Floor Statements

I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for yielding to me.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the bill consisting of two previous bills--tort law reform and a repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

I wasn't here when the Obama health care, the Affordable Care Act law, was passed. In listening to the debate over the last half hour, you would have thought that nobody supported this bill. Of all the speakers we've had, I think three have admitted they supported it then, and now you'd think that it never existed. Well, any agency that's scored by CBO to save $3.1 billion is not going to do it by providing more services for seniors or innovation or preservation. It's going to do it by cutting payments to providers or by cutting services to beneficiaries. It's as simple as that.

This is the beginning of, perhaps, the core of what represents a Federal Government takeover of health care services in this country. Sure, there may be a process whereby recommendations could go to the Congress; but instead of the relationship being between a patient and a doctor, it is going to be governed more by a Federal bureaucracy that will make these decisions.

I urge support of the pending bill, H.R. 5.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Steven O'Connor of Milford, New Hampshire, a remarkable young man who, in June of 2010, demonstrated immense bravery and courage in order to save his younger sister's life.

Steven, who was a Webelo Cub Scout at the time, had just recently learned how to swim when he was celebrating Father's Day at his grandparents' house with his family. Mackenzie O'Connor, Steven's younger sister, had slipped underwater and was struggling to stay afloat when Steven leaped into action. Before any of the adults had time to react to Mackenzie's struggles, Steven had jumped into the pool and pulled his younger sister to safety.

Steven's selfless and heroic actions are commendable, and I am incredibly impressed by this young man's quick thinking and fearless instincts. Steven will be awarded with the Boy Scouts of America's Meritorious Action Award this Saturday in Hollis, New Hampshire, an award that is truly well-deserved.

Steven's parents, grandparents, sister, and extended family, as well as his friends and teachers, must be extremely proud of his bravery, and I join the people of Milford, and indeed the entire Granite State, in congratulating Steven on a job well done. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors, particularly as he seeks to become an Eagle Scout.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer my heartfelt congratulations to the National Guard in honor of its 375th anniversary and a particular thank you to the men and women that serve in the New Hampshire National Guard. The origins of the New Hampshire National Guard can be traced back to 1623 with a proud tradition of protecting the lives and property of Granite State residents. New Hampshire Guardsmen have always answered the call to serve our great state and nation and since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, more than 2,000 New Hampshire Guardsmen have served overseas as part of Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn. Collectively, the New Hampshire Guardsmen have received the highest honors our military bestows including the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Army Commendation Medals, Combat Infantry and Combat Action Badges and Purple Hearts.

New Hampshire's citizen soldiers and airmen have served domestically as well by mobilizing under Operation Noble Eagle, aiding the victims of severe weather, and rescuing lost hikers in the White Mountains. I am proud to represent the brave men and women of New Hampshire's National Guard and look forward to honoring them for their service in the years to come.

Mr. Speaker, the weather is cold in the Northeast. This year is no exception. In October, we had a huge snowstorm, an emergency declaration. Residents of the northern States-- Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont--are over 80 percent dependent on heating oil. And we've depended--in the case of New Hampshire, 47,200 people--on the Low Income Energy Assistance Program. It is imperative that this program be adequately funded this year.

Mr. Speaker, the President, in his budget submission this year, proposed to cut LIHEAP funding by 50 percent. I urge our appropriators to do better than that this year because there are a lot of people in the Northeast that need this funding this year.

I urge support for adequate funding for low income energy assistance.

I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the conference report, which includes the CJS approps bill for fiscal year 2012, and I want to pay a special thanks to Chairman Wolf for his help in working out a very difficult problem.

In 2010, a Federal prison was built in Berlin, New Hampshire, which is in my district. However, due to the lack of funding, the facility has been sitting idle now for a year and a half at a significant cost to taxpayers. So I applaud the inclusion of report language that urges the Bureau of Prisons to begin the activation phase of this prison in Berlin, New Hampshire, and others where construction has been completed but where the facilities currently sit idle.

Additionally, I would like to thank Mayor Grenier in Berlin for his dogged determination and my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee for their special attention to this very serious problem.

Once opened, this prison will house over 1,000 minimum-security and medium-security adult male offenders. It will produce over 300 jobs for the region and bring $40 million to the local economy. It is a very worthwhile program. I thank you for being attentive to this issue with me. I urge final passage of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, while I was present for rollcall vote 820 on November 2, 2011, my vote was not recorded. Had my vote been recorded I would have voted ``yes'' on that passage of the Small Company Capital Formation Act.

Mr. Speaker, on October 6, 2011, I had a family gathering and was not present for rollcall votes 765, 766, 767, 768, 769, and 770. Had I been present, I would have voted in the affirmative on rollcall vote 765 and against rollcall votes 766, 767, 768, 769, and 770.

I want to thank my friend and colleague from Oregon for yielding me time. I also want to thank my friend from California for supporting this legislation and for speaking in support of it.

Mr. Speaker, as the representative of a rural district, I understand the challenges of increasing access to broadband Internet service. We have many, many communities that suffer economically, as well as culturally, due to the lack of access to broadband; and any effort that's undertaken to improve that access is a good effort. At the same time, however, Congress must act to protect the taxpayer and provide oversight for the nearly $7.2 billion in funds appropriated by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

I would only note that a significant percentage of the obligated funds are being expended by recipients who have little or no experience in the business of designing and building broadband Internet and that that, in and of itself, justifies the passage of this legislation, which would provide much needed oversight for the broadband stimulus funds and would ensure that the law is definitive and would be quick to reclaim funds if there is reason to terminate an award for reasons of waste, fraud, or insufficient performance. As my friend from Oregon and my friend from California mentioned, it does not revoke any award that has already been granted.

The GAO and Inspectors General have testified that the size and complexity of the programs and the short turnaround time provided to the NTIA and RUS to award the money has created substantial risk in these programs. Thus far, nearly 30 awards for grants and loans worth about $200 million have been returned to the Treasury. Many have returned the awards because they've recognized that they won't be successful. In those cases, we want to ensure that taxpayer exposure is minimized, and we want to prevent throwing good money after bad for projects that should be terminated for waste, fraud, or insufficient performance.

During committee hearings, the administrators testified that the decision to deobligate funds for awards that give rise to reason to terminate is discretionary, according to the Recovery Act language. I emphasize ``discretionary.'' The Inspectors General said the stimulus bill does not make clear whether or when the NTIA and the RUS must deobligate funds for troubled projects. This legislation removes that ambiguity and makes clear that such problem awards must be terminated and deobligated.

Moreover, the Inspectors General said current law does not ensure the NTIA and RUS will be responsive to their oversight recommendations. H.R. 1343 will provide important sunlight by requiring the administrators to act on recommendations made by the IG or to respond with their reasons for not acting.

While I wasn't in Congress for the Recovery Act's passage, now that the funds have been awarded, I think it's common sense that Congress should require an accounting of how these funds are being spent and what the American taxpayer is getting for these expenditures.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the Congress to pass this important piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, due to weather related travel delays I was unable to be present for rollcall vote 692 on September 7, 2011. This vote was on H. Con. Res. 67, a resolution authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the District of Columbia Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run.

Had I been present, I would have voted in favor of H. Con. Res. 67.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall votes 693 and 694, my votes were not recorded. Had I been recorded, I would have voted in the affirmative on both ordering the previous question and adoption of the rule providing for consideration of H.R. 2218, to amend the charter school program under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and for consideration of H.R. 1892, to authorize appropriations for FY 2012 for intelligence activities of the U.S. Government, the Community Management Account, and the CIA Retirement System.

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

I thank the Chairman for recognizing me and making it possible for me to offer this amendment at this point in the bill.

This amendment will restore $20 million to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It is offset by a $20 million reduction from the Department of the Interior salaries and expenses. Now, the Department of the Interior salaries and expenses at present are about $250 million, so this would represent roughly a 10 percent reduction in the overhead for the agency. But what do you get for that? You get about an 8 percent increase in the Land and Water Conservation Fund funding.

Now, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, as has been mentioned by other speakers, was established 46 years ago in 1965. It was designed as a forward-looking program to preserve critical assets in America for all of us to enjoy.

When you travel around the world, you don't find countries like America that have large parts of our country preserved for public use. Most of the land in other countries around the world is owned privately or by the government and it is not accessible to the public. The LWCF, through its stateside program, its Forest Legacy Fund, has provided countless acres of protected land for public enjoyment.

Now, the fund has, for the last 25 or so years, received most of its funding from offshore oil royalties, and those royalties have averaged anywhere from $7 billion to $18 billion a year. And I have a little table here for the last few years that shows the total royalties and how little amount of money that the Land and Water Conservation Fund takes from these receipts. It is authorized at $900 million. It has been funded of late between $300 million and $500 million. But, my friends, this year it is funded at less than $70 million.

We Republicans have set as a goal in our principles to reduce the growth of government and to reduce programs to their January 1, 2008, level. What have we done in this appropriations bill? We have reduced this fund to its 1965 level.

I have here another little table that shows the historical funding for the Land and Water Conservation program. There is 1965. We will be lower than that if we don't pass this amendment.

I ask you, my friends, for the sake of the 900,000 Americans who visit these lands during the year, of the millions of dollars spent through the outdoor recreation industry, for those opportunities that we may never see again to make critical purchases and easement purchases of assets that are so important to the future of our country, to raise this appropriation from $68 million to $90 million is a small price to pay for what could be done with those funds.

We need to continue the program of land conservation, local recreation, and, yes, working forests. And a $68 million appropriation just plain doesn't do it.

So on behalf of my cosponsors, I urge you, Mr. Chairman, to support this amendment and make it a part of the underlying bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment and move to strike the last word.

A minute or two ago, I was in the Cloakroom and I drew up the Web site for ARPA-E, and it says at the top: ``Disruptive and innovative approaches to technology.'' What a wonderful thought, that a government agency can be disruptive and innovative at the same time.

Billions of dollars have been spent on coal, on oil research, on wind and solar, on biomass and conservation and the FreedomCAR. I got involved in the alternative energy business way back in the late seventies when I was a staffer when ERDA was created. We had a real energy crisis in this Nation as we do today. And yet we're really not anywhere nearly as far along this path as we need to be.

Now, someone in the Congress, in the Department of Energy, had the good idea of taking all these ideas for research and creating an entity that would be devoted to giving individuals and inventors, people with good ideas, that little spark that they need to turn those ideas into reality.

The first time they went out for solicitations, they got some 3,500 to 4,000 short, 7-page letters describing ideas. This is a program that leverages a relatively small amount of research dollars into an enormous potential benefit not only to America but to the world.

But within our boundaries here, we have the objective of lessening our dependence on foreign energy, of cleaning up our environment, of creating jobs and new economies for Americans. Given the fact that we have spent literally billions on the research and development in traditional energy resources, all we are asking to do in this amendment is to get the level up to last year, $71 million over the suggested appropriation of $100 million; $71 million. All that to support an agency that, using their own words, provides a fresh look, a flexible, efficient way to find new ideas to solve very serious problems in America.

I hope that the Congress will support Mr. Schiff's amendment to add this $71 million to keep this program strong, active, and moving forward because I think it has the potential to do more than any other research program in alternative energy can do today. I urge support of this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

As much as it pains me to oppose the position of my good friend from the State of New Jersey, I rise in support of this very worthy amendment and want to thank my friend from New York for his sponsorship of it.

As he said, it raises the Weatherization Assistance Program by about $141.3 million, the State Energy Program by $25 million, and the Buildings Technologies Program by $60.5 million, basically to the level funded at the 2011 level. It is offset, as was mentioned, by a reduction of an increase in the Nuclear Security Administration's Weapons Activities, which would make that line item level funded as well.

And I believe, as has been said by my friend from Indiana, as well as my friend from New Jersey, that the Weapons Activities Programs are laudable, especially as they relate to the safety and security of our weapons stockpile. But I think level funding the 2011 levels is adequate.

When you look at the weatherization programs and what they do, you can't dispute it. Low-income individuals cannot afford to spend money on efficiency. It's just not possible. Yet when they do, it has a positive impact on all sorts of other programs, one of which is LIHEAP.

As was mentioned by my friend from New York, these programs pay back on the order of $7, $8, $9, $10, $11 to $1 spent, not only in savings to low-income individuals but also to the Federal Government. This is good for the economy. It puts people to work. It's good for energy efficiency and lessening our dependence on foreign sources of oil, and it does contribute to the long-term national energy goals for this country as I see them.

So all that Mr. Tonko and I are looking for is level funding for fiscal year 2011 for both the nuclear weapons program as well as the weatherization program, the State Energy Program, and the Building Technologies Program, which benefit so many people in so many different parts of America.

So I urge adoption of this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the chairman.

I want to discuss some important legislative history of a critical piece of this bill, in particular, sections 102(a) and (b) and how those two sections will work together. I think we can agree that it is important that we set down a definitive legislative history of those sections to ensure clarity in our meaning.

I believe that the chairman is correct. The legislation intends parallelism between the treatment of an inventor's actions under 102(a) and 102(b). In this way, small inventors and others will not accidentally stumble into a bar by their pre-filing actions. Such inventors will still have to be diligent and file within the grace period if they trigger 102(a); but if an inventor triggers 102(a) with respect to an invention, then he or she has inherently also triggered the grace period under 102(b).

Mr. Speaker, on June 3, 2011, I was on a leave of absence from the House of Representatives to attend the funeral of former Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen. As a result, I did not have the opportunity to vote on rollcall votes 410, 411, and 412. On rollcall vote 410, providing consideration of H. Res. 292 and H. Con. Res. 51, I would have voted in the affirmative. On rollcall vote 411, declaring that the President shall not deploy, establish, or maintain the presence of units and members of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Libya, I would have voted in the affirmative. On rollcall vote 412, directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove the United States Armed Forces from Libya, I would have voted in the affirmative.