Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, April 30, 2013, at 2 p.m.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of a terrible submarine disaster. The USS Thresher, the first in a new class of subs designed to answer the Soviet threat in the Cold War, left the world's greatest shipyard, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, to conduct sea trials on April 10, 1963. Disaster struck, and America lost 129 of its finest men that day.

I honor these men who are on eternal patrol, and I honor their families, their wives and their children, some of whom never met their dads. Their sacrifices did lead to a sub safety program.

One of the surviving children wrote a song about his dad, and he said, ``A man whose love is stronger than the tide that's taken you away.''

Let's pause and remember these great men and their families.

I thank you, Congresswoman Maloney, for the chance to speak about the damage that the Ryan budget would do to women and to families.

There are a couple of points. The new Ryan budget and the cuts to discretionary programs and the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid guarantees would disproportionately affect the women and children who are already suffering this year because of the sequestration.

The Ryan budget would dismantle the SNAP food program just like it does Medicare. About two-thirds of the SNAP benefits go to families with children. They rely on this.

The Ryan budget would roll back affordable health care provisions, bringing back gender-rating and allowing preexisting conditions like pregnancy and domestic violence.

Discretionary spending programs have already seen sequester cuts that will force women and families in need off of programs that help them. The Republican budget would further decimate these programs.

The special supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, the WIC program, is one of our most successful and essential nutrition programs. Sequester will drop about 600,000 women and children from this program. Under the Republican budget, even more babies and mothers would be kicked off.

The new budget's enormous cuts would do even more than the sequester has done to destroy jobs and hurt our economic recovery. At a time when women are making unprecedented gains in higher education and the workforce, a war on jobs is a war on women and their families.

A budget is a moral document, and the Ryan budget fails this basic test of morality. This is wrong for women, and it is wrong for families, and we just reject this.

I thank you for the chance to talk about it.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 60, had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

America is facing some very serious problems, and they're looking to Congress for a solution.

What have we done this week since the sequester is coming on Friday? We had one vote yesterday, and that was to rename a flight center, and we have one vote today. And these are good votes, but just two votes. Friday is looming, and America wants us to answer the sequester.

We heard the Speaker say that they have put two bills before the floor, but they have not been acceptable. We need to compromise.

We also heard the Speaker say recently to the Senate to get going and get moving, and I would suggest that the House should do the same thing. We need to reach out and compromise, find the solution that can pass this House, pass the Senate, and become law.

I have been listening to my colleagues on the other side point out that this is a Nation at war. Yes, it is. It has been at war for 9 long years, and I wish this Congress would talk about these wars and the cost. But I want to talk today about the cost to the men and women who are kicked out of the military, who have done nothing wrong, have been serving the country all of this time, put their careers on the line, put their lives on the line, and they're being thrown out for something that they have nothing to do with.

I was a military spouse. I can't ever remember anybody getting upset about whether people were gay or straight. And people knew. Of course they know. But what we judged each other on was a code of behavior. Behavior. And when we see men and women who are behaving and serving our country honorably, it is absolutely disgraceful to throw them out.

So, if we want to talk about the military and the war, then I think we should be talking about the military and the war and the cost, not the people who are fighting it or the people who have served this country so honorably.

Thank you, Chairman Miller, for your leadership on this legislation which deals with issues that are literally a matter of life and death.

After the tragedy at the Upper Big Branch Mine, the committee went to Beckley, West Virginia, to hear directly from the families of the victims. Mr. Speaker, words cannot adequately describe the pain in the room on that day as witness after witness described how their loved ones went reluctantly to work at an unsafe job that ultimately would claim their lives.

This was not the first time we found ourselves sitting across the table from grieving family members who just lost loved ones in a tragedy. In 2007, after the Crandall Canyon Mine collapse, family members came to Washington to appear before the committee, and we heard the same stories.

We know that our mine safety laws are in dire need of improvement. MSHA knows it, and our miners and families know it also. For the miner and his or her family, this bill will make a world of difference, the difference between working in a safe environment or not, and in some cases the difference between coming home or not.

Our mine workers deserve our support. This bill gives support to them. I urge Members to support this.

Thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you for bringing the Nation's attention to this problem. This is absolutely stunning. We spent a year and a half listening to our campaign opponents talk about borrowing and spending, borrowing and spending. Indeed, we really do have to get control of the debt. We have been working on that but suddenly they have blown that to pieces because everything in this bill is going to be paid for by borrowing the money.

So the middle class, who needed these tax breaks and deserve these tax breaks, will now carry the debt for the very wealthy who didn't need them and will get huge, huge amounts of money, all borrowed, probably from China, and then they will tell the middle class, but, look, there is something here for you too. You are going to get a piece also. But, by the way, you are also going to be paying for it because we are borrowing the money. So if you don't pay for it your children will pay for it.

Shame on all of us if we allow this to happen after talking about this debt and saying we are really getting serious about the debt. I mean, I campaigned on this in 2005. I said the debt was like an iceberg, and we were about to crash into it. We borrowed from the Chinese, and that was a national security risk as well as an economic risk.

For a year and a half, ironically all of us who are Democrats have been whacked by Republicans for this debt that they ran up during the Bush era, and now they are turning around and saying, well, you know for all the people who are uninsured, or people who don't have jobs and the unemployment benefits, those are not the people we want to focus on now. We want to make sure that the wealthiest receive even more, and we want the middle class to pay for it. It's just wrong on so many levels.

So for those people who are listening, who are concerned about the debt, they need to understand that all of this money to pay for will be borrowed. It's not a gift; it's borrowed money, and if we don't pay for it our children will get stuck paying for it, plus interest, of course.

And why would they need it? I understand the middle class needing it. They certainly do. But why do we have to do this for the wealthiest. There are many who have great social consciousness and are saying, well, we really shouldn't get this money. We don't need it, and we shouldn't get it.

So why are the Republicans driving this, absolutely refusing, absolutely refusing to give unemployment benefits to those who have been victimized by this recession, unless we also took care of the top? I think the Republicans are quite clear about that, and we understand what happened in the last election, and I think it's disgraceful.

The other part of this that's so important, though, is the part where they carried on about Social Security. Social Security is at risk. We have to change Social Security. And we said, no, you don't, you just have to tweak it. You have to bring more income into it and stabilize it, because it's not just a Social Security problem. I read where a journalist said it's actually a retirement problem, that there are many, many millions of Americans who will not have adequate retirement and that Social Security is absolutely the floor.

So what are we doing here knowing that Social Security actually has to have more money coming in? We are cutting again. Again, we are cutting what people pay into it for a year. And then how are we going to make up the money? Oh, we just going to borrow it from the general fund. And how will the general fund get the money? We will just borrow it. And where will we borrow the money? Oh, probably China.

This is insanity, I think it's fiscally irresponsible. I think it's awful that the Republicans held the unemployed in this country hostage to this tax bill, and we simply must fight for this. We have to fight for the middle class. Thank you very much for bringing attention to this.

I wanted to say, this is not just Democrats who are saying this. Republicans who are no longer in power have also been attacking these plans. David Stockman, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration, called these tax cuts ``unaffordable.'' He is one of many voices who said this. Unfortunately, the Republicans who are in power now are not listening. It is fiscally irresponsible.

We need that income; we had to have that revenue so we could pay our bills. If we had that revenue, what could we do with it? Or if we were going to borrow, what should we have borrowed for?

To begin with, we could start paying our military men and women more. This year they are having a very tiny increase. They are outraged, and I don't blame them. They have been serving this country honorably. We have been at war for 8 years. They are exhausted, and now they are getting a very tiny pay raise. We could have used it for that.

What else? We could have helped mom and pop small businesses, the businesses on Main Street. Rather than giving those tax cuts to the top 1 percent, we could have used that money to help our small businesses that are struggling.

What else could we have done? We could have put money into infrastructure and created jobs. We could have been building things. You walk around Washington and you see beautiful buildings that were built during the Depression. They put men and women to work, and they left something behind for the next generation. I have said, if you are going to borrow money and you are going to have the next generation pay for it, you better leave them something to look at. We could have done that. We could have fixed some of our infrastructure. It is crumbling all over the country. We have deferred maintenance.

And we have not taken care of just that. You talked about education. I'm on the Education and Labor Committee. We know we are failing our children. We could have put money there.

Where else? How about money for research and money for basic medical care.

You know, every time I hear the Republicans in power here say: everybody is going to have to feel the pain, I say to myself, I know who they mean, and they don't mean them. They mean the middle income and below. They are the ones who are going to feel the pain. And by the way, they are the ones who are also going to have to pay for this because, once again, it is borrowed money. I think it is absolutely disgraceful.

Given the past campaign that we all experienced where the borrow-and- spend theme, borrow-and-spend was just hammered, absolutely hammered, as if the Bush era hadn't happened, as if George Bush hadn't created the greatest deficits in history, as if the Republicans hadn't been in charge when that happened, they said that they were going to fix that. They had learned their lesson. Remember on the floor, we heard many times that they had learned their lesson, but they hadn't. Here they are, holding people's unemployment hostage to make sure that their benefactors get their tax cuts.

I think it is outrageous. I think it is stunning. I think it is so cynical that it is ugly to watch. And I will not support that.

Thank you.

I think it is important to reiterate that we are very happy when Americans do well financially. We want every American to do well financially. I have said many times before that each one of us hopes to have a little more money, and I said that my kids hope that I have a little more money also. It's not a question of success. We want everybody to be successful.

The problem that we have here is that we are borrowing money that middle-income taxpayers will have to pay back, plus interest, in order to give those who are already extremely successful--and I'm glad that they are--money that they don't need. Then we will carry the debt and put this country further at risk.

So, when we want to tell the truth about the debt, this has to be part of the story: that it was proposed--and I

fear could be passed--that we borrowed more money, probably from China, and we gave it to those who least needed it while we ignored all the great pressing needs of our country.

I fear for the middle class. I know that we all grew up at a time when our parents believed that we would do better than they did financially, and indeed we did. I put myself through college, but I was able to work double shifts in the summer at a factory, and then I was able to work through the school year to pay for that. Now, no matter how hard people work in the summer and no matter how hard they work in the winter, they can't afford to pay for college tuition.

So what are we going to do for those children? What are we going to say to their families? Sorry. We've borrowed enough money. Do you understand that we borrowed the money to give it to the wealthiest so that we can't give it to you? What are we going to do, crush their dreams, their hopes and their possible paths to the same kind of success? This is just wrong on every level.

If you look at children today, you will recognize that, chances are, they have family members who are underemployed or unemployed, that their families are struggling to pay the rent or to pay the mortgage, that the cost of everything has gone up dramatically, and that their families can't afford to save for their educations. What do we say to them later? You have to understand that it was just so important to make sure that we gave you this debt and increased your debt so that we could take care of those who didn't need it.

I don't understand this, and I think that most Americans looking at this don't understand it either. We celebrate people's good fortunes and successes. We are happy that they have been so successful, but we should not borrow money to give them what they don't need.

Let's invest in America. Let's invest in the next generation. Let's help our seniors out. How many seniors fall in the doughnut hole and can't even afford to pay for their prescriptions? Will we say, Well, we can't help you because we can't afford it? Let's build infrastructure. Let's help small businesses. Let's create jobs. Let's get people working again. People really don't want unemployment checks. They want jobs.

How many jobs bills did we try to pass, which were passed out of the House but which sank in the Senate? There was so much Republican opposition to creating jobs. Yet here we are, saying the only way we can help people with unemployment is if we yield to the Republicans and say, okay, we'll give tax cuts to the very wealthiest also.

This is a sad moment, a very sad moment on this floor and in the Senate. I hope that the American people will rise up and say, No, this is not fair to the middle class.

Thank you very much for doing this.

There is a button from an old Presidential campaign that says, ``I Like Ike.'' In this case, I love Ike. We will have to have a new button to talk about Ike Skelton. I arrived in the House 4 years ago on the Armed Services Committee, met Ike Skelton, and recognized immediately that he wasn't just a friend of the generals and a friend of the powerful; he was a friend to everybody. And I had the great pleasure of traveling with him. And I saw the way he treated the very, very young soldiers.

And having been married to a young soldier at one time in my life, I recognized how overwhelming it was when anybody above the rank of sergeant spoke to young men and women. And here was the chairman of the Armed Services Committee of the United States of America bending over to get some words of advice from the young men and women of this country who serve us. And that has stuck with me, Ike.

It's true that you are an incredible scholar, a historian. If Ike says it's so, it is so. And he often told us what was so. And he gave us lists to read and things that we should do and things that we should know. And he was always right about that. And when I traveled with him abroad, the respect that we all received because we were with Ike Skelton was absolutely impressive and overwhelming.

And so to say good-bye is extremely painful, but I think what we really need to do is celebrate the great gift that you gave this country, the gift that your family gave this country, the gift of you, your time, your knowledge, your experience, your wisdom. And the way the rest of the world views you is the way we view you, with tremendous respect, and admiration, and love. Thank you very much for your service.

Madam Speaker, Republicans are holding tax cuts for the middle class hostage as they try to extend tax cuts for millionaires. They say letting tax cuts for the very wealthy expire will hurt small businesses. It is just not true. Ninety-seven percent of small businesses would see no tax increase under the Democratic plan. If the Republicans think they are talking about small businesses, they are truly out of touch.

While they stand in the way of unemployment benefits for millions of Americans still reeling from the crisis Wall Street and the previous administration created, they are doing everything they can to give huge checks to millionaires. This is just one more example of who the Republicans are really watching out for.

Mr. Speaker, some of my friends on the other side of the aisle are always warning the young people of this country that Social Security won't be there for them, so we should just scrap it now, raise the retirement age, and privatize Social Security. They are wrong.

Social Security is critical for those who depend on it. It is essential for the family who has a loved one who needs disability insurance. It's essential for our senior citizens who paid their whole lives into a system so they would have a safety net when they need it most. However, Social Security is not just a retirement benefit; it's also an insurance program. If a spouse or parent of a child dies, Social Security is there for his or her widow, widower or child. This is not just a retirement program for seniors. It's a social safety net for all of us.

The young people of this country need to know Social Security is there for them and that it can be there in the future, just as it was for generations and for our seniors today. However, we must fiercely defend Social Security from some Republican efforts to privatize funds and gamble it on Wall Street. We must protect and strengthen Social Security, not dismantle it.

I have an amendment at the desk.

First, I would like to thank Chairman Rahall and his staff for this very good piece of legislation before us today. It is a product of months of hard work. I believe it is a transformative bill that will go a long way to ensuring responsible energy development and better environmental protection.

The tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico has reminded us of what can happen if we are not vigilant and constantly improving our safety and environmental protection. It has also reminded us that when we put our lands and oceans at risk for energy development in one area, we should be putting land aside and protecting it in another area.

The underlying bill makes good on a promise to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. That program has protected more than 5 million acres of land across this country. Fully funding LWCF is long overdue, and I thank the chairman for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. Chair, among other things, the bill before us makes needed improvements to the way that our offshore energy leasing is carried out. During my time on the Natural Resources Committee, I have been particularly troubled by the reports of unethical behavior at the government agency that was previously overseeing energy leasing. That outrageous conduct must never be allowed to happen again in any agency. This bill puts in place strong ethics requirements and training. My amendment take this a step further by requiring that the ethics guidelines developed by the Interior Secretary be updated every 3 years.

Mr. Chair, another lesson we've learned over the past 3 years is that oil companies do not necessarily use the best available technology and that they are not fully prepared for a spill. Immediately after the spill, BP turned to solutions that had been around for 20 years, solutions from the Exxon Valdez disaster. It was painfully clear that they had not spent time or money

to develop new technologies to clean up a spill. The bill before us creates an offshore technology research and risk assessment program to conduct research and development of new drilling and spill response technologies. My amendment adds language to ensure that we study the best available spill response technology and its availability in regions where drilling is taking place. This is to make certain that we have in place the best technology and equipment needed to respond when there is an accident.

Finally, Mr. Chair, it's also critical that this new technology we're developing be integrated into exploration and response plans. My amendment requires companies to certify as part of their annual certification for offshore drilling that those plans include the best available technology. When the BP executives testified before the Natural Resources Committee, it was clear to me they were more concerned with cutting corners and shaving costs than making sure they had the safest operation with the best technology. Requiring these companies to take into account the best available technology and its availability just makes sense.

Again, Mr. Chair, this is a very strong bill we are considering today, and I thank Chairman Rahall for all his hard work. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hall), a leading environmentalist.

I yield 1 minute to the chairman, Mr. Rahall.

Mr. Chair, again I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1427) honoring the life of John Robert Wooden.

Madam Speaker, I request 5 legislative days during which Members may revise and extend and insert extraneous material on House Resolution 1427 into the Record.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 1427, honoring the life of John Robert Wooden.

John Wooden loved basketball. As a young man in Martinsville, Indiana, starting on his high school basketball team in 1927, Wooden led his team to an Indiana State high school basketball title, marking the beginning of a basketball career brimming with great success. In college, at Purdue University, his athletic victories continued, winning All-American honors 3 years in a row, as well as a spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame. The great success on the basketball court Wooden achieved while in school set the foundation for the great athletic accomplishments he would later go on to achieve.

After being offered a spot in the NBA, Wooden turned it down, deciding rather to teach high school English and to coach high school basketball. His only break from the school setting was during World War II, when he served honorably as a lieutenant in the United States Navy.

In 1948, Wooden accepted an offer to coach the University of California team in Los Angeles, the UCLA Bruins basketball team, and he quickly established a record of success with his student athletes both on and off the court. In his first year with the team, he led the Bruins through a near perfect season, winning 22 out of 29 games. Wooden guided the team to 10 National Collegiate Athletic Association championships, seven of which were in a row. In addition, he led the Bruins to 19 conference championships, 12 Final Four appearances, four perfect seasons, and a record 88-game winning streak from 1971 to 1974.

Off the court, John Wooden was admired and respected as much as he was on the court. Foremost an educator, Wooden stressed the importance of team play while inspiring the development of individual talent and academic excellence. The distinguished Wooden Pyramid of Success has been widely recognized as an example for the building blocks to competitiveness and excellence in any quest, not just sports. It emphasizes the skills that Wooden taught, such as friendship, loyalty, cooperation, enthusiasm, self-control, team spirit, poise, and self- confidence. In 2003, he was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to a civilian.

John Wooden lost the love of his life, Nell Wooden, but he is survived by his two children, by his seven grandchildren, and by his 13 great-grandchildren, as well as by the millions of basketball fans who believe there will never be another coach like John Wooden in any sport, and they mourn his passing.

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank Representative Waxman for bringing this bill forward.

I wish to honor the legendary Coach Wooden for his immense contributions, not only to the game of basketball, but also for his exceptional career as an educator, as a mentor, and for his dedication to the betterment of others. John Wooden's lasting legacy is carried on today on basketball courts all around the country as he was loved and admired by all who play and who know the game. I wish to express my deep condolences to his family, to his friends, to his former players, and to his countless fans and admirers.

I urge my colleagues to support House Resolution 1427, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I would also like to point out I have a basketball player in my home, and I certainly had the biography because the man that we're talking about, the great hero, John Robert Wooden, did indeed show Americans how to play a sport and how to play it honorably and how to play on and off the court.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this resolution.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

Mr. Chair, for too long the American people have been the victims of theft and fraud by contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the past few years, Congress has taken steps to rein these contractors in. One of these steps was to create a database to keep information on these contractors and their subcontractors. Unfortunately, Mr. Chair, they are not entering the information.

My amendment would impose a penalty on those contractors that do not comply with the requirement to report this contract information. Their noncompliance prevents oversight agencies from conducting proper audits and investigations. Therefore, it prevents these agencies from uncovering waste and contract fraud. We cannot protect taxpayer dollars from theft if we can't follow the money.

Just this week, a witness before the Commission on Wartime Contracting said that the contracting environment in our overseas operations was highly vulnerable to fraud. The GAO recently reported that Federal agencies face difficult challenges in tracking and overseeing contractor personnel and contracts.

We have been using contractors in both wars for 9 years now. The scale of waste and contract fraud is enormous, and the criminal activity is diverse: fraud, bribery, kickbacks, extortion, embezzlement, theft of cash or equipment, etc cetera. But we have not given our Federal agencies all the tools they need to catch these bad actors. We often don't even know who we are doing business with.

This amendment will penalize contractors who do not comply with the reporting requirements. Taxpayers are spending billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They deserve accountability.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and the underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. Chair, I want to thank Chairman Skelton for his continued work and leadership on this bill. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and the underlying bill, and I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

I want to thank Chairman Skelton and everyone who has worked on the IMPROVE Acquisition Act. This bill cleans up defense acquisitions spending, saving taxpayers an estimated $27 billion a year and expediting the process to get necessary equipment to our troops.

Accountability in the contracting process is critical to protect taxpayer dollars. According to a Government Accountability Office report, 63,000 Federal contractors had total tax debts of $7.7 billion in 2007. These contractors profit through taxpayer dollars but refuse to pay their own taxes. That is why I am pleased that section 403 of this bill, based on my colleague Mr. Ellsworth's Contracting and Tax Accountability Act, requires contractors to disclose seriously delinquent tax debt.

The bill also includes my amendment to hold the first-tier subcontractors accountable by adding a certification requirement to ensure they, too, do not have unpaid taxes. Those who have incurred a significant tax debt and have avoided paying it should not be eligible for defense contracts. There is no reason for the government to pay money through a contract to those who owe money to the government in taxes.

Again, I would like to thank the chairman, ranking member, and Defense Acquisition Panel for their hard work on this bill.