Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank those people who have worked so hard on both sides of the aisle on this bill, and I rise in support of the underlying bill and in opposition to the amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Last year's wildfire season was among the most destructive in half a century. With frightening speed and growing intensity, wildfires swept across pristine forest preserves around the country destroying homes by the hundreds and forcing evacuations of thousands of residents, and blighting America's skies with thick, black, choking smoke. Over 190 million acres are now at heightened risk of wildfires.

The incidence and severity of these fires can be reduced through the controlled reduction of fire accelerants. For several years, procedural and legal obstacles have precluded land managers from taking timely steps to address these dangers. Currently, it takes several years to propose, analyze, re-analyze, litigate, and appeal preventive management options.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 helps provide Federal land managers with the tools to ensure timely and effective response to wildfire threats.

H.R. 1904's judicial review and expedited administrative procedure provisions formed the basis of the Committee on the Judiciary's consideration of this legislation and comprised some of its most critical components.

Specifically, section 104 streamlines procedures for implementing threat reduction projects on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands near at-risk communities, on fire-prone lands near municipal water sources, on lands that encompass habitat for endangered species, and on lands particularly vulnerable to disease and insect infestation. The Secretary must permit an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement for each of the authorized hazardous fuel reduction project.

Section 105 requires robust public participation throughout the process by requiring the Secretary of Agriculture to develop a formal administrative appeals process for persons who wish to challenge the implementation of forest preservation efforts.

Harmonizing the Forest Service's administrative appeal mechanism with the highly protective appeals process employed by the Department of the Interior promotes public participation, safeguards procedural due process, and permits the more timely implementation of urgent forest protection measures.

Section 106 pertains to the judicial review that requires the Federal courts to reevaluate the factual conditions underlying preliminary injunctions halting threat reduction projects every 45 days. This is critical. Presently, injunctive stays may remain in effect for years before courts reach the merits of a legal challenge, with sometimes catastrophic consequences. Periodic judicial reappraisal of the circumstances predicating injunctive relief will better equip courts to assess and address hazardous forest conditions.

Finally, under the current system, Federal courts focus almost exclusively on the consequences of implementing fire reduction projects. Section 107 of this legislation simply requires Federal courts to also assess the consequences of inaction.

This section, as amended by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), also instructs Federal courts to weigh the factual and scientific assessments of forest threat conditions provided by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management when reviewing threat reduction initiatives. This guidance is consistent with Congress's plenary authority to determine the level of probative value courts may ascribe to agency determinations.

For millions of Americans, particularly in western States such as Utah, which I represent, the threat of forest conflagrations is not a hypothetical possibility, but a daily reality. H.R. 1904 enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support in the areas most threatened

by forest fires. Passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act will help reduce the growing prevalence of forest fires that have destroyed irreplaceable natural resources, including endangered species, and that have threatened hundreds of communities over the last several years.

I urge my colleagues to help safeguard America's forests from increasingly intense and common conflagrations. As chairman of the Bicameral Western Caucus, I can personally attest to the urgency of passing this bill, and encourage my colleagues to support this carefully tailored, proenvironmental legislation and to oppose the amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the subject of my general leave.

Mr. Speaker, I have some graphics that I would like to use down at the other podium if I might.

Mr. Speaker, as members of the Western Caucus, we come to the floor today to discuss H.R. 1904, The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. This bill will be marked up tomorrow in the Committee on the Judiciary and is expected to be brought to the floor early next week.

Let me put this map up. What you see here is a map. If we can focus on the graphic here, what you see here is a map of the United States, and you can understand by looking at this map why we as members of the Western Caucus are concerned with healthy forests.

You will recognize that there is a color chart. What it indicates is that everything in yellow or green or red or the other colors other than white represent Federal lands that are managed by the Federal Government that includes also many lands from the Eastern part of the United States. And as you might guess, we have in the Western Caucus also people who are from the Eastern part of the United States.

We have at least a couple of people here tonight from the Western Caucus who will address some of the issues that are related to the problems of healthy forests.

If we get a fairly tight shot on this, what we can see in this graphic on the left, most of these pictures were taken from an area where there is a forest fire. The picture on the left is a picture of an area that had been thinned and prepared and did not burn. The picture on the right is the terribly scarred and destroyed timber, and by the way one cannot kill the timber by fire without killing a lot of endangered species and destroying watershed and creating huge difficulties for the environment.

That is the difference between the policy that we hope to implement through the Healthy Forest Act and what we currently have in much of our forests today. I am going to talk in particular and show some pictures later on about the effects of mud slides in a town very close to where I live in Utah, but I would like to end my piece of this introduction by quoting the President when he said, ``I have sent you a healthy forest initiative to help prevent the catastrophic fires that have devastated communities, killed wildlife and burnt away millions of acres of treasured forests. I urge you to pass these measures for the good of both the environment and the economy.''

I think if we focus on what the President said, we will realize this is a matter of major concern for all America, not just Americans who live in the West, not just for those people who live near federally managed forests in the East. This is a problem for all America, and it relates to our concerns for a healthy environment, for our concerns for endangered species and concerns for our economy.

I yield to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Idaho for his comments, and if the gentleman would engage in a colloquy, I have some statistics to go along with what the gentleman is just saying.

Apparently, the National Association of Public Administration did an analysis of the forest service and found that it spends 40 percent of its time and 20 percent of its money on planning. This is the analysis paralysis that the gentleman referred to. Is that the gentleman's experience in Idaho?

That is the planning part of what the forest service does because the forest service, 20 percent of their resources go to planning; but around 50 percent, I have heard as much as 58 percent of the resources of the forest service, go for litigation. So we are spending the vast amount of our time and money playing and being paralyzed by analysis and not using that money to actually make our forests more healthy.

In part, that is because if we get an infestation in dead trees, we only have until the next season, the next summer before those pine bark needles or whatever, the infestation is mature and goes into the live and healthy forest.

While we are talking, let me just show a picture here that the gentleman was referring to earlier. If we can get a focus on that, we are talking in terms of statistics, but we can see on the left the terrific fire where we have got this large fuel load on the floor and in the forest, and on the right we have a thinned healthy forest; and we can see there is not really much of a transaction.

In fact, the Native Americans used to burn the forests with great regularity. When the Pilgrims first came, they could drive their carriages through the forest, and all the way down to the Revolutionary War they were burning the Hudson in areas around there to maintain health.

The problem is if we, through huge litigation costs and complicated processes, interfere with the healthiness of a forest, we get the fuel load and this terrible destruction as opposed to relatively healthy maintenance by occasional fires that the Native Americans used to manage those areas before.

That is the kind of thing that happens when we get a huge fuel load in the forest and get the destruction like we have, this is the kind of destruction the gentleman is talking about happening where it actually turns the ground into where we burn the nutrients right out of the soil with an intense fire.

We sort of forget how intense a fire can be. Even a grass fire can burn at great intensity, and we have got a ladder that takes us all the way up to the trees. We get a terrific burn, but let me give the gentleman a couple more statistics.

The forest service does more environmental statements than any other Federal agency, nearly twice as many as any other agency that does these; and this is the Federal Highway Administration. So they spend a lot of their time doing it more than any other agency, and in addition, they have to go through an 800-step decision-making process to complete the Upper South Platte Restoration Project, which simultaneously took 3 years to complete.

Talk about analysis paralysis: An 800-step process and 3 years while there may be some kind of either buildup of fire load, fuel load, or an infestation. That is just absolutely unacceptable and part of the cause for the problems we are seeing last summer and this summer.

I think that is absolutely true. The West has had a pretty severe drought. I think everyone in the Nation by now knows that we have had a severe drought. In Utah, and maybe the gentleman has had the same experience, we have had recently the worst of all worlds. We have had more rain in the last 2 or 3 weeks than we have had in the last 4 or 5 years. As a result of that, Utah is pretty green now on the surface. The problem is, come July, we have now added a couple of steps in that ladder we are missing, that fire ladder, so that fire will take off like crazy. We went from what we thought would have been a lesser burn season this year, because of the dryness and because of the lack of that ladder, to now what looks like maybe a much worse burn season. Is that what the gentleman is facing in Idaho?

And that is why it is so important to look at what the President said when he pointed out, ``I have sent you a healthy forest initiative to prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of treasured forest. I urge you to pass these measures for the good of both our environment and our economy.''

We need to do this now because our problem is acute right now as we speak.

I thank the gentleman for his participation.

We have the pleasure of having with us a man of great experience in this area, and I would yield now to the gentleman from South Dakota. Let me say first, however, that he comes to us with a world of experience as the long-time Governor of the State and having followed these issues and been responsible for them from the State point of view for a very long time.

Would the gentleman consent to a colloquy?

I was struck by a number of the things you pointed out. People with emphysema suffering. By the way, a large forest fire in the West affects people across the whole country.

And places east.

And our children.

There are people who do not care very much about children or people with emphysema.

So they tend to stop the ability we have to clean up our forests, to thin them out, to preserve them.

That is right. To see them and not breathe them. Most of the people who, by the way, have a hard time with what we are doing in our forests, who create litigation to stop us from creating healthy forests, are also people who are adamantly opposed to adding CO2 to the environment, and instead of sequestering CO2 like we do when we have healthy forests, these people are unleashed to get a torrent of CO2.

You get almost infinitely more mercury in the system from a forest fire than you get from all the coal-fired power plants around the world.

When I wrap up, I am going to show some pictures of these devastating mud flows that happen after a forest fire. I could not help while you were talking but think about the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter) when he was talking about working out deals with environmentalists. Then an unrelated group comes in and stops the process. It seems to me what the President has asked for in this legislation is a comprehensive response to a large problem in our system as opposed to these fragmented environmental groups who stop us here and there and everywhere.

I am an environmentalist.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, although Utah is primarily an arid State, it is famous for its beautiful and Sierra landscapes. In fact, I invite anyone who might be listening to come to southern Utah and visit Lake Powell, which is this incredible barren red rock and beautiful blue water juxtaposed together. It is absolutely remarkable. In spite of that view that many people have of the beautiful part of Utah, we have about 16 million acres of forest, about 8 million of those are managed by the National Forest Service; and so we have a huge interest in what happens. I would like to give just a couple of anecdotes to sort of help people understand why it is so important that we create some changes. We had some recent severe weather in the eastern part of the State of Utah, in the Uinta Basin and we had a blowdown of a number of trees. This happened in 2000. The dead trees developed a spruce beetle infestation, which then spread to some of the live trees nearby. The Forest Service acted quickly and decided it was a very small situation, only a few thousand board feet, maybe 12 or so truckloads of wood, a small area of destruction. They moved quickly with an environmental analysis and did a 90-page environmental assessment. Shortly after making the decision, they were given an appeal, a 19-page appeal that stayed the whole process and that is now under review.

We are looking now in Utah at another area that is going to be terrifically unhealthy and terrifically subject to the kind of devastating fires that you see in this graphic, if we can focus the camera on that for a moment. You see the haze and the smoke and the billowing carcinogens that are going to be breathed in South Dakota by children and other ill people and people all the way east of us where the prevailing winds blow.

Let me give you a second vignette which I think is significant and instructive. We had a huge fire in an area that is one of our most beautiful forested areas. It has the Green River, which is among the most exciting trout fishing in the whole world. I know that many of the people from other States will claim that, but this is really marvelous trout fishing.

A fellow was driving along with a camper when the wheel came off and as one would expect, he began dragging the trailer without the wheel and sparks flew. He saw what happened, realized he was dragging the trailer, realized that sparks were flying everywhere and that actually had caused the beginnings of a fire, stopped his truck

and started to put out the fire. A Forest Service agent came by almost immediately and ordered him back into his truck to drive away from the fire and to not put the fire out, which was at that point controllable. He got back in his truck, started to pull forward, he emitted sparks from the dragging axle, started a couple of other little fires, a local policeman came by and ordered him to stop. He said, Just be consistent. Do I stop or not? At that point a group of river runners stopped by. They had water in their car. They jumped out to help put out the fire. The Forest Service agent told them not to do that. The fire then raged out of control and burned hundreds of thousands of acres. As the news reports, the cost was $3 million to suppress the fire. The local rural electric cooperatives there tell me that it cost them over $600,000 just to replace the poles with their electric power lines on them. The lost revenue from tourism that did not come has not been evaluated, but the area was hit hard by irrational activity, irrational activity that resulted, that came from the fact that we have unhealthy forests.

I would like to just show some pictures, including some of the areas where we have the aftermath of a fire. So if we could focus the camera here, we have the burned area in the Squires Forest. It is devastating. We thought of drawing an owl in here, an endangered owl with a little wisp of smoke coming out of his head to point out that this is bad for endangered species. The following pictures are pictures that were taken in a little town called Santaquin just outside my hometown of Mapleton. If we can focus tightly on that, what we see is a river of mud that has come downhill and affected these homes. Here is a closeup picture. You can see that that mud has come down from this direction and affected these houses. We do not think of mud as having a lot of power because it normally does not come knocking on the door, but you can see as you look down here how high up the mud has come, halfway to the door and windows and filled the whole yard.

In this picture, we can see that it has carried rocks and debris that are going to crush things. Here you have a whole area of the house has been torn out by this mud as it comes down. You can see the devastation of this home here. This is just dirt that got saturated with water after a forest fire. We had similar forest fires just north of this area in Provo. The difference is we had three-quarters of an inch in a very short period of time, in a very harsh storm that caused this to flow, whereas we cannot control nature. In Provo we had about the same amount of water, but it was more gradual over a longer period of time. We can see the terrific destruction, cars buried, windows shattered, mud going into basements, cars stranded. When you unleash the forces of nature, it is just almost beyond imagining how much damage can be done to an area because of that.

We have a problem today, Mr. Speaker. We have a problem. We have forests that are not healthy. That is the result of years and years and years of neglect. It is the result of years and years and years of people who have been narrow in their interests and who have stopped the sale of timber, who have stopped the thinning of timber, who have stopped our forest men and women who understand how to have healthy forests, stopped them from doing what they know how to do and left us with desperate circumstances, 70 or 75 million acres of forestland that is ready to be destroyed by fire.

We have suffered in the West with the worst drought in recent history, probably as bad as anything back to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. These are terrible things. They have displaced people, destroyed farms and lives, and now we are going to add to that the further destruction of the forests through fire.

We had thought, and, in fact, we had some charts earlier that showed the anticipated fire damage in the West was going to be less this year than it was last year. Last year, of course, was a record year. We burned much of that which was ready to burn last year. Unfortunately, this year we have had some water over much of the West, and that, unfortunately, has created a fire ladder so that what was not as endangered 2 months ago is now viewed as being subject to devastating fires.

If we look at Utah today, it is as green as I have ever seen it. Unfortunately, that green over the next month or 2 or 3 is going to turn to brown grass that will light at any provocation, a lightning strike, a match or a cigarette carelessly thrown out of a window, a campfire burning out of control. Those things could all happen and will happen, we suspect, this summer with devastating effects.

We need to pass the forest health bill now.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Janklow).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Janklow). I appreciate that, and I am reminded of his earlier words about the unanimity of the Committee on Agriculture, and it dawns on me that those people who see the problem and understand it have a tendency to agree. Locals who know it have a tendency to agree. We have lots of people with incoherent or separate, disparate ideas who get to pursue those ideas, through litigation or otherwise, stopping the process.

What we have here before us with this bill is a coherent and considerate approach that is good for the air, will help with clean air, will help with clean water, will help people in the economy, will help endangered species, and will also help species that are not endangered now. So I urge passage of this bill, Mr. Speaker.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 20 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 14, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, we rise today to honor and recognize Dr. Rod Julander for his devotion and dedication to the students, faculty and staff of Weber State University. For 43 years, he has been an integral part of the Political Science Department.

Dr. Julander began his teaching career at Weber State College in 1960 after receiving a Bachelors of Science from the University of Utah in 1958 and a Masters Degree in Philosophy in 1963. He returned to the University of Utah in 1986 for his Ph.D. and has been a highly valued member of the faculty throughout his years of service.

His hard work and dedication has been acknowledged at the local and national level. He has received numerous National, Regional, State and Community recognition and honors, including the Dello Dayton Teaching Award in 1992, the Crystal Crest Mater Teacher Award in 1995 and the Coretez Honors Award in 1974, and was Social Work Legislative Advocate of the Year.

His exceptional service has also been appreciated by the University and Alumni Association, where he has served as a member of the Executive Committee of the WSU Faculty senate, Past President of the WSU UUAP Chapter, a member of the Search Committee for the WSU Assistant to the President for Diversity, and part of the WSU Continuing Education Lecture Series. Rod Julander has also been active in the community through his involvement in civic and public service. Dr. Julander was a Utah State Senator in 1972, a Member of the Utah Radiation Control Board, a Legislative Consultant for the National Association of Social Workers and has served as the Vice Chair for the Utah State Democratic Party from 1997 to the present.

Dr. Julander's research has been published in the Western Political Science Quarterly, the Institute of Public Administration and in unpublished reports for the United States Air Force. In 1993, Dr. Julander became the chair of the Political Science department at Weber State University. Under his direction the department has grown and thrived. Dr. Julander has distinguished himself throughout his career as a devoted educator, teacher, mentor and skillful leader.

In 42 years of teaching Dr. Julander has influenced thousands of students. He has through his teaching, inspired, taught and been an example for all those whom he came in contact. We wish to add our thanks to Dr. Julander for his long time service to Weber State University, its students and the state of Utah.

His lovely wife Paula served four years in the Utah State House and is currently serving her second term as a Utah State Senator. Between them, Rod and Paula have 5 children and 14 grandchildren. Therefore, we are proud to join with his many colleagues and former students in extending our congratulations and heartfelt thanks to Dr. Julander for his years of dedicated service to Weber State University. We wish him luck in all his future endeavors.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time, and I rise in opposition to the Rahall amendment.

Few people realize how significant coal is in the everyday lives of Americans. Only a small portion of the population appreciates that nearly one-third of the United States' primary energy production is from coal. In addition, domestically produced coal is the most affordable and reliable electricity generation source.

The reason why this is so significant is that an estimated 60 percent of GDP, gross domestic product, is due to enterprises that use electricity as their front-end energy. Without coal, our economy would be about as robust as the Iraqi regime is today.

Credible studies project the United States will need 54 percent more power by 2025, and that power has to come from somewhere. Most experts agree the growth is most likely to come from coal and natural gas that is located on Federal lands. Mr. Chairman, the coal provisions we are discussing here today will help facilitate and expedite this necessary increase in coal production.

For example, by adjusting the existing 160-acre life-of-lease modifications, we will be moving away from regulations that waste coal reserves and which confine the use of modern mining technology and toward a more rational coal policy. In addition, the 40-

year mine-out requirement causes premature closure and results in bypassing nearby coal reserves. This bill gives the Secretary the needed discretion to allow the consolidation of leased coal reserves.

There has been some discussion about fair competition and pricing, and the suggestion has been that somehow we have higher priced coal out of the West. The problem that the people who are mining coal in the East have is that we have abundant supplies that are relatively easy to produce and are being produced at a much lower cost to consumers. So consumers today are the people who are benefiting. The American families are the people who are benefiting from this low-cost coal that this amendment would undermine.

This amendment, if passed, would cause significant increases in electricity for most Americans, or many Americans. So, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to seek the time in opposition.

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

I would like to first thank the chairman of the full committee for his expeditious movement of this bill through a hearing and through markup. I would also like to thank the ranking member of my Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), with whom I sometimes differ, but who never, never differs without grace. I appreciate his positions.

There are a number of issues upon which we differ here. Let me just point out, the markup was shortened, to some degree, partly because it was treated as a joke. Nevertheless, this legislation has been considered in the past and was subject to a hearing.

The gentleman from North Carolina is pointing out that a number of lawsuits will be prohibited or stopped by this legislation; and the answer to that statement is yes, that is the purpose of this legislation. It is to stop lawsuits which are frivolous and intended only to destroy the manufacturers and distributors and importers of guns in America as viable commercial activities.

The gentleman also pointed out that some of these lawsuits that will be prohibited would be wrongly prohibited, and that is where we disagree. The gentleman referred to 13 recall notices. The gentleman will recall that in our hearing, we had an expert from the gun industry who said that if a weapon discharged because of a defect which was subject to a recall notice, or even if it was not subject to a recall notice, but if it discharged improperly, they would, that is the industry, the gun manufacturing industry, would still be responsible for that defect according to current law.

Now, the bill before us does not change current law. It only preempts the recent rash of frivolous lawsuits that are intended and explicitly intended by the proponents of these lawsuits to destroy the industry.

This amendment should be defeated because it would strip away from the bill an essential protection from frivolous lawsuits. The bill allows manufacturing and product defect cases to go forward provided that the product was used as intended. This phrase is vital to, for example, protect a gun manufacturer from a frivolous claim that the gun should have been designed to prevent someone from sticking a gun up his nose to scratch, with his finger on the trigger. That is clearly not what was intended for the use of the gun.

Another example, while all manufacturers under national standards voluntarily adopted by the industry design guns to be safe from firing on impact when dropped, a person who uses a pistol as a hammer should not be able to sue for defective design, which just makes sense, when the gun discharges after its foolish abuse of the design.

As one important product liability case stated, it is well settled that a manufacturer is under a duty to use reasonable care in designing his product when used in the manner for which the product was intended. The phrase ``used as intended'' is today routinely applied by courts and juries based on circumstances of the case and what the court or the jury sees as a reasonable intended use. Of course, the juries will no doubt draw extensively on, for example, the owner's manual of a firearm for guidance as to what the intended use is.

It would seem clear in most circumstances to carry a gun is an intended use and that manufacturing and design defects that cause harm when a person drops the gun during the course of its intended use properly and appropriately falls within the exceptions of the bill's provision. It would also seem clear that in most, if not all, circumstances pointing a gun at an innocent person and pulling the trigger is not an intended use. These would be fact-intensive inquiries, however, best left to the discretion of judges and juries. The phrase ``used as intended'' is by no means an unfamiliar term in the case law. The amendment should be defeated so existing case law among the States can be used to appropriately apply it on a case-by- case basis.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to respond to the gentleman.

We have, in fact, protected manufacturers in dozens of industries. One example is the light aircraft industry where we have set up rules so that we could actually continue, or actually re-create, our light aircraft industry in America.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell).

(Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns), the author of the underlying bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), my friend, for his gracious comments.

Referring back to the prior speaker, the gentleman from Washington, he made a couple points that I think are important. This is not about the right to own a gun; this is an entirely different discussion.

I indicated, on his concern about seeing trigger locks on all guns, frankly, we need to research and improve safety devices over time. Hopefully, some of those improvements in safety will come from a healthy, robust manufacturing center in our country that can afford to develop the kinds of technologies that will keep the many police officers who are shot with their own guns safe from their own guns. That takes a robust industry to do that.

In closing, let me just point out to the gentleman, if we enter the words ``used as intended,'' ``manufacturing defect,'' or ``design defect'' into Westlaw, a commonly used database, we come up with 1,300 State cases and 900 Federal cases. We have a great deal of understanding about the concept that is being attacked in this amendment.

I encourage the Members of this body to oppose this amendment, to go with legislation that is sensible and reasonable and will improve the environment in which we have to exercise our right to keep and bear arms in America.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, the Watt amendment strikes language throughout the bill protecting dealers and importers of firearms, as well as trade associations. Under the amendment of the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), only firearms manufacturers would receive protection from lawsuits based on criminal misuse of their product by a third party. This amendment would gut the bill and the firearms industry.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon).

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

Mr. Chairman, in response to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush), who calls this bill irresponsible and shameful, let me just point out that a gun dealer who does wrong things is still going to be liable under this bill. A very large majority of Members of this body have already cosponsored the bill, just in refutation.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin).

Mr. Chairman, I yield to myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, in response to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), this is not about trial lawyers and their profits. That would come under the rubric maybe of asbestos where they are taking huge returns compared to the minor returns that the individuals are taking.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Reclaiming my time, this is not a bill that deals with that issue, let me point out for clarifications purposes, but it is about people who would destroy an industry using the thousand cuts of litigation.

Mr. John Coale, one of the personal injury lawyers suing the firearms industry, told The Washington Post: ``The legal fees alone are enough to bankrupt the industry.'' That is what is going on that we are trying to deal with here with this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns), the author of the underlying bill.

(Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I have one further speaker, and then I will close.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave).

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

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out we have heard much characterization of the dealer who sold the gun to the person who ended up getting the gun to the criminal who shot Officer Lemongello. Let me point out that if the characterization that has been overwrought and overstated by the opposition is correct, then there is a claim under the law that is not preempted by this bill for Mr. Lemongello to seek redress.

The fact is this bill does not take away the traditional common-law claims for negligent entrustment and violations of law. It only makes it clear that frivolous lawsuits cannot proceed erratically around the country.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to read two quotes to finish up. First of all, let me point out that the industry has been responsible.

When the city of Boston voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against the firearms industry, they said, ``During litigation the city has learned that the members of the firearm industry have a long-standing commitment to reducing firearm accidents and reducing criminal misuse of firearms.'' And they go on and make further points.

So what is this bill all about? What is the litigation all about that we are trying to deal with in this bill. It is about what John Coale said: ``The legal fees alone are enough to bankrupt the industry.''

What we want to do is protect the industry in America. I urge the Members to vote against this amendment and other amendments and support the underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on this special order.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great time, as we come together to speak tonight, things are going well, thank heavens, in Iraq and I think we will actually see a time and place in modern times when a country as strong as America is willing to go in and secure the freedom for other people. And so this is a time of great faith in America but it is also a time of problems. And, in fact, in Iraq in particular we see one of the side effects of that war has been a significant increase in the cost of oil and gas and energy for the people of America. So tonight 2 or 3 of us who are members of the Western Caucus would like to talk about energy policy in America and the need to pass the energy bill later this week.

A couple of things are important as we do that. In the first place, we need to protect the environment. That is essential. In the second place, we need to have a secure source of energy, and that needs to be largely domestic. And, finally, we need to have a reasonable price for ourselves and for future generations.

A little bit later I am going to talk about oil or gas exploration and development in America. I would like now to introduce a couple of my colleagues. I will start with the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) who will take a couple of minutes to talk about some of the big ideas here.

Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman answer a question?

As I look at this chart, the green line is not oil production in America. That green line is oil production that has come through the trans-Alaska pipeline. So this is essentially the Alaskan oil that has come into America, and yet even that relatively small portion of the oil we bring into America from Alaska through that pipeline has had a dramatic effect on the price of oil elsewhere, and that is because I think the markets are so tight that small fluctuations in our resources make a huge difference in that price. Is that what that chart is saying?

When people talk about the ANWR producing only a tiny fraction of the energy we need, what we are really saying is that a small fraction of the energy has a huge influence on the price we pay at the pump?

We have a chart later on that shows the various countries that produce oil that we bring into America and shows that that production in the new ANWR would actually be the second or third largest amount of oil we bring into America from any part of the world; is that not correct?

Mr. Speaker, if I got this right from the chart there, we add ANWR to the system and bring that oil into America and prices, instead of

spiking like the gentleman's red line shows there, prices tend to plummet like they have done as we have brought that oil from Alaska into the American market earlier?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi), everybody I have talked to who has ever visited the area has had pretty much the same response. I have not been up there. I understand it is a phenomenal visit, and it helps to understand exactly what we are doing and why this is a reasonable bill, especially when we put it in the context of the people that are there locally.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I talked to many, many people about this, and to a man or woman on either the Democratic or Republican side, to the degree they have been there, their views are radically different from what they were before they were there. I think the gentleman expressed it very well.

I know the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) also had some comments for the gentleman.

In just a moment we are going to yield again to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) to sort of explore what the meaning of the size of the disturbance is here.

Let me just say to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi) that his discussion about alternative fuel is important. We actually have a chart here that shows at the highest expectation of alternative fuels, it does not get us very far in the foreseeable future, but in addition to that, let me just say that I firmly believe that people who are local have an understanding of what their environment is, and they have a terrific interest in maintaining it.

We have had this problem in Utah where we have ranchers who care enormously for the land, and we have had outsiders who said, No more moo in 1992, trying to get rid of all cattle grazing in 1992, for instance.

And it turns out we find now that the cattle grazing is remarkably important for the health of the land. So locals have a tendency, since they are responsible for it, since they interact with it, they are more reliable in how they operate and work on their lands.

Mr. Speaker, I now wish to yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

Reclaiming my time for a moment, Mr. Speaker. Everybody in America knows we are struggling. We are paying a lot higher prices for our gas. That really bugs me personally.

If we go over there four or five points, and if the camera will focus on that chart, we see the red piece there. That is the amount of oil that we get from Iraq, and that looks to me like it is less than a third of the amount of oil that we would get daily from this new area in ANWR. Am I reading that correctly?

If I have what the gentleman is saying, and again focusing the camera on that chart, ANWR produces almost as much gas or oil as Saudi Arabia does. The next largest importer of gas or oil to the United States is Canada, and that would be about the same amount we would bring in from ANWR. And then the next largest exporter of oil and gas to America would be Mexico, and that is a little less than the amount of gas that we would bring down from ANWR if we did that drilling. And then the next largest supplier, which is significantly less than what we would get out of ANWR, is Venezuela.

Now, of course, part of our problems today, and I should not blame this all on the war in Iraq, because Venezuela has had its problems in recent times, but we can replace virtually any one of those suppliers with just the oil we get out of ANWR.

And when we get to the next step, we drop way down on that chart, to the point where Nigeria is only giving us a quarter, or a third of the oil that we would get from ANWR.

So ANWR represents a pretty huge step in energy independence in America. Is that what I am seeing here?

I could not help thinking, while the gentleman was talking, that the former mayor sounds like a very articulate, thoughtful guy. And if he figures out people in Washington do not listen to him, he is probably pretty smart too.

But as I listened to what the gentleman was saying, I call to mind an article that was printed about a year ago in the Atlanta Monthly which challenges the notion that the people in the Americas were savages when Columbus arrived. In fact, frankly it was suggested that the populations of Native Americans were much higher. And one of the points the article makes is that the Amazon jungle, which has very, very limited soil, is actually an artifact of man. In other words, we had millions of people living in that area and they created the jungle as people who were taking charge and being aware of their environment.

It seems to me that many of the environmentalists are actually racists. They think that they have got the ideas and that man should not be involved and that we should go back to the way the Native Americans were when we got here, ignoring the possibility that there may have been 100 times as many Native Americans in the Americas when Columbus arrived. The article suggested that the antibody systems of the Indians in America were so similar that diseases came in and decimated them, nearly knocked out 98 percent of the people in the Americas. So, naturally, they did not seem to have the kinds of cultural achievements that were apparent, say for instance from the 2 million acres of terrace lands in Peru.

But it occurs to me that people who assume that they, the Native Americans, did it all wrong or did something else other than what we are doing is a pretty narrow and racist view of those folks. And it seems to me that we are doing exactly the same thing when we decide in Washington, we who have never been to that area and have never talked to those people, that we know best for them what should happen in that area and on land that they love and that they feel a kindred spirit for or feel close to because of their ancestors and the spirits of their ancestors who have been there prior to them.

That is a pretty important point the gentleman is making.

Mr. Speaker, it sounds sort of like what we in America might call a stewardship.

Since the gentleman was just there, let me ask him a couple more questions. In the first place, my understanding is that where we have had the transAlaska pipeline, and where we have drilled, the caribou herds have increased significantly; is that correct?

Warm mating is always better than cold mating, I suspect.

Let me ask one other question, because the gentleman has been there recently, and he said it was 20 degrees below zero.

My understanding is you drill in the wintertime there. You create an ice sheet and then drill down through that sheet, so that when you finish drilling and have the equipment gone, when the springtime comes the ice sheet melts and it is like it was never there in the first place. And, in addition, you only have a little bit of a box that protrudes where the oil goes through.

Well, I thank the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, and I think the gentleman from Utah is now going to shift to some charts that actually gives us a sense of the proportions that are involved. Does the gentleman have the chart that shows Alaska as part of the United States? Because if I could ask the gentleman a few questions.

Alaska appears to me to be about a third of the land mass of the United States. And then we have that little yellow area up there that represents ANWR essentially.

Does the gentleman have the chart that shows what portion of ANWR we would have drilling in?

And if we could focus the camera on that, we would appreciate it.

So we have all of Alaska, representing about a third of the land mass of the United States. We have ANWR, which represents the little green peace, which expanded out indicates what is ANWR and then what would be the coastal plain. That coastal plain is tiny in comparison to Alaska, and the gentleman is actually touching that dot there, if the camera is focusing there at the top of his finger, a little tiny dot which represents the ANWR footprint, and down below there is a little square that represents about 2,000 acres.

That is how much land we are going to disturb; is that about right?

And that was for the coastal plane?

If I am reading this chart correctly, we have Dulles Airport, and I am not sure we understand what is going on in Alaska, but most Members of Congress know Dulles Airport, and that is a total of 13,000 acres. So ANWR is less than a sixth. The area that would be disturbed in ANWR for drilling is less than a sixth of the size of Dulles Airport. It is all right for us to have an airport and mess up 13,000 acres of trees, but we cannot let the people of Alaska or the people in the coastal area have a couple thousand acres that would develop jobs and energy for America that would displace 4 times over our dependence of oil on Iraq. That seems to me to be a no-brainer.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), and then I will speak about oil and gas and we will conclude at that point.

Mr. Speaker, Members can see on this chart that we have the biggest amount of use of energy being petroleum. Natural gas is second; coal third; nuclear, unless we do something significant there, and I remind Members of the fact that we have dozens of nuclear reactors on battle ships, on aircraft carriers and on submarines that have been operating for 30 or 40 more years without an accident, and they have been run by 18 year olds. We know a lot about nuclear, and we are going to have to come back and consider that.

To the gentleman's point on hydropower, we have dammed all of the rivers that we are going to be able to dam. We will not have alternative power from hydropower. What we see is even if we doubled what we are anticipating, it would be irrelevant. We are not going to be able to do much with the huge increases in demand that we have in the future based on renewables. This is a graphic form to show what the gentleman is showing.

Mr. Speaker, if the camera will focus, this is it.

Mr. Speaker, this map shows that. We have some pretty significant reserves off the coast of California, the West Coast, and off the East Coast. But the yellow or orange sticker underneath here points out that 100 percent off the coast on either side of the map are tied up. We cannot tap that.

We have a pretty sizable reserve down in the Gulf of Mexico, but 56 percent of that is off limits, we cannot tap that. There are other areas, and I will point out the gentleman is correct, there is a great deal of gas under the Great Lakes where we are not now drilling and have prohibited ourselves from drilling, and so that leaves the bulk of the gas that we are going to use to heat homes. And somebody said 95 percent of our new generating capacity is gas, and it is gas because people say it is clean and we can get away with it environmentally. But where is the gas going to come from? Texas, which is a big producer of oil and gas, is building just gas generators. They are not going to export any gas in the future because they are going to run their own generators in Texas with that gas.

Unless we take that 40 percent locked up now and make that available and make the rest reasonably available in the near mountain west, we are not going to have gas to heat our homes and to generate this huge amount of new power that we are going to be generating with gas-run turbines in America.

My understanding is that we have actually quadrupled.

Just in the last month we have been up to 19, so that reflects a lack of reserve. The gentleman said the reserves are at the lowest level ever. Reserves are a function of what we know is there.

Reserves are a function of what we learn through science, and so reserves of oil and gas have gone up dramatically. We know that we had oil and gas in the ground at different places, and we did not have the technology to get it out, and so we did not count that as a recoverable reserve. We now have technologies that will get a lot more of that out, so our recoverable reserves have gone up on that basis, and also on the basis that we have explored more so we have found new reserves. So we have a couple of dynamics there.

But those reserves are discounted by what we can reasonably legally get to. I suspect, in fact, we are at an all-time low, as reflected in the high price of oil and gas, with the reserves that we have access to today not because we have limited them or we have not discovered more, but because we have taken those reserves that we have and we have legally limited access to those reserves.

I would say to the gentlemen we have about 10 minutes left in this hour. It has gone quickly. I think which had some interesting information here. I would like to talk for

about 3 minutes about the situation with oil and gas and other energy resources with some charts, and then I would like to let everyone take a couple of minutes to make some final comments.

If I can put these back up, if the camera would focus on those charts, we looked at this, and just let me briefly reiterate, we are going to use a lot more oil and gas and other energy. Some of those are limited. There are no more rivers that we are going to go hydropower on. In fact, we are going to get rid of some of the dams I think over time that we are using for hydropower. The non-hydro renewables, even if you quadrupled the amount of growth we are dealing with here, are not going to be significant in the next 20 or so years.

Nuclear could do something new and different, it could be very helpful in this process, but we are going to have to come to understand nuclear and the safety of nuclear.

Now, if you look at this chart, there are a couple of things that are really interesting about it. In the first place, you note in the seventies and early eighties, we actually had a decline in energy or oil usage. That happened for a lot of reasons. We had a slight recession back then. We also got cars more efficient. But, most importantly of all, we had businesses that had an incentive to be more efficient. So in virtually all areas you had a little bit of improvement in efficiency there.

Then we have gone up, if you see the line in the middle that shows the year 2000, essentially the present, we have gone from that nadir back up a little bit. While that energy has increased, let me just point out that our economy has almost doubled, so we have had a huge increase in output in our economy with a relatively small increase in energy.

But we have gotten a lot of those efficiencies out, and maybe we'll have more in future, but we now have a pretty good idea where we are going to go as the economy continues to grow and we have more demand for energy.

If we can focus on that chart, this is just the energy we use for the generation of power. So you note that the major source of power is from coal. The second major, historically, has been nuclear, which is now level. But you can see that green line of natural gas just spiking up. That is going to spike up because in America we have decided to use natural gas because it is easier to permit new generating facilities with gas than with coal, although we expect more coal generation over time. So we are going to have a big increase in natural gas for electricity generation.

But if you look at the chart, this chart now, this chart is about what percentage of homes are heated with various sources of energy. When you have got a little bit of blue in here developed by electricity, you see that is fairly constant over time. That is also generated increasingly by natural gas. But the vast majority of American homes are going to be heated by gas.

Owning a home is good. We just had a study that was released this last week that indicated the way kids do better in school is by living in a home with their families, as opposed to an apartment or other circumstances. The American dream is to own a home. We are going to heat our homes with natural gas. We need natural gas to do that.

That gets us back to our last chart. The bulk of the gas we are going to be using in America in the future is going to be in the inter- mountain west, and to get that gas we have to drill and we have to change the legal structure that allows us to drill there.

They are either going to be cold, and we know what happens to caribou when they are not warm. If you recall earlier, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi) pointed out that the heat from the pipeline has increased the number significantly. Or they are going to be paying an arm and leg for heat in their homes. And that is, I do not think, an acceptable alternative.

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi).

I thank the gentleman, and the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop). We appreciate their contributions tonight. As members of the Western Caucus, we thank them for being here.

I yield the last couple of minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) to wrap up for the evening.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from New Mexico yielding his time back so that we can take a few minutes to talk about energy policy issues. I would like to immediately turn the time over to our colleague, the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana for his interest, intensity, and clarity on this issue that is so important to the American people right now.

I could not help but think as he spoke that, in fact, in America, the cost of energy is as regressive as any tax could be. That is that poor people drive cars and rich people drive cars. Sometimes the cars that are driven by the rich, though the car may cost more, uses the same kind of gas or even less gas than an old beater uses. The fact is, the cost of energy is significant to the people, even in a regressive way, to all segments of our society.

We are speaking today as the Western Caucus. I want to thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), a member of the caucus who spoke earlier, and the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce). I hope we can get back to him. We also are joined by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), who is the communications Chair for the Western Caucus and also by the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop), who is the secretary of the Western Caucus. I would like to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I could not help but think today about some of the things that the gentleman from Pennsylvania just pointed out. When one of my staffers came in and told me that gas prices today are up to $5.70 per therm, this is an amazing amount and an amazing jump in the springtime when energy demand is down for households, but forced up by this steady demand from large production, energy production facilities.

Mr. Speaker, that appears to me to be the fact of our life today, that we do not have the gas coming out of the ground.

Now, the fact is, we have lots of gas. I mean, we could probably drill 50,000 gas wells in Wyoming alone today on where we know those reserves are; and between Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, in known reserves, we could probably drill a total of 100,000 wells that would make gas available to everybody and reduce that cost so we are not at $5.70, but back to $2 or so per therm that has been typical of the last 10 years.

Yes. They are locked up by policy. I might just point out that the Constitution gives this body the control of policy. Anything the administration does is based on delegation from this body to the administration; and that is what we need to look at, and that is what this bill does. It takes great strides in turning that around so that we get that locked-up gas flowing to the homes of people who only should be paying $2 per therm instead of $5.70 per therm.

Mr. Speaker, I think we are in fact dependent for heating our homes with gas on the gas we produce here incrementally in America.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Utah, and I would like to thank all my colleagues from the Western Caucus for the relatively short time we have taken on the floor today. I can assure my colleagues we will be back in future special orders, trying to flesh out for the people of America these issues and how important they are to the future of America, to the future of jobs, half a million jobs based on a decision made by this body whether or not we will open up a small area in Alaska for drilling. I think that is an important issue.

The gentleman from Utah did a little magic trick with the chart and made it disappear for a moment. There is no magic, there is no magic for solving this problem of energy in America. We need to deal with the realities of these policy issues. We need to get away from demagoguery and toward the very important issue of the price of gasoline for our cars, the price of gas for heating our homes, the price of energy for running our factories and creating jobs for the American people.

I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 1104, the Child Abduction Prevention Act. I would like to commend Chairman Sensenbrenner for crafting such thoughtful and meaningful legislation to help protect our children from the sick people who would do them harm. It is essential that we enact legislation to help prevent kidnapping and recover abducted children. Over 70 percent of abducted children who are murdered are killed within the first 3 hours after they are taken, and almost two-thirds of the killers have had prior records of violent crimes. This legislation goes a long way toward providing protections by establishing the means to help prevent abductions and to aid in the quick return of children who have been kidnapped.

With this bill, we enhance the operation of the AMBER Alert communications network to facilitate the recovery of abducted children. As it now stands, AMBER Alert is in place in 38 States. I hope that every State will implement this program. We are all aware of the important role that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has played in the search for abducted children for nearly 20 years. This bill helps ensure it will continue to play a crucial role by reauthorizing and doubling its annual grant to $20 million each year.

Another important provision of this legislation will help prevent repeat offenses by child abductors. In addition to mandating a minimum 20-year sentence for kidnapping or abducting a person under the age of 18 years, it contains a ``two strikes and you're out'' provision that requires a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for twice-convicted child offenders.

I would like to say once again how blessed we are for the return of Elizabeth Smart in my home State of Utah. Many prayers were answered, including those of my 5-year-old daughter. It is a miracle. We are all thrilled and grateful with this wonderful news. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart, about the importance of this legislation. He is supportive and appreciative of the work Chairman Sensenbrenner and the House have done to protect our children. Ed hopes, as I do, that today's child protection legislation will be sent to the President's desk and signed into law as soon as possible.

Mr. Chairman, I support all of the provisions of this bill. I urge my colleagues to join with us in voting for it.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 788. This bill has two purposes: first, it will revise the boundary of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah by exchanging 152 acres of land owned by Page One LLC for approximately 370 acres of land within the National Recreation Area. This exchange will enable both entities to consolidate the properties and make it possible for the Park Service to better protect the area around Lake Powell and Highway 89.

The second purpose of the bill is to increase the acreage ceiling for the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The park's enabling legislation incorrectly identified the total acreage within the park boundary. H.R. 788 will correct that error.

The bill is the result of years of discussion and negotiation between Page One and the National Park Service. The Park Service has been involved from day one. The local communities have also voiced their support for this bill. In addition, the Kane County Planning and Zoning Commission, the Southern Utah Planning Advisory Council, and the National Parks Conservation Association all endorse this land exchange.

H.R. 788 is a noncontroversial piece of legislation that is beneficial to the park, to the private developer, and to the public at large. I urge its support.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the time to talk about this issue.

I would urge support of our Members for this rule and the underlying bill. Over the last three Congresses, the House has passed this bill on six different occasions. We hope that today we can do it for the seventh time. From about the 105th Congress to the present Congress, the House Committee on the Judiciary has held hearings at which more than 130 witnesses have appeared representing nearly every constituency that is affected in the bankruptcy and business community.

H.R. 975 is virtually identical to the bankruptcy reform legislation that the House passed just 4 months ago, which was essentially the bankruptcy conference report, without the so-called Schumer amendment, so we have eliminated that controversy that we had last year. Last year's bankruptcy conference report was the product of nearly a year of extensive negotiations and compromises that were bipartisan and bicameral.

Let me just point out some of the things that this bill does. H.R. 975 consists of a comprehensive package of reform measures pertaining to both consumer and business bankruptcy cases. It improves bankruptcy law and practice by restoring personal responsibility and integrity in the bankruptcy system and by closing loopholes for abuse. It responds to many of the factors contributing to the increase in consumer bankruptcy filings, such as lack of personal financial accountability and ineffective oversight with respect to deterring abuse in the system. It ensures that consumer debtors repay creditors to the maximum that they can afford. It also includes consumer protection reforms that prioritize the payment of spousal and child support, for instance, making sure that the deadbeat parents cannot use bankruptcy to avoid their support

responsibilities. It also protects a debtor's retirement pension and educational IRAs for the debtor's children from the claims of creditors. And it requires debtors to receive credit counseling before they can be eligible for bankruptcy relief so that they will be able to make an informed choice about bankruptcy, its alternatives and its consequences. We find that many people today are taking out bankruptcy and then finding out how brutal it is to have done so after the fact.

We have also touched on many other issues. We help family farmers and fishermen who are facing financial distress. This is a program we have reauthorized several times independently last year. We authorize the creation of 28 additional bankruptcy judgeships. One of the things we do that is really quite important is we reduce the systemic risk in the financial marketplace in this enactment, which Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan has described as ``extremely important'' for our system today.

In addition to the base bill, we have in the rule a Cannon-Delahunt amendment. If I can speak to that for just a moment, this amendment is identical to H.R. 5525, a bill that our former colleague George Gekas from Pennsylvania introduced in the 107th Congress. This really deals with some of the issues that our colleague from Massachusetts has been pounding on here recently, where we have had Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing and other corporations that have shown us how bad a company can actually be. This bill would provide heightened protections for employees by increasing the monetary cap on wage and employee benefit claims that are entitled to priority under the Bankruptcy Code from $4,650 to $10,000. In addition, it would lengthen the reach-back period for wage claims from 90 days to 180 days.

Secondly, the amendment increases the reach-back period during which fraudulent transfers can be rescinded from 1 year to 2 years and provides that outrageous compensation payments and bonuses and other perks given to a corporation's insiders during the reach-back period which we have now doubled can be rescinded and the payments returned to the bankruptcy estate for distribution to its employees and creditors.

Third, it requires the court to reinstate retiree benefits that a corporate debtor modified within 180 days preceding the bankruptcy filing unless the balance of the equities justifies the modification. This amendment reflects sound bankruptcy policy and will effectuate meaningful reforms.

I hope that the Members of this body will support this rule and the underlying bill and amendment. I would like to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for working with us on this amendment, which I think is going to be very effective in reaching the core problem of companies and insiders who do illegal, wrongful things and then walk away scot- free with a lot of money. Not only should those people be criminalized, they should be put in jail and their assets taken back and put back in the estate so that employees and creditors can have the benefit of that transaction. I thank the gentleman for his work on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) for his infinite work on this bill and hope that we bring it to fruition today.

Let me just comment on the comments just made recently about the source of most bankruptcy. Most people who take up bankruptcy have legitimate reasons. It is either because of loss of employment; or, secondarily, as the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren) mentioned, for medical purposes.

I believe that this bill leaves those people with the same recourse they have, but it is intended to bring to bear the law on those who would use and abuse the bankruptcy system.

The House has worked for nearly 6 years perfecting this legislation, and less than 4 months ago passed virtual identical language by a resounding vote of 244 to 116. When this effort first began, America faced a startling rise in bankruptcy filings. The problem has grown only worse as we have labored to confront ever burgeoning filing and increasingly flagrant abuse of the bankruptcy code. Just last month, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts reported that the number of bankruptcy filings in the latest 1-year period again has broken all previous records. During calendar year 2002, nearly 1.6 million bankruptcy cases were filed, reflecting an increase of approximately 6 percent over the prior year.

The gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) and 50 original co-sponsors introduced H.R. 975 on February 27. The bill improves bankruptcy law and practice by restoring personal responsibility and integrity to the bankruptcy system and by ensuring that both debtors and creditors are treated fairly. In addition to consumer business and bankruptcy law reforms, H.R. 975 includes an extensive array of provisions ranging from implementing an entirely new form of bankruptcy relief to deal with the complexities of transnational insolvencies to extending special protections to family farmers and fishermen.

The bill has been carefully through three Congresses, by the Committee of

the Judiciary, the House, the other body, three conference committees, and ultimately again in the House. There have been some 18 hearings before the subcommittee which I chair and a full committee, at which more than 130 witnesses have testified.

I challenge any Member of this body to point to another topic which has been so thoroughly and completely examined by Congress.

Everyone here recognizes the problem. No one disputes the severity of the current bankruptcy crisis; but, Mr. Chairman, the time for deliberation is over. The time has come to act. We can no longer expect long-suffering American businesses and consumers to wait for meaningful bankruptcy reform. I urge support for H.R. 975.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

(Mr. CANNON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, this amendment which I jointly propose with my colleague from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) responds to several significant issues presented by the recent bankruptcies of Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, and others. First, it would provide heightened protections for employees by increasing the monetary cap on wage and employee benefits.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment made in order by the rule and ask for its immediate consideration.

This amendment, which I jointly propose with my colleague from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) responds to several significant issues presented by the recent bankruptcies of Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing. First, it would provide heightened protections for employees by increasing the monetary cap on wage and employee benefit claims entitled to priority under the Bankruptcy Code from $4,650 to $10,000. In addition, it would lengthen the reachback period for wage claims from 90 days to 180 days.

The second provision of the amendment benefits employees and creditors alike. It increases the reachback period during which fraudulent transfers can be rescinded from one to two years and provides that outrageous compensation payments, bonuses and other perks given to a corporation's insiders during the reachback period can be rescinded and the payments returned to the bankruptcy estate for distribution to its employees and creditors.

The third component of this amendment requires the court to reinstate retiree benefits that a corporate debtor modified within the 180-day period preceding the bankruptcy filing, unless the balance of the equities justifies the modification.

These provisions reflect sound bankruptcy policy and effectuate meaningful reforms. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his work on the amendment, and I would like to continue to work with him. In particular, I would like to consider how this issue, while it might be clarified, given the complexity of the issue, I would recommend that our subcommittee consider possible solutions either formally perhaps through a hearing process or informally, and I would certainly hope that we could do so in time to fine-tune our amendment while the bill is in conference.

Mr. Chairman, I think we have made a good start with this amendment, and it is my intention to schedule hearings as early as possible this year on issues presented by corporate bankruptcies and their impact on workers and retirees and to consider measures that could begin to address the problem in a more systematic way.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), the distinguished member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

As I emphasized in my statement earlier today during the general debate on this legislation, the Congress has extensively debated and carefully considered bankruptcy reform legislation over the past 6 years. H.R. 975 represents a consensus, which has sustained overwhelming majorities in both bodies.

The substitute has not been subjected to the same kind of careful consideration from the House that characterizes H.R. 975. It injects an uncertainty into the means test which undercuts the major purpose of the bill, which is to promote uniformity and predictability in the bankruptcy process. Rather than strengthening the integrity of the bankruptcy system and restoring personal responsibility, the substitute endangers these goals. In addition, the substitute contains provisions relating to abortion which are extraneous to bankruptcy, which the House has rejected, and which compromise the objectives of true bankruptcy reform.

Mr. Chairman, we have come too far to turn back now. I appreciate the gentleman's engagement on this issue. However, the substitute truly does take us back. Rather than seizing a historic opportunity to confront a growing problem and restore confidence in a failing system, the substitute merely rearranges the flaws that have drawn us to this point.

Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``no'' vote on the substitute.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Mr. Richard Judd for his devotion and his dedication to public power and the residents of Utah. Mr. Judd has led the development and success of the Utah Municipal Power Agency (UMPA) and has set the benchmark for the level of service and professionalism that residents living in public power communities in Utah have come to expect. At the end of this year, Richard Judd will retire as General Manager of UMPA and his presence will be sorely missed.

Since 1970, Mr. Judd has played a key role in the development of public power throughout Utah. He started his career with Bountiful City Power in 1970, where he was trained and certified as a Journeyman Electric Utility Lineman and later promoted to crew supervisor. While at Bountiful City Power, Mr. Judd also served as the Employees' Association President.

In 1980, Mr. Judd became the Power Department Supervisor at Nephi City Power. There he was given the responsibility of creating a new department. He hired staff, established policies and procedures, and coordinated all improvements to the city's power system.

While at Nephi City Power, Mr. Judd served in the organization and development of the Utah Municipal Power Agency, a joint action agency for six public power cities in Utah. He was made General Manager of the agency in 1987.

Under the direction of Mr. Judd, UMPA set the standard for public power agencies in providing efficient service, a stable power supply, and a commitment to its member cities. During the recent energy crisis that plagued western states, UMPA members were the only utilities in the state and the greater western region that did not raise retail rates as a result of the outrageous market prices.

Through committee testimony and service on energy task forces, Mr. Judd has provided expert knowledge to the Utah State Legislature and the Governor of Utah.

As an unselfish supporter of public power, Mr. Judd has distinguished himself throughout his career as a devoted employee, an innovator, and a skillful leader.

Therefore, I am proud to join with his many colleagues in extending my praise and congratulations to Richard Judd for his dedicated service to public power communities throughout the great state of Utah. I extend my most heartfelt good wishes for all his future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, as dean of the Utah delegation, it is my sad duty to announce to the House the passing of the Honorable Wayne Owens, a former Member of this body and a good friend to many of us.

Wayne died unexpectedly just before Christmas of a massive heart attack while walking on the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the conclusion of a peace-seeking trip to several countries in the Middle East. He was only 65 years old.

That Wayne Owens would be involved in that kind of activity as his life ended is no surprise to those of us who knew him. He spent a significant part of his life trying to bring about accommodation of the interests and passions plaguing that part of the world.

Wayne Owens served in this House from 1973 to 1975 and again from 1987 to 1993, representing the people of the Second District of Utah. His political career inspired a generation of young people with his political idealism. He was a Democrat and he and I differed on many policy issues, but we never disagreed on the need for the involvement of the electorate, and especially young people, in the art and science of making law. In fact, I might say that while we disagreed on almost every issue, he was never, and I hope I also was never, disagreeable.

In the House, Wayne served on the Committee on the Judiciary, and we had parallel careers in that he investigated one Republican President and I, early in my career, investigated another Democratic President. Later, he served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and it was his service there that led to his lifelong concern for the people of the Middle East and to his efforts to mediate their conflicts. He created the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation to assist in that effort.

At the funeral service held for Wayne Owens, Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said of him: ``Any man who is engaged in the cause of peace is engaged in the cause of Christ. By that measure, Wayne was a true Christian.''

The world is poorer for his passing. I join my colleagues in extending to his wife, Marlene, and his children and grandchildren our deepest sympathy for his loss, and our profound respect for their husband, father, and grandfather. We will miss him.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Members have 5 days to submit tributes to their former colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).

Mr. Speaker, I first would like to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) for his comments. He and I worked closely together on issues that he has picked up on, public lands in Utah, from Mr. Owens; and I want to thank him for his kind words to our colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler).

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler) for his kind words.

I will submit for the record a statement by the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman). If I may take a moment to summarize what the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) said. His ideas are important.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) served with Mr. Owens in the House and pointed out in his comments that Mr. Owens was remarkable for the broad range of issues with which he dealt.

He goes on to say that Mr. Owens was a very effective legislator, and after he left Congress that he was deeply involved in the Middle East peace process. One of the reasons why he was so effective, according to the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), is that all sides accepted him as an honest broker. And finally, he never stopped believing that peace was possible even in the most difficult times recently in the Middle East.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall).

As the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) knows, my first job as a lawyer, Madam Speaker, was with his father working on these very cases that we are talking about. It was one of the great experiences of my life, and it is one of many of the areas where Congressman Owens and I had a great deal in common.

I came to represent many of the people who were effected by the radon from the uranium mines. In fact, there is a whole town of widows, Minersville, Utah, which was part of my district until recently. So this has been a very important part of my life and one of reasons I appreciate the life and service of Mr. Owens.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), for his kind words with regard to my dear friend, Mr. Owens.

Madam Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida, and I would now yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his kind comments and now yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her kind words. It dawned on me during her discussion that Congressman Owens has been away from this body for 8 years; and yet many, many people have taken time at an awkward hour, on an important day, to express their appreciation for him and his work, and I hope that this is the kind of thing that his family will appreciate and understand and understand the depth of the value he brought to this institution.

Madam Speaker, I would yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio. If I might make a couple of comments on things she said.

I was thinking during this discussion that Mr. Owens spent a tenth of his life as a Mormon missionary. That is a remarkable commitment. Three years as a missionary and another 3 years as a mission president for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

In addition, the gentlewoman mentioned he could have easily spent his time on a ski slope. And in fact, in Utah, with all due respect to some of the other States who pretend, we actually have the best skiing in the world. So he could easily have taken advantage of that.

In fact, I was talking to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) a few moments ago, who will speak in a couple of minutes, in fact I think he is next, and he mentioned how healthy Wayne was. The fact is he was a healthy, robust, happy, thoughtful person who could have spent his life skiing or doing other things that he would have enjoyed and I know he did enjoy. But rather than do that, he chose to do things that were difficult, that were very difficult, and, frankly, very important.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin. I did not think about it until he spoke, but it occurs to me that he did not spend a tenth of his life doing missionary work, but when we consider the religious zeal he brought to the Middle East, it was probably more like two-tenths or a third of his life in these difficult and selfless aspirations.

Madam Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson) for his kind words and for his help in organizing this event for Congressman Owens, who preceded him sometime ago in his Second District of Utah.

The last time I spent some time with Wayne Owens was the evening of one of the sniper attacks in northern Virginia here and the freeways were shut down. Wayne and I flew in together and shared a taxicab into town and I had the pleasure of spending 2 hours with him.

The nice thing is the government only paid the normal fee because we split the taxicab fee, but it was one of the more pleasant periods of time I have spent. We talked about many issues and talked about many things. We talked about the issues we had worked together on and the issues we disagreed on. It was a fine experience from my perspective.

The gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson) mentioned that Wayne Owens was a person who caused you to work. I worked for Wayne Owens when he was a professor of law and I took a class from him. I worked against him in some of his campaigns. I was wondering about the 12-year-old and whether I was actually engaged or not. I think, in fact, I am a little older than the gentleman from the Second District, and will have to do the math later to see who had known Mr. Owens longer. He was a dear friend for as long as I can remember.

We did work against each other on campaigns. We both suffered through a remarkable experience of investigating a President, and he and I developed a deep bond of shared experience there. We both worked together on the downwinders issue. That was my first job in law school, was working on that issue with the father of the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall), Stewart Udall. And it was wonderful that Wayne picked that up and made that work.

We both shared a deep, deep love for the beautiful public lands of Utah. He traveled those lands, I traveled those lands, yet we had very distinct differences on how those should be managed. We shared a kinship, however, based upon one of the things that became a hallmark of his life, and that was, from my perspective, wonderful. He was a friend.

I am richer from my experience in knowing Wayne Owens, and we as an institution and as a country are poorer

for his passing. I would like Marlene and the children and grandchildren to know how much we cared for him. I hope that this hour that we have spent talking about him will help them understand the deep, deep effect he had on our lives and on the course of American history, on the course of how we deal with our public lands and how we deal with individuals.