up with some bright idea in Washington, passing it, turning it into a law, holding a press conference, taking the credit for it, and then sending the bill to me. The next thing you know they would be home making a speech at the Lincoln Day Dinner or Jefferson Day Dinner, if they were a Democrat, about local control. Well, it is about local control.

The idea that people in Washington would say we don't trust the States to make decisions about how to spend money, look at our record. We are running up trillion-dollar deficits every year, borrowing 26 cents out of every $1 we spend.

I come from a State that has no State debt on roads. It has to balance the budget every year. It has a AAA bond rating. I would trust Governor Haslam, Lieutenant Governor Ramsey, the Speaker of the House, and the Republican legislature a lot more than I do the Senate and Congress to make decisions about tax dollars.

I think I know pretty well what they will do if they have power to do it. I suspect they will say they are not going to pick and choose winners and losers. I know they are going to say that because the Governor and Lieutenant Governor told me. I expect what they will say is this will bring in more revenue so we will lower our tax rate because we will start collecting money from all the people who owe it instead of some of the people who owe it.

It is correct that some Governors have already said that. We were told today that in Ohio they have already said if this bill passes, they will collect money from everybody who owes it and then they will lower their income taxes.

Art Laffer said in his column in the Wall Street Journal: That is precisely what we ought to do to stimulate growth. He said: If we are going to have a tax, the best tax, said Mr. Laffer, is a tax that covers the largest number of people at the lowest possible rate.

If that is the case, what we are perpetuating within action is the worst kind of tax, which is the tax that States are allowed to tax a smaller range of people at a higher rate. This permits them to tax all the people who are in a similarly situated place at a lower rate, if that is what they choose to do.

The arrogance of those in Washington who would say they don't trust the States to make those decisions, they need to go back to seventh grade, read the U.S. Constitution and learn a little American history about where this country came from.

I am very proud of this Senate for, on this important issue led by Senator Durbin and Senator Enzi, coming up with 75 and 74 votes 3 consecutive times to say we believe in a two-word principle on this 11- page bill, States rights or 10th Amendment, that we will recognize the power of States to make their own decisions.

If we don't act, all these claims about what happened to the 9,600 jurisdictions will come true. Some Governor--I know I would do it if I were still there--the Senate didn't act on this, the Congress didn't act, I would go right back to the Supreme Court. I would bet that 20 years after the Quill case that Senator Heitkamp brought, back before there was an Internet, when the Court then said that requiring out-of- State sellers to collect the tax was burdensome, they would look at the Internet.

Those Justices know they can find out the weather in their hometowns by putting in the ZIP Code and putting in the name of the town. They know that an out-of-State seller could figure out the sales tax from the ZIP Code of the buyer. They know that.

I will predict that they would hold it is not an undue burden, and then all

the out-of-State sellers really would have 9,600 jurisdictions to deal with. We are simplifying, and we are creating something that will work. We are following a process that is well tried. There are a great many out-of-State catalog sellers and online sellers that today do exactly what the instate sellers do. They collect the sales tax. They do it through the ZIP Code over the Internet. We are saying everybody should do that except those who sell less than $1 million a year. They don't have to do anything under this law.

According to many economists, that takes 99 percent of the online sellers out of the effect of this bill. We have tried to bring this through regular order. We are down here trying right now. We have received substantial support. There have been hearings. There has been a lot of work in the House, and there is broad support from the Governors. I am hopeful we will move forward tomorrow, finish this legislation, send it to the House, and take a step toward recognizing the Constitutional framework of our country by honoring the sovereign States rights to make decisions for themselves and stopping this attitude of requiring Governors and legislators to come to Washington and play ``Mother May I'' with responsibilities that ought to be clearly the responsibility of States.

I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we have two bills before us under this rule, which I will briefly discuss before getting into the more important topic of what bills are not being considered on the floor of the House this week.

Notably, despite comprehensive immigration reform's having passed the Senate with more than two-thirds support, despite the fact that there are more than 10 million people here in this country illegally, despite the fact that our borders are porous and that people are sneaking across, as well as illicit goods, despite the fact that we have no meaningful workplace enforcement, despite the fact that farmers and the faith-based community are crying out for reform--the business community, the tech community, labor--there is no immigration bill on the floor of the House today. Instead, we are discussing two bills.

We are discussing one SGR fix. Now, that sounds obscure to people, ``SGR fix.'' What is that? This is the reimbursement rate for doctors under Medicare, and there is a budgetary fiction that long predates me in this place. I assume that, at the time, Republicans and Democrats created this elaborate budgetary fiction together as this degree of budgetary fiction requires both parties' most creative thoughts to possibly put it together. So we pretend every year that there are going to be large cuts to Medicare. I think Republicans and Democrats know that that is not likely to happen. Those cuts would completely gut Medicare. Doctors would drop Medicare patients if those cuts were to occur.

So each year and sometimes shorter than a year--sometimes 6 months, sometimes 3 months, sometimes 2 years--Democrats and Republicans have to come together to figure out how to avoid those automatic cuts that otherwise occur. That discussion is about how to pay for avoiding those cuts each time.

Democrats have suggestions to pay for it--let's eliminate oil and gas loopholes; let's use the overseas contingency fund. Republicans have ideas about how they want to pay for it--in this case, the 52nd repeal of ObamaCare. By the way, they want to keep all of the taxes from ObamaCare; they just want to get rid of some of the benefits. So they are going to keep all of the taxes from ObamaCare--those Republicans love those taxes--but they are getting rid of some of the benefits. That is the secret of what they are using to pay for it, just so you know.

The real discussion is how to do it, but in this case, the Republicans are presumably so embarrassed about their pay-for--the fact that they are using the ObamaCare taxes to pay for Medicare--that they are slipping it into the rule in what is called the ``deem and pass'' language, or what is characterized by some as the ``demon pass'' language.

This rule says:

The amendment printed in part B of the report of

the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution shall

be considered as adopted.

That means there is not even going to be a vote on the actual way to pay for avoiding the Medicare cuts. It is in the rule, itself. This is the most costly rule I have ever seen. This rule costs $138 billion of ObamaCare taxes that the Republicans want to use. This is an expensive rule, Mr. Speaker. If there is a real desire to talk with Democrats about ways to pay for the Medicare SGR fix, also called the ``doc fix,'' we are happy to do it. We were hoping that you would allow a Democratic pay-for sponsored by Mr. Tierney, who will talk about the previous question. Our idea is to use the Overseas Contingency Fund to avoid any cut to Medicare beneficiaries, but this rule does not allow us to do that. This rule doesn't even allow the House to vote on using ObamaCare taxes to pay for SGR. It includes the ``deem and pass'' language in the rule, itself--a rule, itself, that includes self- executing language that costs $138 billion. That is one expensive rule, Mr. Speaker, and I certainly hope my colleagues vote ``no.''

This rule also includes H.R. 3189, the Water Rights Protection Act. As my colleague said, those of us in the West feel that whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting about. I think the debate on the Rules Committee last night and the upcoming debate here on the floor will probably reflect that old adage. The genesis of this particular bill is something that Mr. Tipton and I and, I think, many Members of this body agree on. We wanted to address a narrow dispute between the U.S. Forest Service and ski permit holders that directly impacts my district and impacts Mr. Tipton's district.

I support Mr. Tipton's efforts in that regard, and I was hoping we could have gotten the bill to a point where it would have passed near unanimously or unanimously. Instead, this bill has become a job-killing Republican water grab that even the counties that it was designed to help oppose. The counties in my district that have ski resorts--Eagle, Rand, Summit County, famous resorts like Winter Park, Vail, Arapahoe Basin, Breckenridge, among others--now oppose this bill because it will destroy jobs in their counties by destroying recreational opportunities like white-water rafting, fishing, year-round tourism opportunities, which are

critical to the economic success of my district.

These changes to this job-killing Republican water grab have caused this bill to snowball into an effort that will hurt our rivers' health, destroy recreational opportunities, and the underlying bill jeopardizes the agreements that leave waters in streams and rivers, which allow our tourism industry to be so vibrant. Even some of the counties, as we mentioned in the Rules Committee yesterday--certainly not all of those counties--like Pitkin County and the home of Aspen and Mr. Tipton's district, also oppose this bill. Again, there was an overreaching decision by the U.S. Forest Service that required ski area permittees to transfer the ownership of water rights to the Federal Government. In 2012, that water directive was overturned by a U.S. District Court judge.

It is important to note that I believe in the purpose of this bill, and I hope that we can address it through the amendment that I have offered, which allows for 20 minutes of floor debate under this bill. This bill can still be saved by this body's endorsing the amendment that I have offered as part of this bill, which is also supported by ski area representatives from across the Mountain West, along with my colleagues from Colorado Ms. DeGette and Mr. Perlmutter.

Unfortunately, this job-killing Republican water grab bill uses the ski area directive as a pretense for making wholesale job-killing changes. Look, ski areas have been a punching bag for U.S. Forest Service's misguided policies for the last decade. I think we can find common cause around a narrow solution. In that time, the Forest Service has changed the ski area water policies four times. It has inconsistently enforced others' water clauses. It has left ski areas subject to the agency's whim. They are very capital-intense ski areas. They are the major economic driver of the mountain areas of my district, but they have been at the whim of sometimes arbitrary Federal actions. Ski areas collectively hold water rights worth hundreds of millions of dollars that are critical for their businesses.

Now, my colleagues might wonder what kind of improvements a ski area might want to make. In 2011, this body unanimously voted to support the Ski Area Recreational Opportunity Enhancement Act, which allowed ski areas to expand summertime activities, like zip lines and mountain biking. Amongst some of those other summertime activities that ski resorts benefit from are white-water rafting, fishing--the very kinds of recreational opportunities that will be impacted by this job-killing Republican water grab.

I entered several pieces of testimony into the record in the Rules Committee yesterday--statements from water districts and from counties--with regard to how this bill will impact recreational opportunities in Colorado. Along with Ms. DeGette, Mr. Perlmutter, Ms. DelBene, Ms. Kuster, Mr. Cartwright, and Mr. Huffman, I was proud to offer an amendment that would fix and address the issues in H.R. 3189 and return the bill to its original purpose.

The amendment ensures that any U.S. Forest Service directive will not condition ski area permits on the transfer title of any water right or require any ski area permittee to acquire a water right in the name of the United States. The amendment ensures the long-term viability of ski areas, and it makes sure that this bill is not the job-killing Republican water grab that it has become.

It is important to note that the narrow dispute that was the genesis of this bill could have been solved with a suspension measure. We have offered language repeatedly to Mr. Tipton and his staff, to the committee and its staff, but we were not taken up on that offer, sadly. Instead, we have before us a job-killing Republican water grab bill that would devastate my district.

Instead, the manager's amendment was offered, as well as additional language in committee.

This bill is riddled with problems that are not addressed. The bypass flows issue is not solved in the manager's amendment, which does address the Endangered Species Act component but does nothing to address the issues around the Forest Service, BLM, Interior, and Agriculture agencies that also have relevant authority under a number of statutes, including the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Forest Service and Park Service Organic Act, and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, to impose bypass flows.

Simply put, the manager's amendment doesn't make the necessary improvements to make this a bipartisan measure--they are simply window dressing for a job-killing Republican water grab.

Let's talk about some of the issues in the underlying legislation.

In the West, water rights are State-based, and any challenge to a right or to the system itself is a very delicate proposition to years of precedence and claims, subordinate and senior, with regard to water.

As a result, this legislation only serves to cast doubt on the complicated laws and authorities that make up our Nation's and State water laws, and that companies, individuals, and counties have made decisions on and already have economic investments in.

In addition, this bill, absent my amendment, muddles the message of disapproval over the 2011 decision.

What exactly are we saying with regard to this bill? A bill that was meant to address the needs of ski areas because of the 2011 directive instead has become an all-encompassing, job-killing Republican water grab, which is not even a clear signal of our unhappiness with the original directive.

I think not only would there be a much cleaner path to actually become the law of the land if we were to consider a targeted approach encompassed by the amendment that I have offered, but it also, even absent becoming law, would send a clear and unambiguous message to the U.S. Forest Service of congressional disapproval of the directive.

Instead, I think they will just shrug their shoulders and say, That is that crazy House of Representatives.

This bill is not going to become law. This bill will not have any impact--and the message is lost with regard to the 2011 directive.

If they think this is the House's reaction--muddled, job-killing, water-grabbing--to this sort of thing, what is to stop them from doing this again? What is to stop them from targeting ranchers? What is to stop them from targeting recreation areas?

When this kind of thing occurs, we need a targeted reaction that can become law or a clear and unambiguous message that the House will not stand for it.

In summary, this rule contains $183 billion in ObamaCare taxes that are spent for another purpose and allows two bills to come to the floor, both of which could be negotiated in good faith with the Democrats, and both of which have not.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), to further discuss the rule that allows for the debate of the job-killing Republican water grab and the bill to keep ObamaCare taxes and remove the benefits.

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

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

The Republicans are getting worse and worse on these ObamaCare votes. You would think that you would get better with practice, after 52 times they would be better at repealing ObamaCare. That is because this body, the House of Representatives, has voted to repeal ObamaCare, in whole or in part, 52 times.

Those votes started out where it was very simple. The votes were to repeal everything that was in the Affordable Care Act. That is how those votes started. Now they have gotten to the point where the Republicans want to keep the taxes from ObamaCare and get rid of the benefits. I don't think anybody wants that.

I mean, if you are talking about repealing the Affordable Care Act, you still have people that are split on that. You might have a few more people that

agree with you or a few more that agree with us, but the American people have different opinions about that. But if you offered any of them keep all the taxes and get rid of the benefits, I can't imagine anybody wants that.

I would hope that, after so much practice, the Republicans would be quite good at this. It seems to be the core competency they are developing. Almost every week, in fact, this body repeals ObamaCare, but now they are repealing it in a way that keeps all the taxes and gets rid of the benefits; so I am quite surprised that the old adage of ``practice makes perfect'' is far from true with regard to the Republican approach to this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 45 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire of the gentleman if he has any remaining speakers.

I am prepared to close. I have 6 minutes, and I wanted to yield to the gentleman if he has remaining speakers who wanted to speak before I close.

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

Mr. Speaker, sadly, with these two bills, while the Republican job- killing water grab bill and the ObamaCare tax bill are both not going to become law, they both have a genesis in a real issue, one that calls for bipartisan cooperation, one that affects the water rights of ski areas that we have offered language in an amendment that would address, the other, my colleague, Mr. Kind, addressed.

This body has a long tradition of coming together around figuring how to pay for SGR. Now, the gentleman mentioned February 6 the language was available. The language regarding the SGR fix is not what is in dispute. The way of paying for the SGR fix is what is the topic of debate between Democrats and Republicans. That language was not seen February 6. That language is not even going to be voted upon under this rule. It is contained in the rule itself.

Sadly, while we take up our time on these bills that are not going to become law, we continue to avoid action on the pressing issue of reforming our immigration system. In August, a number of us sent a letter to Speaker Boehner saying that he should introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation. If he failed to do so, we would work with a diverse group of our colleagues to introduce a bill for comprehensive immigration reform in the House. There were crickets, and so my colleagues and I, in October, introduced H.R. 15, comprehensive immigration reform, a bill that has bipartisan cosponsors, over 200 sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

Immigration reform is supported by an unprecedented coalition, including business and tech companies, faith leaders from across the country, police, security specialists, but most importantly, the American people, who are sick and tired of having over 10 million people in our country illegally.

We need to restore the rule of law. We need to allow American families to succeed in our country and to live their dreams. We need to have control of our border. We need to implement mandatory workplace authentication to ensure that people who are here illegally cannot work. Every day that passes is a failure of this body to address these issues, and the solution to all of these issues, workplace authentication, securing our border, uniting families, those are all in

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, but I regret to say unsurprisingly, the Republicans continue to play politics with Medicare, politics with water that is the lifeblood of the American West and the economic lifeblood of the counties that I represent in Eagle and Summit County. And all we have here to vote on today is, once again, an attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act, to keep the taxes and remove the benefits, and an attempt to grab the water from those who would use it for fishing and recreation in the Mountain West.

I hope that we can do better.

If we can reject this $183 billion rule, I think it will send a message to the Speaker that we are ready for immigration reform.

We are ready to reach out our hand on the SGR, on the doc fix, and figure out the best way to pay for it, taking the best ideas that Republicans and Democrats have to offer, working with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) and others to bend the cost curve, so that we can deliver a better quality of services to American seniors and contain costs more effectively.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question and vote ``no'' on the underlying bills.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I also agree we should not invade Canada. I live right near there. It would be terrible.

What we are hearing and what we have heard now for a number of months is a discussion about deficit reduction, about how we proceed and how we address the fact that this country has a $16.6 trillion national debt. That is a serious issue.

I think as we contemplate how we address this issue, we have to put it into a broader context as to what is going on in the United States. What is the best way forward in terms of deficit reduction at a time when the United States has by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. In other words, we cannot talk about how we proceed with deficit reduction, we cannot say it is OK to cut Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or nutrition programs when the middle class of this country is disappearing, poverty is extremely high, while at the same time the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. Any serious discussion about deficit reduction has to include those issues.

Let me bore you for a moment with some interesting statistics. This, in fact, came out just yesterday from the Pew Research Center. What they said is that all the new wealth generated in this country from 2009 to 2011 went to the top 7 percent of the American households. All the new wealth went to the top 7 percent of American households, while the bottom 93 percent of Americans saw a net reduction in their wealth.

The Pew Research Center found that from 2009 to 2011, the mean net worth of American households in the top 7 percent rose by 28 percent, while the mean net worth of the bottom 93 percent of American households went down by 4 percent; in other words, the people on top are doing very well, everybody else is not doing well.

Over this same time period, the top 7 percent of American households saw their wealth increase by a combined $5.6 trillion--the top 7 percent, $5.7 trillion in wealth increase; the bottom 93 percent saw a wealth decline of $600 billion. That is what the Pew Research Center reported just yesterday.

Today, when we talk about distribution of wealth and income, the wealthiest 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America. Four hundred people have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. Today, one family, the Walton family-- owners of Walmart--own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people; one family has more wealth than the bottom 40 percent.

Today--and this is truly a remarkable fact which of course we do not talk about too much--the top 1 percent of Americans own 38 percent of all financial wealth. Let's guess what the bottom 60 percent of the American people own. The top 1 percent own 38 percent of the wealth. The bottom 60 percent own 2.3 percent of the wealth in America. That is a rather remarkable and disturbing fact.

Today, as Warren Buffett has pointed out, the 400 richest Americans are now worth a recordbreaking $1.7 trillion, more than five times what we were worth just two decades ago. Meanwhile, according to a June 2012 study from the Federal Reserve, median net worth for middle-class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010. That is the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle- class family.

That is distribution of wealth. That is incredibly unequal, incredibly unfair, and getting worse and worse. That is something we might want to keep in mind when we talk about how we do deficit reduction.

Then when we talk about distribution of income, what we earned last year, that is even worse than distribution of wealth, as bad as that is. If you can believe it, the last study we have seen on this subject--this is quite amazing--showed that from 2009 to 2011, all the new income created during that time period went to the top 1 percent while the bottom 99 percent actually saw a decline in their income. All the new income created in that time period, 2009 to 2011, went to the top 1 percent. Real unemployment today is not 7.6 percent, it is 13.8 percent if we count those people who have given up looking for work and those people who are working part-time. The youth unemployment rate is just horrendous, and it is even higher than the general average.

Very interestingly, a new poll came out by Gallup that was done just a few days ago--April 17, 2013. I find the results of that poll very remarkable. This poll deals with an issue that very few people in Congress are even prepared to talk about, let alone act upon.

Here is what the poll from April 17, 2013--this week--said: About 6 in 10 Americans--about 60 percent--believe money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people in the United States, while only one-third of Americans think the current distribution is fair.

So when my friends want to cut programs for the middle class and give tax

breaks to the rich, they should understand that about 60 percent of the American people already believe that we have an unfair distribution of wealth in America. What is even more interesting, according to this Gallup poll from a few days ago--and they do this poll every year--is that a recordbreaking 52 percent of the American people believe ``that our government,'' i.e, the Congress, ``should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich.'' Again, that is 52 percent of the American people who believe that.

How many Members of the Congress get up and come close to reflecting what a majority of the American people want? The American people know that the middle class is collapsing. They know poverty is unacceptably high. They know the wealthy and large corporations are doing extraordinarily well, and they want us to do something about it. But around here, forget doing something about it. We cannot even talk about what the American people want us to do.

The American people are frustrated with Congress for a whole lot of reasons, and certainly at the top of the list is how we are ignoring the economic reality facing the middle class of this country and the growing wealth and income inequality. They want us to do something about it, and I think it is high time we did.

So instead of cutting programs for the middle class, they are giving more tax breaks for those people who don't need it. Maybe we should do what the American people want and ask the wealthy and large corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes and protect working families.

Interestingly enough, we hear from the wealthiest people in this country and from their organizations. What we hear from them is not: Hey, we are doing really well. We know this country has a whole lot of problems, and we are prepared to pitch in; we are prepared to help out with deficit reduction. By the way, for those who are on Wall Street, remember that it was the American people who bailed out Wall Street. Instead of hearing how they are prepared to reciprocate now in America's time of need, unfortunately what we are hearing is quite the contrary.

Lloyd Blankfein is the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and this is what he said on November 19, 2012, to CBS:

You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower

people's expectations--the entitlements and what people think

that they're going to get, because they're not going to get

it.

Blankfein and his friends at the Business Roundtable recently came out with a report. Now, the Business Roundtable is the organization representing the CEOs of the largest corporations. All of them make millions of dollars a year in salary or benefits. All of them have very generous retirement benefits. Some of them are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

These people, the Business Roundtable, which consists of Wall Street and other large corporations that are doing phenomenally well, came forward and said to Congress: You should raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to 70 and cut Social Security COLAs by adopting the so-called chained CPI. The wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well, Wall Street gets bailed out by working families all over this country, and then these guys come back to Congress and say: Raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to 70 years of age.

Needless to say, my views are a little bit different than Mr. Blankfein's or the Business Roundtable. I believe the way to do deficit reduction is not by punishing people who are already hurting and struggling to keep their heads above water. We don't punish the sick, the kids, the elderly, or disabled veterans. We need to ask those people who are doing very well to start paying their fair share of taxes.

Now I will talk about what I think we should be doing and why we should be doing it. In 1952, 32 percent of all of the revenue generated in this country came from large corporations--about one-third of all the revenue. Today just 9 percent of Federal revenue comes from corporate America. In 2011, corporations paid just 12 percent of their profits in taxes. That is the lowest percentage since 1972.

In 2005--the last figures we have--one out of four corporations paid no Federal income taxes at all even though they collected over $1 trillion in revenue during that 1-year period.

In 2011, corporate revenue as a percentage of GDP was just 1.2 percent lower than any other major country in the OECD, including Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, and many other countries. Each and every year corporations and the wealthy are avoiding more than $100 billion in U.S. taxes by sheltering their incomes in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and other offshore tax havens.

So the point is: How do we do deficit reduction? Do we say to an elderly woman in the State of Vermont who is trying get by on $14,000 or $15,000 a year that we are going to cut her Social Security?

Do we say to a disabled vet: Thank you for your service and your sacrifice for this country, we are sorry you lost your legs, but we are going to have to cut your benefits?

Do we say to a struggling low-income family trying to survive on one or another nutrition program: Sorry, but you may have to go hungry and not get dinner on Wednesday?

Do we say to working people who have lost their jobs: We are going to have to cut your unemployment compensation which will make it almost impossible for your family to survive?

Is that our approach or do we go to corporate America, which is enjoying recordbreaking profits?

One out of four corporations pays nothing in taxes. Do we say to them: You know what, it is time you helped us with deficit reduction.

I hear a lot of my Republican friends and the President talking about how we need tax reform, but we are going to do it deficit neutral. No, I beg to differ. We do need tax reform. We do need to end the absurdity of losing huge amounts of money because of the tax havens in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda and elsewhere, but we also have to raise revenue when we do tax reform. It is not simply lowering tax rates.

I will give some examples about how absurd the current situation is and why--before we cut Social Security and before we attack programs that the middle class and working families of this country depend upon--we have to end these absurd loopholes corporate America is enjoying.

I have just a few examples. Bank of America is one of the financial institutions that was bailed out by the American people when their recklessness and greed almost resulted in the collapse of our financial system. In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, which, of course, has a zero percent tax rate to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Bank of America set up 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands. In 2010, not only did Bank of America pay nothing in Federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. Bank of America paid nothing in taxes.

In 2010, JPMorgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. They avoided paying $4.9 billion.

Goldman Sachs is one of the largest institutions in the country. In 2010, Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries and offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes.

Citigroup, which is another financial institution that was bailed out by the taxpayers of this country, has paid no Federal income taxes for the last 5 years. That is not bad. Many people who are out there watching this are saying: That is pretty good. How did they avoid paying income taxes when they are one of the largest corporations in America for a 5-year period? That is pretty good.

During the last 5 years General Electric made $81 billion in profit, which is not too shabby. Not only has General Electric avoided paying Federal income taxes during these years, it received a tax rebate of $3 billion from the IRS. GE has at least 14 offshore subsidiaries in Bermuda, Singapore, and Luxembourg for the purpose of avoiding U.S. income taxes.

Does anyone still want to know why the American people are cynical about what is going on in Washington? Does anyone want to know why the Congress of the United States has an extremely low level of support or favorability? It is because the American people know they are getting ripped off. They are

working 50 or 60 hours a week, and they are paying their taxes. General Electric makes $81 billion, and over the last 5 years they have paid nothing in taxes. Does anybody vaguely think that is fair?

We have some people who say: We want to do tax reform, but we want to make it revenue neutral. We don't want any new income in order to help us with deficit reduction. Let's cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, but, no, we cannot get new revenue from large corporations.

During the last 5 years Verizon made over $48 billion in profits. Not only has Verizon avoided paying Federal income taxes during those years, it received a $535 million rebate from the IRS--not too bad.

From 2008 through 2010, not only did Honeywell avoid paying Federal income taxes, it received a $34 million tax refund from the IRS.

Merck is a pharmaceutical company. In 2009 not only did Merck pay no Federal income taxes, it received a $55 million tax refund from the IRS. On and on it goes: Corning, Boeing, Microsoft, Caterpillar, Cisco, Dow Chemical. I have example after example of large profitable corporations where CEOs make millions and millions of dollars, and they say to the American people: We support cuts in programs for you--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, you name it--but don't ask us to pay more in taxes.

This Senate has a decision to make: Do we occasionally--I am not asking for much--stand up to the lobbyists, campaign contributors, and big money interests and ask the large corporations and the wealthy who are doing phenomenally well to help us with deficit reduction or do we continue to stick it to the working families and the middle class of this country? That is the challenge and the issue we face. I hope we have the courage to do the right thing.

With that, I yield the floor.

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 material on the bill H.R. 3189.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

President Obama has made no secret of the fact that he is willing to act unilaterally to impose new laws and regulations on the American people, declaring that he has ``a pen and a phone.''

Over the last 5 years, there have been numerous examples of what has become an Imperial Presidency. Under the administration, the reach of the Federal Government has extended into nearly every sector of our economy and ensnarled it in new red tape and regulations.

An egregious example of this is the Federal Government's concerted effort to take water away from individuals and businesses. Water is the lifeblood of communities and essential for a strong economy. Cities, ranchers, farmers, businesses, along with the jobs

they support, all depend on a stable supply of water to survive.

For over a century, there have been established laws upholding a State's right to manage its water and its water laws, but now, this administration is threatening to undermine those laws and seeks to take away private property rights--or private water rights governed under State laws.

Madam Chairman, that is why we are here today, to consider H.R. 3189, the Water Rights Protection Act. This bipartisan bill would protect private property rights from Federal overreach that threatens to take water supplies away from water users, such as ski areas, ranchers, cities, towns, and local conservation efforts.

This bill is responding to a very real threat as the Obama administration has sought to extort water from individuals and businesses through the permitting process.

Now, how is this done, Madam Chairman? Federal agencies are threatening to withhold permits needed to operate on Federal lands, unless private water rights are turned over to the Federal Government.

Put more simply, the Federal Government is holding necessary permits hostage unless water rights are relinquished; and they are demanding that water rights be signed over without payment, which of course is a violation of the Constitution's guarantee of just compensation.

Unfortunately, these businesses that are affected need both the permits and the water in order to operate, so what the Federal Government is doing is forcing them into an impossible situation where either choice puts them in danger of losing their livelihood or their businesses.

During today's debate, we will hear specific examples of businesses and families, including ski resorts and ranchers, who have experienced this heavy-handed tactic of the Federal Government's.

It is important to be clear about the risk posed by the Federal Government's action. This is not simply a threat to ski resorts and to ski areas located on Federal land as, I am sure, some will argue on the floor here today. The known problem is much greater. We have heard testimony in our committee to that fact, and the threat is not limited to one part of the country.

If a Federal agency can demand that a ski resort in Vail or that a rancher in Utah has to hand over his water to get a Federal permit, then a Federal agency can certainly do the same thing in other States-- Ohio, Florida, West Virginia. Water may be more plentiful in these regions of the country than in the arid West, but the Federal Government's appetite has no geographical limits when it comes to expanding its regulatory control and its disrespect for private property and the livelihoods of American citizens. This is a threat being felt first by the West, but the risk is real, and it exists for the entire country.

Madam Chairman, regardless of where the Federal Government seeks to take water and from whom it is trying to take it, it is simply wrong, and it must be stopped. That is why H.R. 3189 is necessary, and it is why the bill is endorsed by numerous national and regional groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Ski Areas Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cattlemen's Association, the Natural Water Resources Association, and others.

Now, in the course of the debate, there will be claims and assertions made today that this bill is overly broad and that it will have a whole range of unintended consequences. Madam Chairman, I certainly don't blame those who support the Federal takings of private water rights from wanting to change the subject, but this bill is very focused. It has only one consequence, and that consequence is absolutely intended. It stops the Federal Government from taking the water of American citizens without paying for it. It does nothing else.

In fact, this bill carefully states that this prohibition will not affect irrigation water contracts, FERC licensing, endangered species recovery, national parks, or any other legal authorities. Important environmental restoration, wildlife protection and conservation work that has been occurring for years in a positive, cooperative manner-- and that is whether it is in Puget Sound, which is in my State, in the Chesapeake Bay, nearby here, or in the Florida Everglades--will all continue, and all are protected. Such efforts will not be changed by this legislation.

Madam Chairman, I want to thank and recognize the sponsor of this legislation, our colleague from Colorado (Mr. Tipton), for all of his hard work in advancing this important, commonsense, bipartisan legislation.

It is time for the legislative branch to exert itself on behalf of the American people and rein in the imperial overreach of the executive branch and this administration. No law gives Federal agencies the authority to take private property rights as the administration is seeking to do. In fact, the Constitution prohibits such takings. It is time to put an end to such tactics, so I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and send a strong signal to this administration--to leave private property rights alone.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton), the sponsor of this legislation.

Madam Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 1 minute.

Madam Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlemen from California (Mr. McClintock), another member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Madam Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop), a member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, I have at least four others, besides myself, that want to address this very important issue.

I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Smith)

another member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Madam Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Gardner), who I think was a member of the committee but is not anymore.

Madam Chair, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), a former member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Madam Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), a member of the Rules Committee.

Madam Chair, I am very pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Madam Chairman, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I will advise my friend from California that I am prepared to close and will reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of the time.

Madam Chairman, let me just comment on a few points here that were made by my friends on the other side of the aisle. There was some concern about the timing of the hearing and the people who were invited.

I just want to make this point: when the hearing was held, we have to have advance notice. We had witnesses coming in from across the country, so we are going to have the hearing on the day we said because of the expense incurred by those private citizens who wanted to come here and testify to help protect private water rights.

The second point is this was a bipartisan bill, as my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Polis) admitted. He was an original cosponsor of the bill. Maybe that was a reason why my friends on the other side of the aisle did not call a witness for or against the original legislation.

I just wanted to make that point. The hearing was scheduled, and it had to go through because of the expense of the private citizens coming in to testify.

I want to make another point, too, that some of my colleagues have made. Several of them have said that this legislation redefines Federal water rights.

Madam Chairman, that is simply not true. If they read the bill, they would see that the definition is for the purpose of this act only, meaning that the definition is only for this act, so that doesn't hold up either.

Just about all of my colleagues on the other side that talked about the Federal lands and so forth--I will acknowledge that this is about Federal activity on Federal lands, but nowhere--nowhere did my colleagues suggest or say that the Federal Government had the water rights.

Why? Because that is states' rights; and as my colleague from Wyoming said: Yes, it is Federal land; but it is State water, and you have to mesh those together.

And finally--I think this is probably more important than anything else, and frankly, a debate like this has been going on for some time.

We agree--we agree, both sides--that ski resorts have been potentially compromised by the threat of the Federal Government saying ``no permit unless you give up water.'' Both sides agree on that. The question is, What is the remedy?

The big difference I think between the two sides is this. Their remedy is, well, the rulemaking isn't over. Let's find out what the rulemaking is, and then we will respond to it. Our side takes a different approach. Our side says wait a minute. We are the House of Representatives. We are part of the Congress. We make the law.

That is what this legislation does. It makes the law saying the Federal Government cannot extort, through the permitting process, State water rights. It is as simple as that. And so if we are going to continue to have the debate in this House on divisions between the two parties and what their philosophy is, frankly, I welcome this, because it appears every time we have a debate similar to this, their side says let the bureaucracy write the laws. We say wait a minute. That is not the way it is supposed to be. We are the Congress. We write the laws. That is what this debate is about here today, and I look forward to the amendment process.

In the meantime, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. It has been characterized as a Western piece of legislation, but as Mr. Woodall says, indeed, it is not. It affects all water rights which are the province of the States.

It is good legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for his work on the underlying bill and his amendment.

I support the amendment.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I compliment the senior Senator from Oregon who has come to this floor and very clearly laid out what is felt in the heart of Oregonians across our State, and that is this bill tells Oregonians they have to be the collection agents for folks from 45 other States and hundreds of local jurisdictions. This is not just an expense mandate, it is an offensive intrusion into the rights of the citizens of our State.

In that regard, I want to just engage in a few questions and thoughts with my colleague from Oregon and try to highlight some of the concerns and issues we have.

I ask through the Chair the senior Senator from Oregon: As he reads this bill, does he see in it any compensation for the time and effort that the businesses in Oregon will have to spend collecting the tax for hundreds of jurisdictions across this country?

The Senator makes a great point. If States have not voluntarily entered into compacts where they get to collect their own sales tax for other States where it is a mutually beneficial relationship, then it is very strange to have to be compelled--even those 45 States that have sales tax obviously were not so excited about forming such a structure. They also seem determined to pull into this involuntary structure States that find the sales tax abhorrent. If they find a tax abhorrent--and just a little bit of background there. I believe our State has voted nine times on a sales tax. Largely the vote has been on heavy majorities defeating it. Many of those votes are 70 to 30.

Some of those reasons for that is because it is an extremely regressive tax. Another reason is that it is an expensive tax to collect; therefore, it is much less efficient and much more government waste.

Now we have all these Senators who are champions of government waste not only forcing an extension of their own State's wasteful tax system, but imposing it upon the small businesses of Oregon. Then we come to a whole series of concerns that any small business is going to have in this situation.

A small business is told they must participate, and basically anything beyond a single-person shop is pulled into this bill. Then they are subjected to--I think it is over 800 tax jurisdictions--having to call them and say: We are not sure you gave us the right amount.

Is there anything in this bill that says those hundreds of tax jurisdictions out there cannot call and basically challenge whether they have the right amount of money?

Mr. President, I think about the small businesses that would be subject to so many jurisdictions that they now have a tax relationship with and the responsibility to collect for and the possibility of having to basically call them and say: Well, you didn't do it right; you didn't use the right amount or the right software or this or that.

I can't imagine any small business wanting to be exposed to, as my colleague pointed out, 9,000--and even if it is consolidated into 800, that is still a lot of people to deal with. If we have to deal with five or six, that is overwhelming. But then the question becomes whether those States have the power to audit the Oregon small businesses as collectors of a tax, just as they might audit any other group that was collecting sales tax for their State.

Well, I appreciate the Senator expanding on that.

On page 6 of this bill, there is a line that starts out very promising: ``Relieve remote sellers and certified software providers from liability to the State or locality for incorrect collection and remittance . . . '' Well, that sounds OK. That sounds as though you are not subject to an audit. But then it goes on to say, only from basically an error in the software provided by the State. In other words, if a mistake is made, a business owner is subject to all of the same things as if their efforts were inside the State of New York, and that means subject to the State organizations inside the government of New York, that means audits, that means fees. It could include court actions.

So we are talking about, as the Senator put it, 9,000 jurisdictions that now can make life completely unmanageable. It would only take 2 or 3 to make it unmanageable, but 9,000 can make it unmanageable for a small business in Oregon.

Now, my colleague from Illinois has said it is OK for small business because we put in an exemption for selling $1 million online. That is no kind of an exemption at all. Let me explain. Let's say a small business is selling $1 million online and they have a 5-percent margin. That means they are making $50,000 a year. After they basically recognize that a person is working for themselves--they have no benefits separate from that--that is a very modest, middle income. That is one person. So this has an exemption for only a business of one--a modestly successful business of one--which means every other business in the State that is engaged online is subject to this provision.

So while others may feel comfortable telling their home State small businesses--and this would include those in the 45 sales tax States-- that they are subject to audits and fees and court action from 9,000 other entities, I am certainly not comfortable telling the small businesses of Oregon they are going to be facing this type of incredible bureaucracy created by some of the folks who come to the floor and say they are all about small business.

Now, they want small businesses to be audited and fee'd and asked to turn up in some other State for a hearing. That is an outrageous attack on small business, not to mention our States that do not have a sales tax. It is an outrageous overplay attacking States rights.

I thank my senior Senator for his championing and his leadership and his longtime defense of the Internet as a place of fair transactions for small businesses and large, as a tax-free zone. I hope this Chamber is not engaging in a course that is going to change that dramatically, as it seems so intent on doing at this moment.

I am very struck by the correct point my colleague made about foreign companies. Here we have a company in Canada that is not subject to this bill. We have a company in Mexico that is not subject to this bill. For that matter, we have a company in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world not subject to this bill. So when American businesses say we should maintain a level playing field to keep business in America, allow us to play on a level playing field, they are certainly hoping we won't pass something such as this that gives such an enormous advantage to other nations.

I must say that constituents have been weighing in on this issue. I don't think it would surprise anyone to know that they don't like it. Ninety-eight percent are writing in to us to say: We don't like it. We don't like the idea of other States auditing our businesses. We don't like being asked to be a tax collection agency for another State.

Oregon is not asking anyone else to do that unless they have a State- to-State compact, which is exactly the way this could have been done and should have been done but hasn't been done because the States couldn't agree, even though they were sales tax States. That tells us quite a lot.

They don't like the idea of being subject to bureaucrats or the potential for legal action where they might have to travel to another State, and they don't like the idea that there is absolutely no compensation for the enormous imposition this bill places on the small businesses of Oregon. That is quite a lot not to like. So, of course, it is 98 percent against this bill.

I thought I would read one such letter:

Please do not support the Marketplace Fairness Act. It is

not fair to businesses like mine that other States could tax

my Oregon-based company. The voters of Oregon have

continually voted down sales taxes as a method of collecting

revenue within our State. It should not be imposed on us by

other States. If these States have problems with their

collection, they should figure it out with the help of their

local populace . . .

My company is an Internet retailer and we are able to

compete and create jobs on a level playing field.

The dynamics of this fight will have consequences for mid-

sized retailers like mine, especially companies based in

Oregon. Big retailers are fighting to limit our ability to

compete with them. Their goals are to have local footprints

and employees across the country in major metropolitan

markets. They should pay those local taxes and fees where

they are a burden. Companies like mine, that have not chosen

to be in that model, should not.

Please continue to support the Internet's free market.

Please protect Oregon business and maybe even create some new

opportunities.

That is what we should be doing in the U.S. Senate--creating new opportunities for Oregon small businesses to succeed in this tough economy. That is what this business owner in Oregon believes, and I will repeat that sentence since the writer made that point: That is what we should be doing in the U.S. Senate--creating new opportunities for Oregon small businesses to succeed in this tough economy. But that is the opposite of what we are doing here. Maybe that is why Oregonians are overwhelmingly opposed to this bill.

I think it is clear that there are some ideas for which, if someone passionately believes in them, they are willing to try them out, they are willing to develop a pilot project before they impose it on the entire Nation.

Certainly out of the 45 States, since so many have come to the floor representing their States passionately, saying this should be done, why don't they have a pilot project among their States and demonstrate that this is not going to be a burden in which there are audits and fees and court appearances and phone calls from the some 9,600 jurisdictions my senior colleague has pointed out? Why don't they demonstrate that first before they decide to run an attack on the success of small businesses in the State of Oregon and, for that matter, across this Nation? How about that? That is a fair proposal. Run a pilot project.

If you love this idea so much, do it among yourselves and demonstrate it and bring the report back to this Chamber for further conversation. But the idea of coercing my citizens of the State of Oregon to do your work, with enormous imposition and uncertainty, when they are trying to succeed as small businesses--and when small businesses are the power of creating jobs in this country--that is wrong.

So for those who speak about the heavy hand of government, those who speak about the power of small businesses, those who speak about bureaucracy and imposition, then live your words in action and kill this vicious attack on small businesses across this Nation.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Madam Chair, after listening to our Democrat colleague's statement, probably the best thing that we can do to be able to allay their fears is for them to read the bill. It actually protects private property rights, and let me fill in the balance of the story from the letter that you just cited:

The ski areas are saying that they strongly support the passage of the bipartisan Water Rights Act, H.R. 3189.

I would like to submit for the Record letters from over 40 different organizations--farmers, ranchers, ski areas, municipalities--that are supporting this legislation to be able to protect private property rights in the United States.

Madam Chair, the fear in Washington is palpable. Yesterday, we heard from the White House of the threat of a veto, a veto against a piece of legislation which is just codifying what is protected in the Constitution--private property rights in this country. There is going to be a headline in tomorrow's paper. With the affirmative passage of this legislation, it will read that the House of Representatives stood with the American people--stood with private property rights--to stop a job-killing Federal water grab. That is what this legislation is about.

A very clear choice exists today. You can choose to stand with farmers, with ranchers, with municipalities, with our ski areas to be able to protect the Constitution regarding the Fifth Amendment for just compensation, or you can embrace the heavy hand of government and support a job-killing Federal water grab. That is the clear choice that we face today.

This bill is narrow in scope. In fact, the manager's amendment that I will be putting forward is actually going to make sure that many of the concerns that we have just heard expressed are reasserted in that legislation to be able to protect the Endangered Species Act, to make sure that authorities are not currently under law or exceeded, and to make sure that our tribes are actually protected from the heavy hand of government being used as a tool for another Federal water grab.

This is a commonsense piece of legislation--legislation that is designed to stand for the very principle that we have in this country of private property rights.

Protect the water of the West. Protect that private property right. This is simple, 2-page legislation.

Madam Chair, this is legislation which serves the interests of this country, serves the interests of the West, and I ask for its adoption.

Colorado Cattlemen's

Association

Arvada, CO, March 12, 2014.

Hon. John Boehner,

Speaker, Washington, DC.

Hon. Nancy Pelosi,

Minority Leader, Washington, DC.

Dear Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Pelosi: The

Colorado Cattlemen's Association (CCA) and Colorado Public

Lands Council strongly support the Water Rights Protection

Act (WRPA), (H.R. 3189). The CCA and PLC represent Colorado's

public and private lands ranching industries through a

grassroots network of affiliates and individual members. Many

of our members hold private water rights on federal lands,

which serve as an integral part of their operations; thus,

these water rights keep our members in business and rural

communities thriving. However, landowners face an

unprecedented threat to the future of their water rights on

lands managed by the USFS and potentially other federal

agencies.

H.R. 3189, introduced by Congressmen Scott Tipton (R-

Colo.), Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Tom

McClintock (R-Calif.), and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) disallows

the USFS and the Bureau of Land Management from seizing water

rights without just compensation. An issue that arose in a

USFS directive applicable to ski areas was seen by industry

as an issue that could threaten all water users, including

ranchers, as they depend on water rights on public land (and

private) to keep their businesses viable. It is important

that H.R. 3189 pass without limitation to specific

industries--ensuring ranchers have access to the water rights

they own, maintain and have developed.

We support an amendment by Representative Tipton that would

make revisions to the legislation which would clarify the

intent of the bill. We also understand that several

additional amendments have been submitted that would too

narrowly focus the legislation so as to not protect livestock

producers, and one amendment in particular that would cause

the legislation to become applicable only to ski operations.

CCA and PLC strongly oppose any amendment with exclusive

language that will jeopardize the efficacy of the bill for

our constituency, ranchers. Our members face the same threats

as ski companies do--perhaps, with more at stake, as they are

individuals and families depending on these water rights for

their livelihood. It is important to include all industries

that may be impacted in the legislation, to keep our rural

communities thriving. Rep. Tipton's bill accomplishes the

purpose of protecting all water right holders, including

ranchers.

There is no justification to include an amendment that will

only protect one type of water use, and we strongly urge all

members of the House to vote against any such amendment.

We thank you for your attention to this crucial issue, and

for supporting America's ranchers as they continue to be an

essential part of rural communities and stewards of our

public lands.

Sincerely,

Gene Manuello,

President,

Colorado Cattlemen's Association.

Tim Canterbury,

Chair,

Colorado Public Lands Council.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I offer this amendment to further strengthen and improve this bipartisan bill. As we heard during general debate, the bill has one goal: to eliminate Federal extortion of private property.

The Federal Government cannot and should not take and seize what it does not own without compensation, but that has been happening, and the threat continues to exist for a host of individuals and businesses who responsibly use our public lands for multiple purposes.

This bill ends this Federal property rights grab; however, we just heard a litany of charges that the bill impacts other Federal actions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bill already has a savings clause ensuring that any existing Federal authorities are not impacted. Importantly, the Federal Government does not have the authority to take private property rights without just compensation; but, to further clarify, my amendment reiterates the specific actions into the bill-- the protection of existing Federal water contracts.

The Colorado River Water District, the Family Farm Alliance, the National Water Resources Association, all organizations whose members have contracts with the Bureau of Reclamation, already support this bill, and that should have been enough. Yet we heard rhetoric from the other side today that water contracts are in danger despite the ardent support of water organizations.

This amendment specifically reiterates this protection, ensuring implementation of the Endangered Species Act and any flows needed for the species, the protection of reserved water rights for national parks and other Federal lands, and continuing the hydropower relicensing process for non-Federal dams. These additions to the bill are a simple reiteration of protections already built into the bipartisan bill.

Yet, in a good-faith effort to dispel any myths, I offer these provisions to ensure, once and for all, that the only thing the bill does is protect private water rights owners from being extorted by the Federal Government through underhanded administrative means.

I certainly yield to the chairman.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I suppose I can bring some good news. It is not a 5-page bill, but actually a 3-page bill that we have actually put forward.

What I think we are really frustrated about is that we often hear from our colleagues that they want to be able to have bipartisanship. They are concerned about endangered species. While it is already protected in the bill, we add a further savings clause to be able to protect it.

They are concerned about the Federal Government being able to continue operations under legal authority--already protected in the original bill. We put in an additional savings clause to be able to address that.

We are concerned even more than they are, apparently, about standing up for Native American tribes in some proposed amendments that we are going to be putting forward to protect them from using Native tribes as a tool to extort water for the Federal Government.

This is a commonsense, sensible piece of legislation. Our colleagues want to say that it is expanded. Actually, I have the original bill in my hand. They say it is simply about ski resorts. We have common ground. I, too, want to be able to protect ski resorts, but I am not willing to sacrifice, on the altar of the Federal Government, our farm and ranch communities in addition to our municipalities.

Looking at the original bill, it doesn't mention ski areas once, yet an author of an amendment today said it has become more broad. Show me how.

This is a good piece of legislation. The manager's amendment addresses their very concerns.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, how much time remains?

Madam Chair, for the point of clarity, to ease the concerns of my colleague from Colorado, the National Ski Areas Association endorses this bill today. That has not changed. Also, to alleviate the concerns that you just demonstrated, no existing authorities will be impacted under this legislation. No existing authorities will be impacted. No bypass flows will be impacted.

Effectively, what this bill is doing, Madam Chair, is we are codifying existing practice, which I think we all agree is a desirable thing to have continue.

This is about political theater. The job-killing part of what is happening right now is being conducted by the Federal Government. They are killing jobs with a Federal Government water grab.

Either you stand with the farmers, the ranchers, and long-held practices of the West or you don't. If you don't, I do, and that is what this bill continues to support.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, again, I will refer my colleagues to the text of the bill. No Federal water rights that they currently have are going to be impaired. That includes national parks.

We continue to hear about the upcoming Polis amendment. The original bill that Mr. Polis and I introduced never specifically mentioned just ski areas. It talks about any permit. So if you care about farmers, if you care about ranchers, if you care about municipalities, and if you care about ski areas, which we all share, let's protect those private property rights from Federal extortion.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.