Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I would like to bring to your attention today the many outstanding achievements of Kenneth Ryan, the outgoing president of the Carlsbad Hi-Noon Rotary Club. Kenneth's leadership during the 2007-2008 Rotary year has contributed significantly to the Hi-Noon Rotary Club and the community of Carlsbad. During his tenure, the Hi-Noon Rotary Club awarded high school scholarships, and partnered with the Carlsbad evening Rotary clubs to sponsor the annual Oktoberfest fundraiser, a community-wide event which provides financial support to the Carlsbad Women's Resource Center, The Boys and Girls Club of Carlsbad and Community Youth Services. In addition, during Kenneth's presidency, we had the most successful golf tournament in the club's history. The funds were earmarked for high school scholarships and to assist families of wounded marines.

During his presidency, a number of other projects were completed. These projects included providing volunteers to help maintain public and private property, provide food and clothing for the homeless, and assist in the distribution of food, clothing and toys to needy Carlsbad families in conjunction with the Carlsbad Christmas Bureau. A Children's Christmas party and dinner for very needy elementary school students were also provided. In an effort to improve literacy, badly needed bilingual dictionaries were provided and distributed to English- and Spanish-speaking elementary school students. In addition a book a week was contributed to a school library, and mentors were also provided for the ``City Stuff'' program. This program promoted an understanding of the workings of city government for young Carlsbad school children.

On the international front, Kenneth's leadership and his team of Rotarians joined with Habitat for Humanity to build a house for a needy family in Mexico. Through the Paul Harris Fellow Program, contributions were made to the Rotary Foundation, the purpose of which is to support international projects for the benefit of humanity, such as eradication of polio through out the world and to support the Micro-banking Project.

In addition, there were numerous other projects which he led to completion during his tenure, too numerous to mention.

I hope my colleagues will join me in recognizing the many fine achievements of Kenneth Ryan. Without question, his leadership and the fine work of the Carlsbad Hi-Noon Rotary Club are worthy of recognition by the House today.

Madam Speaker, I submit the following:

Requesting Member: Congressman Brian Bilbray.

Bill Number: H.R. 5658.

Account: RDT&E, Army.

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Burnham Institute for Medical Research.

Address of Requesting Entity: 10901 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037.

Description of Request: Recent world events have made abundantly clear the need for a deeper understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms employed by bacterial and viral pathogens that would facilitate the design of countermeasures to weaponized biological agents such as anthrax, ricin, smallpox virus, botulinum toxin or plague bacteria. Additionally, as evidenced by the ever-present threat of viral pandemics and the relentless rise of antibiotic-resistance, there is a clear and urgent need for the development of new families of therapeutic agents--antibiotics, vaccines, antitoxins and antivirals. Given the large and growing number of recalcitrant pathogens, the most useful new therapeutics are likely to have broad-spectrum efficacy; to target immutable elements of the pathogen or host; to be rapidly adaptable in the face of natural or engineered variants; and to be physically robust.

To assist the United States Army in protecting our soldiers against these growing threats, the Infectious & Inflammatory Disease Center (IIDC) at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research will build on its studies of diseases that result from a broad range of human pathogens. The work will define and characterize host responses to infection, including innate and adaptive immunity and inflammation, providing a molecular understanding of host-pathogen interactions. Over the next ten years, many antibiotics currently prescribed to treat bacterial infections will no longer be effective owing to microbial resistance. Drug-resistant strains of some pathogens, such as the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, and MRSA, have already appeared. Several deadly viral agents have also emerged, threatening both our soldiers in the battlefield as well as large civilian populations;

and, except for some vaccines, few treatments for viral infections exist to date.

With regard to infectious diseases, a major goal of the IIDC is to discover, characterize and validate novel virulence factors and toxins from infectious agents, working closely with our bioinformatics group who annotate (attempt to assign function based on the DNA sequence) the rapidly expanding number of pathogen genome sequences. These combined studies facilitate the discovery of novel but conserved pathways that may be validated as targets for broad-spectrum antibiotics. Complementary strategies will be developed to produce drug-like compounds for further development, including High-Throughput Screening (HTS), `in silico' screening, and the development and application of NMR-based fragment approaches (the Institute hosts ``The San Diego Chemical Library Screening Center'', one of 5 such centers nationwide). The IIDC will continue its well-funded studies of the most likely agents of bioterrorism, including anthrax (Bacillus anthracis), smallpox (Variola virus), and plague (Yersinia pestis); but it will also expand its focus to the study of emerging diseases such as SARS, West Nile and Dengue Viruses, as well as preparing countermeasures to treat a possible influenza pandemic--should avian flu strain H5N1 gain the ability to transmit directly from person to person.

A major new focus of the IIDC will be to understand and exploit host responses to infection. Human cells provide the never-ending backdrop in a contest between host-defense molecules and pathogen virulence factors that seek to subvert the host's innate and adaptive immune responses. Identifying the players and mechanisms of the natural host responses, many of which are common to a broad range of infections, may provide novel (host-targeted) leads for broad-spectrum therapeutics, the exciting possibility of naturally boosting innate immunity, as well as the discovery of novel adjuvants for vaccine design. Vaccine technology has developed little in the past 50 years. A high priority will therefore be the development of novel vaccine methodologies which employ robust single-chain antigen-adjuvant combinations that facilitate rapid production and modification in the face of engineered or mutant pathogens.

The IIDC is well positioned in that it already has much of the infrastructure in place to generate novel therapeutic leads; shortly, with the opening of our new facility in Orlando, FL we will have the additional capability of developing these leads through medicinal chemistry and pharmacology to phase I trials, the latter in collaboration with our clinical partners in Florida.

Additional funding made possible through this process to the IIDC will enable the expansion of our Center into a number of critical areas. Priorities include recruitment of new faculty members and their programs working in the fields of innate immunity, microbiology, and medicinal chemistry. Recruitment into these currently underrepresented areas within our Center will complement our existing expertise and further expedite the development of novel therapeutics.

Leveraged Funds--Based on the Burnham Institute for Medical Research's past successful record of leveraging seed funds, we estimate that $3 million for additional scientists through this request will result in $30 million in additional grant funding for the next 10 years at the BIMR.

Current/Future/Matching Funding--Private philanthropy for the San Diego, CA area has contributed to the current research work ongoing at Burnham's IIDC. Since BIMR scientists started focusing on the important area of research, the IIDC has secured nearly $40,000,000 in competitive federal grants from a number of sources including the DoD and the NIAID. BIMR researchers and their research are very well respected throughout these federal agencies. Researchers in the IIDC will continue to seek federal grants through the traditional competitive process this year through funding opportunities available from the DoD and the NIAID.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2649, a bill that is looking at a precious resource that needs to be cleaned up and used.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you in working and speaking with me about other challenges we have environmentally around this country, one of them being the fact the Federal Government is still mandating the polluting of our air and the picking of our pockets with the mandate of corn and ethanol going into our gasoline. I don't know about in your State, but in our State, that impact has reached $6 a comparable gallon untaxed ethanol being forced into our fuel system by the misguided approaches here in Washington.

I look forward to working with you in eliminating that mandate and protecting our air and protecting consumers when we go to the pump. But as we talk about liquid gold, out west it is not just gasoline and ethanol that are liquid gold, but actually clean drinking water. This bill would address a problem that has actually been created by a well- intentioned but misguided application of the Endangered Species Act and other Federal regulatory activities.

Where Lake Hodges had traditionally had a clean watershed kept clear from debris and undergrowth, because of the Federal agencies' misguided application of our environmental regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act, the local agencies and community were not allowed to clear the watershed while the water was low so that once the water did rise up we did not have rotting organic material in our water source. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, that has occurred, and the water quality of the lake is now in violation of the Clean Water Act, 303(d). This bill will allow us to give a portion of the money, probably around one-quarter of it, to allow the local community now to purify the water so that it can be compatible with 303 of the Clean Water Act.

I hope that we will be able to work together, pass this bill, and be able to work with the local community. I look forward to working with you, Mr. Speaker, at not only cleaning up our water, but cleaning up our air and taking that ethanol out of our gasoline.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I would like to thank and congratulate the gentlelady from the great State of Texas for this amendment. As she knows, it really reflects a strategy that has worked since 2000 when we did the original bill. And I want to thank her as the original author of this bill.

And with this amendment, it brings in that cooperative effort between the local government and the Federal Government. Both the gentlelady from Texas and my background show that that kind of cooperative effort has been essential for the success of the BEACH bill for these last 7 years, 8 years now.

The bill really does, with the amendment, talk about the fact that the best people to take care of the local environment are the local people, that Washington needs to be here supporting and encouraging local people to take control of their own environment.

I think of the old statement that we used back in the sixties and seventies of ``acting locally.'' It was essential for any success that we're going to have with environmental activities. This bill actually builds on that success that we have had in the past.

A note of personal interest, Madam Chairman, is that you never know when and how your own legislation may affect you. And as the author of this bill from 2000, it was interesting to see that when my children were on the computer, they were not just checking out the water quality and if the beaches were open. They were also looking at real-time cameras to see how the surf was that day. How we would have loved to have had that in the sixties when we were growing up that you could actually look out on the water to see not only how good the surf was, but to also see how clean the water was. And with this bill, that is possible.

And so I appreciate the amendment by the gentlelady from Texas. I strongly support it. And hopefully we will be able to get this bill back to the President and get it signed as soon as possible.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, this is an amendment that we've worked out with Chairman Oberstar and the gentlelady from Texas. It is really an implementation for the new step for the BEACH bill, and that is to go beyond the existing system we used in the last 7 years where public health officials have to wait 3 days to be able to know if a beach has a water quality problem or does not.

Scientists all over the world have been working on what is very close to a real-time response to this concern and be able to empower our local health officials to be able to know, within a few hours, rather than a few days, if it is safe for water contact activity along our beaches.

My amendment just simply allows the administration to do a study within the next 2 years to be able to develop the system that local governments can use to implement the BEACH bill so we don't have to wait 3 days in New Jersey or 3 days in California to know if our beaches are polluted or if they are clean.

With this study, with cooperation between the Federal Government, the local governments and the private sector, we can actually make this system effective so our children and our families know if it is safe to go in that day and not have to wait 3 days to find out if there is a problem.

So, Madam Chairman, my amendment 13 stands. I would ask for support for it. And I think in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation that this bill has carried since the year 2000, I think we can move forward with a system that keeps our families safe and our waters clean.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Bilbray

Amendment No. 13: At the end of the bill, add the

following:

Offered by: Mr. Bilbray

Amendment No. 1: At the end of the bill, add the following:

Mr. Speaker, the gentlelady from California pointed out rightly that a barrel of oil has come up to $100. But what if I told you of an industry or a group that wanted the consumer to have to pay $330 for a comparable barrel of oil?

Mr. Speaker, this rule is protecting an industry and a plot to pick the pockets of the American consumer, while polluting our air. And what I am talking about is the fact that in California today, the Federal Government is mandating that we put an additive into our gasoline. We're being required to have corn ethanol put into our gasoline, what is costing a comparable $6 a gallon.

So when someone stands on the floor and says they're outraged at the price of gasoline, let me just ask you, you either have to confront the fact that this rule is protecting a bill that is protecting the picking of our pockets and the polluting of our air with corn ethanol. And everyone knows that it's a sham. They know that it's out there costing more.

And those of us that have worked on the air pollution issue, as myself, the California Air Resources Board is telling you, not only don't mandate this stuff, outlaw this stuff. It is polluting our air and costing a comparable $6 a gallon.

So I hope the American people remember, when someone stands up here and says, this is a green bill, this bill stinks to high heaven. It's polluting our air and picking our pockets under the guise of protecting the environment and protecting the consumer.

The group that is working together to cause this rip-off and this pollution is the United States Congress. The blame goes on both sides. But the majority has the chance now to address this issue.

Now I understand those who may have corn producers in their district justifying this kind of action. But what about all of us that don't have that?

I ask you today, stand up for the environment, stand up for the consumer, vote against this rule and bring it back without corn subsidies.

Mr. Speaker, Agent Aguilar, like myself, was born and raised on the border. He knew the challenges that faced the border. He understood the risks, and sadly, his life, as documented, was the price he paid for out-of-control borders.

I just hope that everyone today, when they vote on this bill and support this bill, recognizes that for all too long Border Patrol agents have not only faced the threat of life-and-death situations along the border while they're enforcing our laws, protecting our neighborhoods, and protecting the lives of illegal immigrants crossing the border every day. A story that's not told enough about when somebody crossing the border illegally needs to be saved while they're dying in the desert, drowning in rivers, being attacked by coyotes, it's the Border Patrol agents who are the last straw of survival for so many of these illegals.

Border Patrol Aguilar proved his loyalty to America with his life, and sadly, I just ask all of us to remember that there are Aguilars up and down the border, north and south, all over this country, doing a tough job and, frankly, not getting very much credit, in fact, getting attacked personally and viciously just because they're doing the tough job that the American people want.

I just hope that we understand that our job today is to recognize the sacrifice of the Aguilar family and remember that when Mrs. Aguilar passed away after finding out about her son, I'm sure she would want to send a message of do what you can, Congress, to make sure my other son is safe, protected, and well-provided for in his duties of serving the American people.

So, Mr. Speaker, I'd ask that we recognize the service of not only Agent Aguilar but his mother, his brother, and his entire family, and by doing that, let's be brave enough to send them the resources, both in physical equipment and in the proper laws, that the Border Patrol agents have been asking us to do for a long time so that they do not have to continue to function in this killing zone that we call the border area.

And so I ask strongly the Democrats and Republicans to join together and let's do what we can to avoid this situation in the future. That may mean taking some hits from our friends about building fences or cracking down on illegal employers, doing all those things that we have not done enough in the past, and that, Mr. Speaker, would truly be a good recognition of the service of Agent Aguilar and an appropriate memorial by this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak in favor of H.R. 3179, the Local Preparedness Acquisition Act. I am pleased to serve as the original cosponsor of this legislation. I also want thank Congressman Towns for his leadership in sponsoring and advancing this important idea.

H.R. 3179 will allow State and local governments to purchase homeland security products and services at more reasonable prices by providing them access to the General Services Administration schedules. Following the attacks on September 11, our local and State governments have taken on more responsibility for emergency preparedness and homeland security. With this added responsibility, these local governments need to purchase a wider array of goods and services.

Under this legislation, these localities will be able to purchase many products such as access control and perimeter security systems, fire detection and suppression equipment, firefighting clothing and marine craft from the GSA schedules. With this option, the cost of many of these products will be less than the cost of purchasing them from State-approved purchasing lists or the open marketplace, saving these local governments valuable tax dollars.

Importantly, this legislation does not impose any requirements on States and localities to utilize the GSA schedules, instead offering an additional voluntary purchasing method.

This legislation has strong bipartisan support and was passed out of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee by voice vote. Additionally, it has gained the endorsement of the National Association of Counties and many other outside organizations.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak in favor of this bill. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say I appreciate the bipartisan support for the concept that people should not be rewarded for breaking our immigration laws. I appreciate the ranking member and the chairman agreeing on this.

I would just ask both of you to take a look at the leadership that the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Shuler) has made with a piece of legislation that I feel should be the enforcement part of this direction, and that is that the e-verification be used before people benefit from public funds. That is a very simple system to allow anyone to check that Social Security numbers and names match. It's not an onerous check system to use, and it is one that many of us are looking forward to not only Federal Government but all employers using in the future.

I just ask that you consider the fact that to fulfill the intent of this motion, that the e-verification specifically try to be considered here as the vehicle that before anyone gets these benefits that we check that they are legally here as verified by the e-verification.

If anybody has any questions about that, I am sure Congressman Shuler can brief you extensively on it. But it is sort of the consensus of most of us working on these issues that this is a simple, clear way to allow everyone, including those who are providing public benefit, the assurance that those benefits are not going to somebody who's not qualified to be able to provide it.

So I would raise that as a discussion, that the e-verification be used to verify this motion.

I thank the gentleman. It's Solano Beach, California. I know one beach is like the other. I was raised in one, but live in Carlsbad. But I would just like to clarify.

This resolution is recognizing the men and women who were fighting on the front line. And I think there are two big advantages we had in San Diego. San Diego County lost over 1,500 homes. Many of those homes could have been saved under all kinds of different theories. But the fact is we had one great advantage that we did not lose more. And it was not just the men and women who were fighting on the line that you saw on television, but it was the men and women who serve in a very unique California experience called the Unified Disaster Council, where San Diego County itself houses the chairman of the county, and every mayor, police chief and fire chief in a system of networks, with a common communications system, with a common planning system toward the local providers who were able to provide the base and the foundation for State and Federal agencies to come in and build upon. And that was essential.

And if there was any lesson that I would hope the people of the United States would take from our tragedy that we had in our county was that preparedness starts at the local level, and that you can never expect a State or Federal agency to replace the needed foundation and the networking that you have at the local level.

So get your act together locally, communicate and build a system, because a crisis in one way or the other is coming your way. And San Diego, I was very proud, as the former chairman of the Disaster Preparedness Council, I was proud to see how far they have come along and how well they are organized.

A lot of people may not know that a lot of the great savings we had, when the fires were moving towards my home in Carlsbad, my mother got the call over her phone through a thing called ``Reverse 911'' that notified her that she was in a warning area, needed to pack up and be ready to leave at a moment's notice. She was assured that if her area was becoming a danger zone, she would be notified by the same phone communication that had told her to prepare for that. This is the kind of local networks that we need to continue to build, not just in California, where we have historically done it through the county system, but throughout this Nation.

I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that we also recognize that this infrastructure gave our men and women, the firefighters not just from San Diego County or Southern California, but from the entire State, from the north down to the south, gave us the capability to respond to this crisis in a way that I think those of us in California should be very proud of.

The crisis has not passed totally; we still have threats out there. But the fact is I think we can build on building better communication between the Federal, State and local community. But the foundation has been set. And I would invite anyone who is interested in preparing their community for their crisis to try to learn from our mistakes and our successes in California and San Diego so that we can all build for a safer neighborhood. And when we do that preparation, we not only make ourselves safer, we protect those men and women that are firefighters to avoid their exposure to risk by us doing the right thing ahead of the fires.

Mr. Speaker, as a former member of the Air Resources Board in the State of California and working on air pollution issues for decades, I was looking at the text that said this bill was going to move America forward.

This text is not moving America forward; it's moving us back to a 1970's agenda. This agenda is the same agenda we had in the environmental community in the 1970s. In the 1970s, we were doing the best we could then. But this is the best America can expect from this Congress, is 30-year-old ideas that have been proven false, and the example, this bill is going to pick winners and losers in the industry.

It is going to mandate not only the inclusion of poisons in our gasoline in places like California where in 1992 we warned you about MTBE, we warned you that ethanol was going to cause problems, but this place was bought off by special interest groups that claimed to be environmentally sensitive and forced MTBE into the fuel of America.

Later, when you realized we were right, you said, sorry. Just last, a few months ago, Harvard came out with another study about ethanol. All we are asking is, don't mandate that this poison is put in the fuel.

If you can't believe CARB, then why are the States around the north using our standards at CARB to clean up the environment? Look before you leap, but this technology that we are talking about doesn't even include zero mission generators like high pressure gas reactors, doesn't include.

The only way we are going to beat greenhouse gases is to go nuclear, but you don't have the political guts to look our friends in the eye and say we have got to move beyond the 1970s. We have got to move forward. We have got to be willing to do what is right for the environment.

If that tells Archer Daniels Midland or the extreme wackos who are always going to be against nuclear that, sorry, guys, the environment comes first, if you don't have the guts to do that, don't claim this is a green proposal. 1970 cars are polluting and wasteful. This bill is polluting and wasteful.

Mr. Chairman, in San Diego County today, the consumers are paying over $3.50 for gasoline, and people point fingers at the oil companies when, in fact, Washington, DC, has mandated that we put in our gasoline corn-based ethanol that costs $4 a gallon. And considering that you need 1\1/2\

gallons of ethanol to equal the mileage you get with gasoline, that equals $6 a gallon that is mandated by the Congress of the United States for a product that not only is driving up the price of gasoline but is polluting our air, as identified by the Air Resources Board of California.

Now, if you are a constituent that is making money off of corn-based oil, that's fine. But do not allow anyone who claims to be an environmentalist and claims to be a consumer in California to support the corn-based ethanol proposal here.

I do not agree with Mr. McCain of Arizona very often, but, as quoted by Mr. McCain all the way back in 2003, he stated that the corn-based ethanol mandate that Congress is perpetuating on the United States is highway robbery perpetuated on the American people by Congress.

Please let's eliminate the corn-based mandate, save the environment, and save the consumers.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to the exemptions in this motion. I find it hard to believe that anyone who wants to really fight greenhouse gases is going to try to have winners and losers and allow these major exemptions that are in this bill.

The City of Los Angeles is going to continue to go without the same mandates and requirements and standards that the City of San Diego would have. Why are public utilities exempt in this bill, as if their emissions are not going to affect the environment, as if government is somehow immune? Government should be leading, not being exempted.

Mr. Chairman, as many surfers know, like myself, Hawaii has some of the most sun, wind and surf of any State in America. Why are Hawaii emissions exempt from this mandate when the rest are included? These exemptions are irresponsible and do not justify the environmental intention of this motion.

I have strongly supported the intention, but it is too bad that special interests, special lobbying and the back-room deals have snuck in these exemptions that should not have ever existed.

Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

The most gracious gentlelady from Connecticut pointed out that the gentleman from California had cooperated here. Is there any reason that the gentlelady from Connecticut or the majority could accept the amendment and bring it back tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. so the American people could be assured that illegal aliens would not get this benefit, as the gentlelady from Connecticut has assured us?