Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, every week the Majority makes a new attempt to roll back environmental rules that protect the health of our citizens and the health of our environment in favor of big polluters. This week the Majority has brought to the floor two bills that according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would collectively mean 32,500 more premature deaths, 19,500 additional heart attacks, and 208,000 asthma attacks that otherwise would have been avoided. This is unacceptable.

Instead of working on legislation to increase employment and create new jobs or legislation that would support critical infrastructure needs of public schools and roads, the Majority is bringing to the Floor two pieces of legislation that would delay the implementation of long overdue air pollution standards. Even though such standards are required by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, these bills would put off the cleanup of mercury and other toxic pollutants from cement kilns, incinerators, and industrial boilers, as well as make permanent changes to the Clean Air Act that weaken health and science-based standards. The facilities targeted by this legislation are some of the largest sources of U.S. mercury pollution, a powerful neurotoxin known to be dangerous to pregnant women and to impair children's ability to think and learn.

The EPA rules are scientific and data driven. These bills would defy science in favor of the regulatory option that is most beneficial to industry, even if another option is feasible, cost-effective, and offers better public health protections. For example, H.R. 2250 would nullify rules that require industrial boilers and incinerators to reduce their emissions, and yet, estimates for the emission reductions required by the rules would yield $10 to $24 in health benefits for every dollar spent to meet the standards. The savings from lower health care costs and higher worker productivity mean tens of billions of dollars more in net benefits and will result in lower rates of illness and death.

At the start of the 112th Congress, the Majority put in place rules requiring that all legislation be offset by new authorizations but that rule is disregarded in these bills. In other words, these bills are not paid for. H.R. 2250 and H.R. 2681 would nullify existing EPA rules and require EPA to start the rulemaking process over again--a process the Congressional Budget Office estimates would result in $1 million in discretionary spending by EPA.

I oppose these bills that would increase toxic air pollution, cost lives, drive up health care costs, and fundamentally weaken future standards under the Clean Air Act. We must protect our communities from toxic polluters.

Had I been present October 5, 2011, I would have voted ``aye'' on Amendments #1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, and 21, to H.R. 2681.

Mr. Speaker, while the Palestinians engage in political theater at the United Nations, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gets no closer to resolution and the Palestinians get no closer to a real state. A Palestinian state can only come about through direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead of working toward peace, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is engaging in political theater that will leave the Palestinian people even more frustrated with the lack of tangible results.

I am pleased that President Barack Obama stood up at the United Nations General Assembly and told the world that ``Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N.'' It was a brave speech that will make him less popular in many quarters, but it was the right thing to do.

America believes in a two state solution. Israel believes in a two state solution. The Quartet believes in a two state solution. But there is a big difference between a theoretical ideal and the nuts and bolts of defining a new country's borders, ensuring the security of its neighbors, and resolving open issues regarding refugees and water rights. And while Israel has conceded the right of the Palestinians to have their own state, the Palestinians have never acknowledged the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

The fig leaf of an agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority cannot hide the fact that the two factions remain at war with one another for control and that Hamas remains determined to erase Israel from the globe. They have managed to maintain an uneasy truce in order to secure international approbation, but it is unlikely to last. If Hamas wins the struggle or remains a significant element of the government without renouncing terrorism and its determination to destroy Israel, then the fledgling Palestinian state would be established with the intent of waging war on Israel. That is an unacceptable outcome, particularly if the UN, which was founded to promote peace, serves as the midwife to the new state.

What we are witnessing at the United Nations is nothing more than a popularity contest. And when it comes to a popularity contest, the Palestinians win. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has 57 states. There is only one Jewish state.

UN recognition of a Palestinian State will yield few changes in the lives of most Palestinians. The most significant tangible result

would be an ability to bring cases against Israel in international legal bodies that are often hostile to the Jewish state. But ordinary Palestinians will soon realize that their lives are little changed. Their disappointment will further destabilize the region and leave us farther from a resolution to the conflict.

At the end of the day, the Palestinians' gambit will bring them no closer to peace, no closer to established borders and no closer to economic stability. It will, however, leave Israel more isolated, more vulnerable and less secure. I applaud President Obama and both the Democratic and Republican leadership of Congress for taking a principled stand against an unprincipled effort. Peace can only come from the bargaining table.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2401. Instead of legislation that would train Americans to get back to full employment, the majority is bringing to the floor a bill that harms the health of our nation.

This bill would endanger the health of millions of our nation's children, seniors, and sick by blocking rules to reduce cross-state air pollution and to reduce the emissions of mercury, lead, dioxin, and other toxic chemicals from power plants. H.R. 2401 would also delay future safeguards by requiring studies that only measure pollution cleanup costs while disregarding health and other benefits.

Along with many of my colleagues, I recently sent letters to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in support of the Power Plant Air Toxics Rule and the Cross-State Air Pollution Control Rule because of the positive impact these rules will have on the public health of our nation. Toxic air pollution from power plants remains a major unregulated source of mercury and lead in the air. Already, more than half of all coal-fired power plants use widely available pollution control technologies to meet these important standards. Once the rule is final, the remaining 44 percent will take similar steps to decrease dangerous pollutants, saving thousands of lives and avoiding tens of thousands of illnesses. It is clear that the benefits of the mercury and air toxics standards will far outweigh its costs--it is estimated that the pollution reductions required by the rule will yield health benefits of $59 billion to $140 billion per year (from lower health care costs and higher worker productivity), which is 5 to 13 times its costs.

Further, by delaying the Cross-State Air Pollution Control Rule this bill would allow highly polluting facilities located upwind to continue to pollute major metropolitan areas with impunity. Such sources of pollution have made it

unattainable for major metropolitan areas like New York City to be in compliance with federal standards for smog pollution even though most pollution is generated by large upwind sources. The Cross State Rule would make polluters control pollution at the source rather than continuing to shift the cost burden onto local governments and local taxpayers.

This bill requires an unnecessary, duplicative, and biased study of specified air quality and hazardous waste regulations without assessing the benefits of environmental and public health standards. Impeding these EPA rules jeopardizes the health and well-being of the American people. I encourage my colleagues to vote against this legislative train wreck.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill which is an attack on the fundamental rights of working men and women.

We are debating this bill at a time when roughly 13\1/2\ million Americans are unemployed and the labor force participation rate is still at a low--not seen in over a generation. This House should be focused on paying our bills, creating jobs, strengthening the middle class, and protecting workers rights. Instead, the Republican Majority has brought a bill to the Floor that does nothing to help our economy or create jobs, but instead makes it easier for corporations to send American jobs overseas and allows employers to punish their employees for exercising their rights to organize and ensure a full day's pay for an honest day's work.

H.R. 2587 will strip the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of its authority to enforce basic labor protections, and will allow employers to openly discriminate against union workers. With this bill, companies will be allowed to outsource jobs and intimidate and fire workers without repercussions in retaliation for American workers who exercise their rights under current U.S. law.

Mr. Speaker, the assault on union employees is happening across the country from Wisconsin, to Ohio, and now right here in the House of Representatives. We must not let it continue if we want to preserve our nation's middle class which is in serious decline. There is no question that the unions have contributed to building the middle class in this country.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union workers are more likely than non-union workers to be covered by health insurance, and receive pension benefits and paid sick leave. We must not ignore the critical role that unions have played in building America by helping improve the wages and working conditions of union and non-union jobs alike.

I urge my colleagues to stand up for working families, for a stronger middle class, and a growing economy. For more than 75 years, federal law has provided Americans the right to join together in unions and bargain for fair pay and benefits and safer working conditions. I pledge to fight to maintain those rights and protections and urge a no vote on this harmful legislation.

Mr. Speaker, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that while 14 million Americans are looking for work, there are only 3 million job openings. This means that if every single job was filled outright, there would still be 11 million Americans unemployed and looking for work.

Passing the President's jobs bill will help these people and help our overall economy. According to Mark Zandi, Moody's economist, the President's plan would add 2 percentage points to the GDP growth next year, add 1.9 million jobs by next year, and cut the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point next year.

Published reports indicate that economists across this country are giving the President's plan a thumb's up. This is a clear chance for all of us to say ``yes''--yes to growth, yes to a middle class tax cut, and, most importantly, yes to jobs and our overall economy.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank the ranking member and chairman for their leadership on this important bill, the Surface and Air Transportation Programs Extension Act.

This act includes a clean 6-month extension of our Nation's critical highway and transit programs. The funding provided in this extension to State Departments of Transportation and local transit agencies will keep Americans working and our economy moving while Congress acts to reauthorize these critically important programs. This extension is necessary to our Nation's economic health and to getting Americans back to work.

I applaud the bipartisan work of our Chamber's leadership in bringing this to the floor. However, I believe that, once the extension is passed, we should focus on bringing true high-speed rail to the Northeast Corridor.

As a representative of the citizens of the great city of New York, I understand the significant economic and transportation value of having a high-speed rail option that would serve the Northeast mega-region. Such an initiative would not only create high-paying construction jobs in the near term, but would spur economic development and growth throughout the region in the long term.

The Northeast region contains 20 percent of the Nation's population and just 2 percent of the land area. This density is evidenced by the fact that 70 percent of all chronically delayed flights originate in the New York-area airspace while 60 percent of the Northeast region's road miles are considered heavily congested.

At a time when highway and air modes are nearing capacity levels and jobs are at a premium, high-speed rail for the Northeast corridor must be a serious consideration of this Congress. It would help our economic development and move our country forward in the 21st century, competing in the global markets.

Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, the horror of 9/11 struck this great Nation. But in its aftermath I have never seen this Nation or this Congress so united and so determined to make sure that we protect our citizens and that it does not happen again. We came together with such a strong purpose.

We need to come together again with a strong purpose behind the President's jobs proposal. Fourteen million Americans are out of work. He has a plan. Let's unify, let's work together, and let's put Americans back to work building our crumbling infrastructure, repairing our schools, investing in innovation, education, and working together. We did it after 9/11, that great crisis. We can do it again.

The President has a plan. Let's get behind that plan. If the Republicans have a plan, then put it forth. Let's look at it. Let's work together and put Americans back to work.

I thank the ranking member for his leadership in so many ways before this Congress, and Chairman Rogers for his lifetime commitment to protecting Americans even as a former FBI agent.

I want to underscore what the ranking member said. The best defense against terrorism is intelligence, and we need to support this bill in every single way. We were reminded of the need for intelligence yesterday when Mayor Bloomberg announced there was a credible threat against New York and Washington. And where did this information come from? It came from the intelligence community.

After 9/11, the 9/11 Commission report said the biggest failure in preventing 9/11 was a failure in our intelligence system. This Congress came together, and

I was proud to have worked with and helped author a bill that was the first major reorganization and the most fundamental since 1948, where it brought all 17 agencies together under Homeland Security and one director to gather information to make us safer.

This bill very critically supports the task forces, the joint terrorism task forces that are sharing information and protecting our citizens, and this bill approaches and focuses on cyber attacks, which are one of the most serious attacks that we have in our country now on the Pentagon and on financial institutions. Foreign countries are hacking into our information systems. This bill addresses that and focuses resources and oversight in that area.

I congratulate this bipartisan effort. I consider it one of the most important bills that we have an opportunity to vote on, and I support it completely.

Mr. Speaker, our unemployed are hurting, and America's infrastructure is crumbling. It would seem morally indefensible and fiscally irresponsible not to take the opportunity to help solve one problem by addressing the other.

The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 14 million Americans are looking for jobs while the total number of job openings is just over 3 million. So if every single job is miraculously filled overnight, there would still be 11 million unemployed Americans looking for work and needing jobs. At the same time, all across America, there is work that urgently needs to be done. Our bridges, our roads, our schools, and other infrastructure are structurally deficient.

The two most important responsibilities this Congress faces are keeping Americans safe and helping to create jobs. This is our chance to do both. Let's choose to build a stronger America through making it in America and building it in America with American workers.

Mr. Speaker, if this had been a clean vote to raise the debt ceiling, I would have supported it--as I have in the past, and as our nation has done 78 times since 1960.

But this was far from a clean vote. The cuts were too large, there were no revenues, no plan for job creation, and thus it was an unbalanced approach to the deficit problem.

Although cuts to Medicare and Medicaid were averted in the first round of cuts, the `sequestration trigger' included cuts to Medicare providers which would hurt my district, and ultimately Medicare recipients as well.

What's more, making such large budget cuts now, in the midst of a struggling recovery would lead to a further loss of jobs--at a time when there are already five Americans out of work for every one job opening. This deal makes things worse; it would slow economic growth.

The process by which this deal was reached was no less ugly. This issue was taken hostage by the most extreme parts of the Republican Party, who put forward non-negotiable demands, which is not how democracy works.

By refusing to even consider closing tax loopholes and ending special-interest subsidies, the Republicans made clear who should pay for their extreme agenda: those who can least afford it.

I will not be a party to a plan which is likely to hurt the interests of my district, my city and my country as it struggles to emerge from the worst economic crisis since the Depression.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce bipartisan legislation along with my colleagues on the Human Trafficking Caucus, Reps. Chris Smith and Jackie Speier.

Most Americans are unaware that many of the goods they use each and every day have passed through the hands of a slave at some point. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor identified 128 goods from 70 countries that were made by forced and child labor. We write to invite you to join us in becoming an original cosponsor of the Business Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act, which will increase transparency in supply chains in order

to remove slavery from business operations and products.

The Business Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act doesn't tell businesses what to do, but rather to tell consumers what they are doing to end human slavery.

This bill will help raise awareness for consumers who want to know where and how their goods are being made. While there are good actors, there are businesses operating in parts of the world that rely on enslaved humans to produce their products. We believe American consumers have a right to know who these companies are.

This legislation creates a market-based solution rather than relying on prescriptive action by the federal government. Companies simply have to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) what they are doing to rid their supply chains of human slavery and post this information on their company Web sites. Consumers will be able to research a company and determine their purchasing decisions based on the information provided. Very simply, this bill creates competition to improve practices to end slavery by providing the public with information about what companies are doing to address slavery.

Human trafficking is the slavery of the 21st century. It is estimated that nearly 12.3 million people are working in some form of forced labor worldwide. The International Labor Organization estimates that for every person trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, nine people are forced primarily into labor exploitation. We must use every tool available to help these men, women, and children around the world who are enslaved.

I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, on July 30, I attended the service and funeral of a family member and missed rollcall vote 682. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote 682, a bill to cut spending and maintain existing commitments.

Mr. Speaker, today I am reintroducing an important piece of legislation, the Breastfeeding Promotion Act with my colleagues Mr. Meeks, Ms. Lee, and Mr. Serrano.

The benefits of breastfeeding, to both mother and child, are significant. Scientific studies show babies who are breastfed the first six months of life have a greatly reduced risk for acute and chronic disease, yet only 10 percent of all infants in the U.S. are breastfed.

A 2001 USDA study found that if just half of the babies in the U.S. were exclusively breastfed for six months (as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics), our Nation would realize a savings of $3.6 billion in health care costs for the three leading childhood illnesses alone. According to the United States Breastfeeding Committee, if we replicate that study based on current breastfeeding statistics, the savings could reach nearly $14 billion in health care costs for all childhood illnesses in a single year.

I was so proud to partner with Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to pass into law a provision of our bill, the Breastfeeding Promotion Act (H.R. 2819, S. 1744), in comprehensive health care reform legislation signed by President Obama on March 23, 2010. The provision requires that employers provide breastfeeding employees, who are hourly workers, with ``reasonable break time'' and a private, non-bathroom place to express breast milk during the workday, up until the child's first birthday.

Our bill will build on our past successes and encourage and promote breastfeeding by removing common obstacles to breastfeeding and expressing milk in the workplace that many women face by: (1) amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect breastfeeding in the workplace, and (2) expanding the requirement under current law for employers to provide break time to express breast milk, as well as make reasonable efforts to provide a private place for them to do so, to salaried workers in traditional work or office environments.

Public opinion and awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding continue to grow, and the momentum we've recently gained presents the perfect opportunity to build on that progress in achieving our goals.

We urge all of our colleagues to support this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the ``Presidential Dollar Coin Efficiency Act of 2011.'' This bill makes some changes to a law I was proud to cosponsor back in 2005, the ``Presidential Dollar Coin Act of 2005.'' At the time, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would reduce the deficit by $280 million over the life of the program. However, since the law has been in place, it is clear that demand for the dollar coins has not been as high as predicted. The Federal Reserve is now spending its resources to house excess coin stock that comes back to the reserve banks after they have been in circulation.

The bill I am introducing today will address the problems of a lack of coordination between the Fed and Treasury and will remove some of the statutory restrictions in the law that keep the two agencies from running the program efficiently in an environment of lower demand. But the bill will maintain the program which numismatists, citizens, and businesses have invested in and which should continue.

The bill seeks to make changes to the program that will allow it to function more efficiently with the goal of reducing the number of coins that have to be stored at the Fed. It will also require the Fed and Treasury to coordinate administration of the Presidential Dollar Coin program by: requiring the two agencies to come up with a plan to reduce excess reserves; eliminating the introductory period for unmixed coins; capping the number of coins that the Mint can produce based on numismatic demand from the year before; removing the requirement that the Mint spend money on marketing the coin; and moving up the reporting requirement under a law passed last year that gives the Mint the authority to research and develop new metals for coins.

By removing some of the statutory constraints that were placed on the Fed and Treasury in the original law, I believe that this worthy program can continue in a more limited manner which will reduce excess coin stock being housed at the Fed. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

I thank the gentlelady for her leadership.

I rise in opposition to the Republican rule.

We have all been getting numerous phone calls from our constituents who are rightly worried that the interest rates will be going up on their homes, on their cars, on their student loans, because they see that this Congress is in chaos. Already since last Friday, shareholders in U.S. markets have lost over $400 billion in value just due to the uncertainty and the lack of action. Our constituents' retirement funds have been taking a hit--and will continue to until this issue is decided. We have less than 4 days.

We must stop this ``Republican roulette'' and get to work on a plan that is realistic, that can pass both Houses. This is a dangerous game, putting forward a partisan bill that, each time it comes back, is more partisan, appealing to a narrower sliver of America.

Madam Speaker, we need to revisit a clean vote on the debt ceiling-- as we have done 78 times since 1960. If we don't, the President should do his constitutional duty and raise the debt ceiling on his own under the authority of the 14th Amendment. The Republican leadership has walked out on President Obama, on Vice President Biden, on McConnell, and even their own leader, Boehner. Then they want us to revisit

this in 6 months and put the economy in uncertainty. This is the wrong direction.

I urge a ``no'' vote.