Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the tenure of Mr. Steve Lewandowski, on the occasion of his 20th anniversary as announcer at the San Diego Polo Club. As a beloved media personality in San Diego County, I would like to congratulate Steve and celebrate his two decades of outstanding commentary for the Club.

Known as the Voice of the San Diego Polo Club, Steve has provided invaluable entertainment acting as a play-by-play announcer, color commentator and ambassador for the game he learned to play at the club. With Steve's wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm for the game, you wouldn't know that he didn't have much background in polo when he arrived in San Diego in 1982 as a naval officer based in Coronado. But after his first match at the Club in 1991, he was instantly hooked.

With a background in public speaking, Steve came in to announcing at the club by chance, as a last minute backup whose versatile talents instantly took everyone by storm. From there it was history as Steve proceeded to take over the distinguished post that has warmed hearts for the last 20 years.

Novice fans count on him to provide the introductory polo basics, seasoned veterans want the inside scoop--Steve delivers it all in an eloquent balance. Known for his ability to convey tremendous excitement and enthusiasm, Steve has announced at the World Cup, done commentary as ``the voice of polo'' for ESPN, and has traveled all over the world, including Mexico, Ireland, and Australia.

Furthermore, Steve has made countless contributions to our community as the Master of Ceremonies and auctioneer for hundreds of charity events. Steve holds a particular passion and longstanding commitment to supporting wounded warriors. Time and again, Steve has demonstrated his admirable dedication and unwavering support for wounded warriors and the organizations that serve them.

Madam Speaker, I ask that my colleagues please join me in recognizing Steve

Lewandowski on the occasion of his 20th anniversary announcing at the San Diego Polo Club. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose the Dodd-Frank bill. It is overreliant on vague, complex regulations administered by large bureaucracies. We should not be putting our trust in the wisdom of the same regulators who failed us during the last crisis.

Instead, we must strive for true transparency and accountability in the financial sector, both for private companies and for the agencies that regulate them. The financial industry submits huge volumes of information to various regulators--financial statements, securities disclosures, banking reports, loan-level data, and much more. Too often, this information cannot be easily searched or analyzed because it is trapped within lengthy documents that must be manually reviewed.

The financial crisis of 2008 demonstrated the dangers of opaque financial reporting. Complex transactions and products helped financial companies hide leverage from investors, while regulators failed to recognize systemic risks and ongoing frauds.

Effective scrutiny of the financial industry's regulatory information, by the public as well as by regulators, could give us a fighting chance at avoiding the next crisis. And to enable effective scrutiny, that information needs to be easily searchable, sortable, and downloadable--and also publicly accessible as often as possible. Transparency and accountability in the financial sector represent our best hope that someone will spot hidden leverage and risk.

As a member of the conference committee for this legislation, I felt it was my responsibility as a conferee to do my best to improve the bill. On the first day of the conference, I offered amendments to increase transparency throughout the financial industry by requiring financial regulatory agencies to designate electronic data standards for the financial information they receive from the industry. In other words, under my amendments, financial companies, securities issuers, and other regulated entities would apply consistent, unique electronic tags--like a bar code at the grocery store--to each individual element of the forms, statements, and filings they submit to the government, instead of using paper or plain text.

In this technologically possible? Absolutely. In fact, some regulators are already using financial data standards. At the Securities and Exchange Commission, Chairman Christopher Cox championed new rules that require public companies to file their financial statements using a financial data standard called XBRL. Meanwhile, the FDIC has begun to require banks to use XBRL to apply electronic tags to each element of the call reports that they must file. In fact, XBRL has become a global data standard for financial information. It is already in use by regulators and stock exchanges in Australia, China, Japan, India, Korea, and many other countries. It transcends language barriers and differences in accounting standards to make financial information accessible to anyone, anywhere.

Why are these technologies so important? Data standards in financial regulation can help us achieve--for the first time--full transparency and accountability for both the regulated private companies and the federal agencies that regulate them.

For example, let's consider what has happened at the SEC. When companies submit their balance sheets and income statements in XBRL, every number in the balance sheet and every number in the income statement gets a unique electronic tag. That means market analysts and investors no longer need to manually hunt through lengthy documents and transcribe numbers into their own spreadsheets and databases. It makes companies' public financial information instantly searchable, sortable, and downloadable. And that means better transparency for publicly- traded companies. It has become much easier and much cheaper to track companies' performance. It has become easier for the SEC--or anyone else--to apply automatic filters to check for indicators of fraud.

For a second example, consider the experience of the FDIC, which now requires banks to file their call reports in XBRL. The electronic tags for every number in the call report helps banks to achieve better accuracy because it automatically checks all the mathematical relationships between numbers. Before the FDIC adopted XBRL, 30 percent of the call reports contained mathematical errors. Afterwards, the error rate fell to zero. Better accuracy also means better transparency.

In the early successes at the SEC and the FDIC are any indication, financial data standards would allow the markets to see reckless behavior ahead of time, or at least allow us to know the underlying value of assets when the markets begin to melt.

Financial data standards lead to better transparency for public companies and banks--but they also bring about better accountability for the regulators themselves. Why? Because when watchdog groups, financial media, and the public can slice and dice financial regulatory data for themselves, they can see for themselves whether the regulators are doing a good job at finding fraud and analyzing risk.

For all these reasons, I felt strongly that true financial reform should build on the SEC's and the FDIC's experience by adopting financial data standards throughout the whole regulatory system-- securities disclosures, banking reports, swap transaction data, insurance reports, rating agencies' disclosures, and every other type of information collection that is discussed anywhere in the entire 2,000-page bill. My amendments would have accomplished that, and would have also required the data to be made public wherever possible--with appropriate protections for trade secrets, privacy, and so on.

When I proposed my amendments on that first day of the conference, and advocated for greater transparency in our financial system, Chairman Frank agreed with me. He accepted the idea of requiring the agencies to adopt financial data standards. At Chairman Frank's request, my staff worked with his staff, and with Chairman Towns' staff at the Oversight Committee, to draft--on a bipartisan basis--a comprehensive package of financial data standards amendments. On the last day of the conference I proposed the comprehensive package to Chairman Frank and the other

House conferees. They adopted it unanimously by voice vote.

But this victory for transparency and accountability did not stand. In the wee hours of Friday morning--even though the House conferees had agreed unanimously on the amendments that Chairman Frank and I had worked out together--the Senate conferees stripped the amendments out of the bill, and the final conference report does not include them. There is no written record showing why my transparency amendments were not included. Ironically, they were removed in a completely opaque fashion. By blocking amendments that would have achieved transparency in the financial sector through technology, the authors of this legislation have made it more difficult for financial institutions and regulators to be held accountable, setting us up for more devastating financial failures in the future.

I am very disappointed that this conference report ignores the need for greater transparency in the financial system by adopting proven technologies. Transparency is the only real solution to the corruption, hidden leverage, and ineffective bureaucracies that contributed to the previous financial crisis. Let me give you just a few examples.

First, transparency through technology can stop corruption. Suppose the financial statements for Bernie Madoff's investment firm had been encoded using a financial data standard, and made publicly available. Analysts would have used software to automatically compare Madoff's results with others in the industry. It would have been clear to everyone that his results were suspiciously consistent--such an outlier, in fact, that fraud could be the only explanation. But the SEC's new XBRL reporting rules hadn't yet been adopted when Madoff was running his fraud, and in any event they still only apply to public companies. Therefore, only the sophisticated financial firms who paid for Madoff's data to be manually entered into their software systems noticed these patterns. Individual investors who trusted Madoff never learned how unusual his results were until it was too late. Neither did the SEC. The SEC relies on manual reviews, and never has developed the ability to do quantitative analyses. The SEC was as clueless as anyone. My amendments would have required the SEC to impose a financial data standard on investment advisers' filings, like Bernie Madoff's, and to make that data available when appropriate.

Second, transparency through technology can reveal hidden leverage. The financial crisis is partly the result of complex mortgage-backed securities which became toxic because nobody could reliably estimate their value. The technology exists to make even very complex assets transparent. If we were to require financial companies that bundle mortgages into mortgage-backed securities to apply electronic tags to the underlying information--for instance, the ZIP code and payment history of each mortgage--and regularly update that information, then the securities would be easy to value. My amendments would have required the SEC to start exactly that project.

Third, transparency through technology can make regulators more effective, less bureaucratic, and less wasteful. Just last Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a shady Ukrainian company whose sole employee and owner was a 79-year-old massage therapist had been cleared by the SEC to sell stock in this country--even though its filings reported no revenue and $100 in assets. I don't mean to suggest that small, newly-founded companies should not have access to the capital markets. But if the SEC had required initial filings to be encoded using a financial data standard, this company's lack of revenue and assets would have raised automatic red flags and triggered greater scrutiny. My amendments would have required the SEC to impose financial data standards on registration statements and prospectuses.

In a letter to Chairman Frank, these principles were endorsed by all of the major independent financial services standards organizations, including the Financial Information Services Division of the Software and Information Industry Association, FIX Protocol Limited, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, the International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication, SWIFT, and XBRL US. And my amendments, before the House conferees approved them unanimously, were agreed to by the SEC, the Fed, the FDIC, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

My amendments would have imposed transparency through data standards across the whole financial system--for the Fed, for the FDIC, for the Comptroller of the Currency, for the CFTC, and especially for the SEC. But they were stripped out of the Dodd-Frank bill in the wee hours of Friday--even though my staff and Chairman Frank's staff had worked together to draft them, even though the regulators had approved them, and even though the House conferees had unanimously adopted them. Despite this setback, I am determined that transparency through technology is essential to foreclosing another financial meltdown. I am determined to pass legislation to ensure that financial disclosure information--and other types of regulatory information, too--is reported using data standards to make it fully searchable, sortable, and downloadable.

Yesterday, when the conference briefly reconvened, Chairman Frank promised to try again. We will work together to introduce stand-alone financial transparency legislation with the same provisions, bring it through the Financial Services Committee, seek quick House passage, and again confront the Senate. Americans have the right to free access to regulatory information that is searchable, sortable, and downloadable, and they have the right to use that data to hold financial companies and regulatory agencies accountable. I will continue to fight for legislation to accomplish this, and transparency will have its day.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the military service of Major Albert F. Corchuelo on the occasion of his retirement from the United States Marine Corps. I commend Major Corchuelo's career and offer my sincerest thanks for his more than 20 years of dedicated service in protecting our nation.

Beginning his career with an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, Major Corchuelo's graduation was followed by his commissioning as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. His first assignment included serving as an Air Defense Control Officer in Cherry Point, North Carolina and was subsequently hand selected to apply his skills as a Spanish linguist as a liaison in support of counter-narcotics operations in Barranquilla, Columbia.

In 1992, Major Corchuelo was selected to train and was designated as a Naval Aviator in Pensacola, Florida where he was promoted to Captain during flight training. Upon receiving his Naval Aviator wings, he was assigned to HMT-302 in Tustin, California, followed by HMH-462 where he deployed with 15th and 13th MEU. During his tour he served as Pilot Training Officer, Assistant Logistics Officer, Tactics Officer, Administration Officer, and Legal Officer. Throughout the course of these numerous duties, Major Corchuelo also participated in Exercise Hunter Warrior as part of the Commandant's Advanced Warfighting Experiment.

In 1998, Major Corchuelo graduated from Amphibious Warfare School and served as the Executive Officer (XO) for the Training and Education Company at Headquarters and Service Battalion. Soon after this term, Major Corchuelo joined the Selected Marine Corps Reserve in 2001. Just one year later he accepted orders to the Active Reserves as the Assistant Operations Officer which deployed shortly thereafter.

With distinguished tours of duty in Kosovo, Djibouti, and the Persian Gulf for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, Major Corchuelo's tenure in the Marine Corps is certainly worthy of commendation. In 2004 he transitioned to Camp Pendleton where he served as the Officer-in-Charge (OIC), then as the Reserve Officer Recruiter for the West Coast for the next three years. In 2008 he operated as the OIC for Prior Service Recruiting while earning a Master of Science Degree in Information and Telecommunications Systems Management. On July 9, 2010, Major Corchuelo finished out his extensive military career as the Executive Officer for Reserve Site Support Del Mar at Camp Pendleton, California.

Major Corchuelo distinguished himself by extraordinary acts of leadership time and again. Among his many accomplishments, Major Corchuelo's decorations include the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (2), Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, Joint Meritorious Unit Award, Navy Unit Citation (5), Meritorious Unit Citation (3), National Defense Medal (2), Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (3), Kosovo Campaign Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, Recruiting Ribbon, Armed Forces Reserve Medal and the NATO Kosovo Medal.

These recognitions are a true testament, among other things, of Major Corchuelo's great dedication, leadership and commitment to our country.

I offer Major Corchuelo my warmest congratulations and may he enjoy a rich and rewarding retirement with his wife Peggy and his two children, Daniel and Brian.

Madam Speaker, I ask you to please join me in honoring all the brave men and women who have served in the United States Armed Forces, and the admirable service of Major Albert Corchuelo.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the distinguished tenure of Mr. Don W. Martens, on the occasion of his retirement as Chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Intellectual Property Law. At the helm of this association, Mr. Martens has brought a wealth of knowledge, experience and leadership--leaving a profound impression on intellectual property law.

Mr. Martens will end his one-year term as Chair of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law in early August. With over forty years' experience as an intellectual property litigator, Mr. Martens is a leading voice in intellectual property matters.

Mr. Martens graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor's degree in engineering followed by a juris doctorate degree from George Washington University Law School where he was Patent Editor of the Law Review and graduated first in his class.

Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Martens has served as President of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) and three terms as a member of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's Advisory Council. Prior to his current Chairmanship, Mr. Martens also served as Chair of the Section's Patent Law Reform Task Force.

Additionally, Mr. Martens' list of remarkable achievements include being named as one of ``The Top 10 Patent Lawyers in the World'' by PLC Global Counsel, as one of ``the 20 Best Patent Lawyers in the World'' in a comprehensive international survey by Euromoney Legal Media Group, one of two ``Leading IP Lawyers'' in the United States by the Global Counsel's Handbook and one of the ``Best Lawyers in America'' for both Alternative Dispute Resolution and Intellectual Property Law--all impressive distinctions.

In 2005, Mr. Martens and the IP Section of the ABA were asked to put together a Patent Law Reform Task Force to assist in the gathering of information for legislative reform efforts in Congress. As a result, the Task Force developed a White Paper which has since become a well- regarded source for objective and well-reasoned analysis and recommendations on patent reform issues, both in Congress and the private sector.

Madam Speaker, I ask that my colleagues please join me in recognizing the celebrated tenure of Mr. Don Martens and applaud his determined efforts as Chair of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law to improve the legal process and promote the rights of inventors across the country.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the service of Anthony Cerone and his dedicated service to the people of the United States on the occasion of his retirement.

In February 1976 Mr. Cerone was hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and was assigned as a Correctional Officer at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego, California. He was promoted to the rank of Senior Officer Specialist in August of 1980.

In 1979, Americans were taken hostage at our Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Mr. Cerone responded by joining the U.S. Air Force Ready Reserve. He remained until 1985 and was Honorably Discharged as a Staff Sergeant.

With a desire to work in the field and within the community enforcing immigration law, Mr. Cerone pursued a career with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and was hired in November of 1980, assigned to the U.S. Border Patrol in San Ysidro, CA as an Immigration Detention Officer. He transferred to the San Diego District Downtown Office in May of 1983. He was promoted to Lead Detention Enforcement Officer in 1985 and Deportation Officer in 1987.

Mr. Cerone graduated from Miramar College, San Diego, CA in 1983 and earned a degree in the Administration of Justice.

In 1999, Mr. Cerone was promoted to Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer where he formed and was the team leader of the newly created Alien Removal Unit. On June 30, 2001, Mr. Cerone voluntarily retired with over 29 years of federal service.

After September 11, 2001, Mr. Cerone desired to return to federal law enforcement to aid in the effort to protect the United States and its citizens from future terrorist attacks.

In March of 2002, he was hired as a Special Deputy U.S. Marshal to protect the U.S. Courts and its staff at the U.S. District Court of Southern California, in San Diego. During this time, he also applied to return to service with the INS.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hired Mr. Cerone as the Officer-in-Charge of the ICE Otay Detention Facility on June 12, 2005. After two years of overseeing this custodial operation that managed 1,000 ICE detainees and over 400 employees, Mr. Cerone transferred to the downtown ICE office on July 1, 2007, as an Assistant Field Office Director.

Madam Speaker, I ask that my colleagues please join me in recognizing the distinguished career of Anthony Cerone serving the People of the United States.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise with serious concerns with H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvement Act. This began as a bipartisan bill, and if our one opportunity, a motion to recommit, is passed, it will have an opportunity to end as a bipartisan bill. There is no

question in my mind that telework is the future. It, in fact, is the present. Virtually every Member of Congress has remote access. Virtually every Member of Congress and many of their staff carry BlackBerrys and use other tools so that we can work here and around the world. It would be just about impossible for a Member of Congress and their key staff to bounce back and forth between their far-away districts, here on the Hill, and various meetings if we didn't have the ability to be portable in our information access. So we are not here to talk about telework as though it is a bad thing, because it can be an extremely effective tool.

We do have concerns. One of our specific concerns in the underlying legislation is, at a time in which we're borrowing nearly 40 percent of the operating cash of our government--put in another way, once you get past entitlements, everything we spend is borrowed--it would seem ridiculous that something that can save money, that is argued to save money, in fact, is not required to be at least neutral in its expenditure. This bill is expected to cost millions of dollars per year and, like most government estimates, is likely to cost far more than that if it's expanded to its logical conclusion.

So, Madam Speaker, it is my hope that as we begin offering what we were not allowed to offer under the rule, which would be any amendments that would curtail the millions of dollars in costs over 5 years or to deal with the reality that if you're going to claim that you can save the construction of office buildings, you should be required to show that you are saving it. If you claim that you are going to be more efficient by not having a commute time, you should at least be required to show it. Additionally, we are very concerned that recent discoveries have shown that there are vulnerabilities which have not been properly cared for in this bill. The bill authorizes it but does not require it.

I am, however, pleased that in a number of areas, the majority has made improvements and has taken many suggestions. The committee did work, as you would expect us to, in favor of the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal workforce in getting this bill as far as we could go. It is my sincere hope that one and only one opportunity to further amend would be accepted and that this will be a broadly bipartisan bill at the end.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), one of the cosponsors of the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman).

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

The chairman and the majority leader both make good points, and I would like to address them for just a moment. The chairman, who I have had a good working relationship with, made the point that this passed out of committee without anything left unresolved. And to a certain extent I would agree with him. Except of course we didn't have a score on this. We never do. We didn't know what this bill was going to cost. And when we discovered that this was going to cost millions of dollars every year, we made it clear before the last round of a request for a vote that we would have to find an offset or we would have to modify the bill to ensure that it would not cause the taxpayers to look at this as simply a perk for government.

Because ultimately we can talk about morale, but the Federal workforce makes on the average $60,000 more than their private-sector counterparts. So morale should already be good in an organization the size of the government that has added a quarter of a million new workers since we went into a recession.

There is no question that telework can justify this if it's done properly. Our amendment is going to seek, our one motion to recommit-- we weren't allowed any amendments--to try to at least trim around the edges to have our Members be able to go home and say of course we supported telework, but we made sure there were some safeguards of the American people's money.

The amendments that we tried to offer to what was known in advance to be a closed rule, a please do not suggest, create a process problem that I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will be sensitive, along with the American people, to. Our committee has 40 or so members. That's roughly one-tenth of the Congress. So 9 out of 10 Members of the House never get an opportunity to be there. As a matter of fact, including the Delegates, it works out just exactly as 10 percent. So 400 people didn't have input when we were working this through committee.

Some may have noticed the bill, but as the majority leader said, he has been working on this for 20 years. Who would have thought it would come to the floor now? So can we as a body deny the process of 400 people, 400 voters, if you will, or representatives of voters, including yourself, Mr. Speaker? How can we deny you the ability to look at something when it's going to become a bill on the floor and offer constructive amendments?

The process of the Rules Committee is supposed to deal with germaneness. It's supposed to deal with whether or not your amendment is properly written, whether it seeks to amend a portion of the bill allowed to be amended. That's not the way it is here in the House right now. We had amendments perfectly allowable, and they simply were ruled out because you could. So we will use our one opportunity, our motion to recommit. We trust that we have written it properly, and that it will be found to be in order. And we trust that both sides will see that it is modest, it's moderate, it's intended simply to deal with cost and other concerns in the bill.

There is no killer in this bill. There's nothing the American people would not be happy with in this bill the way it is. And there is nothing they will be unhappy with if the motion to recommit passes. We structured it that way. We would like to have something that started off as bipartisan end as bipartisan.

Mr. Speaker, I truly believe we are going to have that opportunity. I would hope that everyone in this body will view it that way, look at it carefully, come to the same conclusion, and we will leave here today on a bipartisan basis.

I reserve the balance of my time.

If the gentleman would yield, that's correct.

I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. It's pay and benefits.

At $175,000, one Congressman to another, yes. The typical American making $35,000 or $40,000 understands we make a lot more.

In pay and benefits.

Even though it's not germane to today, I'll be glad to make that available to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I note the gentlelady acts as though already everybody teleworks. It's very clear that the people who were able to telework, that, quote, saved us $30 million during that snowstorm, were the people who have redundant activities, for the most part, people who had a duplicate computer, duplicate capacity. That costs money. That is an item that we simply want to make sure is cost justified.

You know, many people on the other side of the aisle, including the next speaker, have talked about the private sector. Well, I, for one, came from the private sector, and I very much understand that we do a cost benefit.

The previous speaker talked about insurance salesmen. You don't care where they are. That's right. An insurance salesman is usually a commission person. It's somebody who's very accountable for their pay because it's earned and justified against revenue. More importantly, even their package of perks is figured into that.

So, in the private sector, if somebody costs, if you will, $190,000 dollars--or as the average Federal worker costs, nonuniformed, $119,000 per worker versus $59,000 in the private sector--in the private sector they know what their sales or revenues or profits are relative to that cost. In the public sector, we don't.

All we're seeking to do, all we're talking about here today is we want telework to be used and rolled out extensively where it can be at least revenue or cost-neutral relative to alternatives of bringing people in. That's all we're asking for. We believe it's reasonable.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself just 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, my good friend from Virginia was accurate in almost everything he said, but the one part that I'd like to correct is we don't need more time. We had sufficient time, once the scoring was in, to figure out what needed to be changed among the various hundred or so Republicans who were not on the committee, and we offered them. And the gentleman from Virginia is not on the Rules Committee so he's not part of that hidden hand that simply doesn't allow any dissent or any amendments or any corrections once a decision has been made by the majority. So, you know, I appreciate the fact he has been good to work with and that he is not somebody who would have limited that, and we would be happy to share all of our amendments if we had a chance of having them ruled in.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

As I begin, my staff is bringing over to the chairman a copy of something I am going to include in the Record from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce. The chairman may recognize the Department of Commerce is part of the administration and part of government.

Their assessment in 2008--and it has only become greater--is that we have as Federal workers against average--this is not against average of job per job but just against the working stiff, whatever they do in the outside world versus the working stiff in government, $29,169.63 of additional wages. What makes the huge difference the American people don't always see is that in the private sector, a typical benefit package is about $9,881. Well, a civilian Federal Government employee has a benefit package on the average worth about $40,784 or $30,900 more.

So, Mr. Speaker, we do have the Department of Commerce currently, during the Obama administration, telling us very clearly--not that engineer versus engineer. I appreciate the way

you can match up various jobs, but the Federal workforce is a highly skilled and highly paid workforce, and we should understand that if we are going to have telework go greater and greater--and I approve of it doing it--we have two reasons to do it.

One is continuity of government, and sometimes continuity of government can cost more. It can be for redundant computers, redundant centers and so on, no question at all. But often it is, and as it is justified in this bill by many of the people speaking on it on both sides of the aisle, it is also about avoiding traffic, avoiding building new buildings, avoiding heating and air conditioning, avoiding costs. All the minority would like to make sure is that this expansion meets one of those requirements or the other. If it is necessity and it costs more, fine. Of course you can have redundant facilities; but if it is intended to be cost savings, let's make sure it's cost savings.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, although we have 12 minutes left on our side in debate, I don't intend to use it. I also don't intend to continue to have the American people hear haggling on the House floor about how much one side gets paid or another. For that reason, I will today post at republicans.oversight.house.gov the Department of Commerce report in sufficient detail for people to realize that $60,072.97 is roughly the additional amount in pay and benefits that Federal employees receive than the average private sector.

But the interesting thing about the Federal workforce versus the gentleman who was talking about commuting from Bridgeport and other parts in his State, is they are not laid off. They are not suffering. As a matter of fact, they have been net-hired. The growth that has occurred over the last 2 years has been in government. The pay increases have been in government. The benefit increases have been in government.

Now, we are not talking about telework as a benefit, although some speakers have talked about family time because you can telework and so on. We are talking about telework for one of two reasons that are justified, and Republicans will today, I hope, vote for the motion to recommit and then vote for final passage, because it either is part of the job of government, the sustainability, the continuity of government, and we want to make sure we use telework in order to advance that, or remote access, if you will, or it saves the taxpayers dollars.

If someone doesn't drive for an hour and they work an hour more remotely, that is a good thing. But if we are simply improving quality of life, having redundant computers at a cost of several thousand dollars plus several more thousand dollars in maintenance and overhead and renewal and software support, Mr. Speaker, we are not doing what the American people expect us to do.

The American people expect us to start being safeguarders of their precious money, which isn't even current but the money we are going to have to take from them in the future to pay back what we are borrowing today.

If we don't start counting the pennies, the nickles and the dollars and make sure they are well spent, then it is very clear we will never get to any kind of an affordable government, a balanced budget, and there will be an inevitably that the United States will look too much like Greece and not enough like the country that we were so proud of this past Fourth of July.

We have a great tradition, a tradition of small government and large private sector. Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that our government works more efficiently so we can have a smaller government that meets the basic requirements, not that we simply expand government with one after another programs.

With that, I fully expect that we will make this bill better, that we will continue to work on telework being to the advantage of the American taxpayer and not simply an additional item to be spent.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I am, in its present form.

Mr. Speaker, this is a straightforward motion. It is a motion that, if passed, will cause the Republicans to vote for this, if not unanimously, virtually unanimously. If we take out the $30 million in cost by insisting that there be reasonable offsets, then we will in fact have fixed one of the problems that was unnecessary in the bill. Additionally, as was so well read by our Clerk just a moment ago, it is very, very clear that there are some small areas but meaningful areas. We do not want the American people to believe that telecommuters are downloading pornography full time the way $200,000-plus executives at SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, were doing.

Now, I wanted to include in the motion to recommit that if you're found downloading while telecommuting, you'd be fired, but it turns out, Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House prevent me from offering that. I am not allowed under the rules to insist on behalf of the American people that somebody be terminated if they've downloaded endless pornography while telecommuting. So instead we have simply said in the motion to recommit that if they're found downloading pornography, they can no longer telecommute.

Likewise, on a number of other areas we feel that the American people should know that there is accountability. Accountability as to the Presidential Records Act. Mr. Speaker, as you know, the Presidential Records Act is extremely important. That if somebody is working offsite, we want to ensure that they do not use a Gmail account or in some other way go off system and have that lost for the rest of eternity. It is too important and it is too uniform a law to not make sure it is included in this Act. Additionally, the question of official business.

Now, often motions to recommit include poison pills. This is not one. We wanted to make sure that if there's a union contract in which there's union negotiation or other time allotted--official time--that it not be done clandestinely around telecommuting. The fact is that if a union leader who is also a Federal employee has a right to have so much time spent doing that, this would not stop them, but it would make it very clear that you can't simply be working out of your house and use that as collective bargaining time or other work that would not be manageable.

It's very clear that we were limited in this. This does not fix everything, Mr. Speaker. This does not fix everything I'd like to fix, but it simply makes the bill revenue neutral and in a couple of important areas assures the American people that their taxpayer dollars are not being misused while someone is telecommuting.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, others will rise and they will talk about the underlying bill. Although I was on the conference committee, and for 2 weeks Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus and the rest of us were together, I do not claim and will not claim to be an expert on all the things that led to the financial meltdown or all the things which will preclude the next.

I do rise to oppose the Dodd-Frank bill, and I do so because I don't believe that it will preclude another meltdown and another crisis. I don't do that because I am an expert on the financial system. I am not. The people I served with on conference, many of them are. I am not concerned that the process was not open. I think Chairman Frank allowed us an unusually great amount of time to be heard. But I am disappointed that at the end of the day so many things were left out.

I appreciate Chairman Frank's offering for a separate bill to make up for the fact that the transparency and data issues that I worked for 2 weeks to put in this bill, because they were rejected by the Senate, we will have to send them again and hope that the Senate is more benevolent when we simply ask these agencies to have data standards that allow for the kinds of transparency among the regulators that will in fact see reckless behavior ahead of time, or at least allow us to know the underlying value of assets when the markets begin to melt.

The reckless behavior that led to the meltdown will be debated for years, but the absence of transparency at the time of the meltdown, an inability for our regulators, our banks, or anyone else to actually tell us what the underlying value of various assets were, were in no small part the result of arcane systems that underlie these very modern instruments.

You cannot have paper copies sitting in banks to tell you the details about a loan and then cut it into thousands of pieces, spread it around the world, and hope that somebody can have confidence in the document when things start going wrong.

Technology transparency is the most important thing missing from this bill. I hope to work with the majority and the minority to bring that in the coming days. I don't do it for my committee. I do it because the next time there is a hiccup anywhere in the world, even if that's simply a massive power outage leading to a confidence loss, we need to have the ability for regulators with confidence to say we have transparency, we know what these assets are worth, and we can assure them.

This bill does do a few good things, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the ability for banks to trust each other in financial transfers of non-interest-bearing large amounts is in no small part something that will keep the market going if otherwise there is a lack of confidence in the bank.

I do object to the way this bill is paid for. I believe that it was inappropriate. And unfortunately, people at the conference were not willing to consider a real pay-for, not even a real rollback in unexpended funds that would otherwise be available.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is done. We cannot look to what this will or won't do. We have to look to the future. Will we do a better job in data management, in transparency, in creating the tools that would allow the financial oversight board and the financial industry regulators to do the job the next time that they didn't do the last time?

Mr. Speaker, I do not have high confidence that it will be done. I have high confidence that this body will work together to produce a bill, send it to the other body, and try, try to get them to understand that data transparency is essential if we are not going to have another meltdown.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Sean Nank, a teacher at El Camino High School in Oceanside, California and congratulate him on receiving the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST). This remarkable achievement is the highest recognition that a kindergarten through twelfth grade mathematics or science teacher may receive for outstanding teaching in the United States.

Mr. Nank has proven to be an outstanding educator who has taken his teaching to the next level. This prestigious award justly recognizes his curriculum content that has led to enhanced student learning through unique classroom instruction.

With 13 years of teaching experience, Mr. Nank is currently a secondary mathematics teacher of Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II courses. He has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the needs of students by promoting the principles of a quality and challenging curriculum.

PAEMST is administered by the National Science Foundation on behalf of The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. This award recognizes teachers for their outstanding contributions to teaching and learning and their ability to help students make progress in mathematics and science.

As a well deserving recipient of this tremendous award, I am honored to represent constituents in the 49th District who are devoted to furthering the educational advancement of our nation's young people and encouraging and inspiring our next generation of leaders. This award represents a heartfelt salute of appreciation to Mr. Nank as an extraordinary teacher committed to helping students achieve academic success.

Madam Speaker, I would like to commend Mr. Nank's leadership and his dedication to advancing excellence in mathematics. Once again, I congratulate him on receiving this incredible honor and applaud his contributions to the education of future generations.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Richard ``Ric'' Hunsucker, a United States Marine Corps veteran, and the Walk Across America Team for their selfless efforts to bring awareness to disabled veterans across the country.

Mr. Hunsucker, an ironworker from Green Bay, Wisconsin, has completed a challenging yet worthy undertaking that has achieved great success-- all in the name of disabled veterans. On Veterans Day, November 11, 2009, Mr. Hunsucker set out to begin his 202 day walk across America to raise donations and awareness for the struggles faced by disabled veterans.

Starting at the Duval County War Memorial in Jacksonville, Florida, Mr. Hunsucker and his support teammate, Jack Dixon, visited countless veterans medical centers and outpatient clinics to meet with disabled veterans, doctors, nurses, family members and the public.

This 2,600-mile journey took them through four time zones and eight states, ending proudly at the Balboa Park War Memorial in San Diego, California on Memorial Day, May 31, 2010. He carried a 5-foot by 3-foot navy blue Disabled American Veterans flag the entire route. All donations raised went to the Disabled American Veterans organization, a nonprofit that advocates and assists those injured while serving their country.

Mr. Hunsucker trained for six months for his 202-day walk and has since gone through three pairs of sneakers and countless aches and pains. Walking an average of 17 miles a day, meeting the families of those killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan were among the most memorable moments.

Mr. Hunsucker's patriotism and desire to raise awareness for veterans was best explained when he recently stated, ``You can build a memorial for those who have been killed, but how can you remember those who are disabled? You take care of them.''

Madam Speaker, I would like to extend my personal accolades to the Walk Across America Team for such a remarkable and dedicated journey.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Colonel David J. Furness on the occasion of his taking Command of the 1st Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division.

Colonel Furness was commissioned a Second Lieutenant on 16 May 1987 upon graduating from the Virginia Military Institute. After completing the Basic School and the Infantry Officer Course in Quantico, Virginia, he reported to the Second Marine Division where he served as a rifle platoon commander and 81mm mortar platoon commander with the 3d Battalion, 4th Marines and the 2d Battalion, 8th Marines from February 1988 to September 1991. During this period he participated in a contingency deployment to the Republic of Panama and two unit deployments to the Mediterranean Sea with the 26th and 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable). From September 1991 to May 1995, he served on the staff of the Basic School as a Staff Platoon Commander and a Tactics Instructor for both the Basic Officer and Infantry Officer Course. In June 1995, he left the Basic School to attend the Infantry Officer Advanced Course (IOAC) at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Colonel Furness served as a Rifle Company Commander and Battalion Operations Officer with the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines in 29 Palms, California from November 1995 to November 1998.

In November 1998, he served as the Commanding Officer, Recruiting Station Sacramento, until July 2001. In August 2001, he reported to the Marine Corps Command and Staff College (CSC) where he graduated and earned a Masters of Military Science degree in June 2002. From July 2002 to January 2003 he attended the School of Advanced Warfighting (SAW).

While a student at SAW, he was ordered TAD to augment the G-3 section of the First Marine Division and participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom as the Assistant Plans Officer. During April 2003, he retuned to SAW, graduated, and in June 2003 reported to the First Marine Division and returned to Iraq where he served as the Operations Officer of the First Marine Division. In October 2003 he was reassigned as the Deputy G3. In January 2004, he returned to Iraq as part of the Division's advance party to prepare for the relief-in-place with the 82d Airborne Division in support of OIF II. He returned to Camp Pendleton in April 2004 and assumed command of the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines.

From December 2004 to June 2005, he deployed to the CENTCOM AOR as the Commanding Officer of Battalion Landing Team 1/1, the Ground Combat Element of the 15th MEU (SOC) and participated in Operation Unified Assistance and OIF III in South Baghdad, Iraq. From 20 January to 18 August 2006 he deployed as Commanding Officer Task Force 1/1, RCT-5 in support of OIF 05-07.1 operating principally in the cities of Karmah and Western Baghdad, Iraq. In October 2006 he relinquished command and assumed the duties of Executive Officer, First Marine Regiment.

During July 2007, He reported to the National War College as a student and was promoted to his current rank. After graduating from the National War College in June 2008 he reported to Headquarters Marine Corps, Office of Legislative Affairs to serve as the Director, Marine Corps Legislative Liaison Office, U.S. House of Representatives.

He is married to the former Lynda Taylor of Richmond, Virginia. They have four children David Jacob (17), Elizabeth (12), Benjamin (8), and Zachary (6).

Madam Speaker, I ask that my colleagues please join me in recognizing the distinguished career of Colonel David J. Furness serving the United States Marine Corps and the People of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, doesn't our House rule require that the address be made to the Speaker and not to each other?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, 3 minutes is all I need because we're going into a process, one in which I would like to be optimistic, one in which I will have 72 hours to pore over a 2,000-page bill to see where we can make it better.

Mr. Speaker, I, too, like the gentleman from Pennsylvania, remember 2008. I remember helping lead the charge against a wholesale bailout, a slush fund for then-President Bush to pass around $700 billion and to pass on to the next President a piece of that left over to spend it, and if you happen to get paid back, to spend it again.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are tired of endless bailouts of the select few. When the gentleman spoke of AIG, AIG still owes us $100- plus billion we'll never see back, in spite of the fact that much of that money went outside the country.

I'm part of a Congress that saw the Bush administration make mistakes. I'm fortunate that I voted against it and I'm happy that I voted against it. As we go into this financial reform, I would hope that we remember Milton Friedman once said, Capitalism is a profit and loss system: the profits encourage risk-taking and the losses encourage prudence.

Mr. Speaker, we must have freedom to fail in this country. We cannot have ``too big to fail.'' And more importantly, we cannot have the politicalization of the process by picking and choosing people like Freddie and Fannie to get $6 trillion worth of full-faith funding from the American people in order to guarantee what ultimately was to a great extent their fault. We went into a financial collapse because when homes became unaffordable, gimmicks were produced. The American people watched their government create most of those gimmicks, and even today the American Government continues to fund a 3.5-percent-down form of financing as though homes will only go up in price. So I look forward to working on a bipartisan basis to get this bill right in conference.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Brigadier General Richard L. Simcock, United States Marine Corps.

From August 2009 to June 2010, Brigadier General Simcock distinguished himself through meritorious service while serving as the Legislative Assistant to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Utilizing his leadership, communication skills, and dedication to duty, Brigadier General Simcock contributed to numerous successes of the overall Marine Corps mission. His knowledge of and experience in Congressional affairs, combined with an emphasis on Congressional relationships advanced the Commandant's strategy and vision. His leadership during this period has enabled the Marine Corps to continue to succeed despite high operational tempo and unprecedented interest in Marine Corps activities.

Brigadier General Simcock has developed an exceptional relationship with Members of Congress and staff members. We benefitted from his counsel and tireless work to provide answers to our questions about the Marine Corps, Marines and their families. This strong professional relationship is a direct reflection on Brigadier General Simcock's dedication, foresight, and proactive approach during his time as the Commandant's Legislative Assistant.

Working in concert, Brigadier General Simcock, the Armed Services Committees and numerous other Members of Congress, have helped to ensure the health of the Marine Corps. In the past year, Brigadier General Simcock's input and experience were paramount in the continued development, support, acquisition, and championing of Marine Corps initiatives and programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter. During this period, excluding hearings and official travel, General Simcock has responded to 3,886 Congressional Inquiries, 779 official requests-for- information from Members and Professional Staff, and connected Members with Marine General Officers on 425 occasions. His understanding of the legislative processes, his responsiveness and accurate, forthright communication with the Congress has furthered comprehensive support for the Marine Corps.

Brigadier General Simcock's leadership has set a new standard for the Office of Legislative Affairs and his genuine devotion to Corps and Country will ensure the Marine Corps is ``most ready when the Nation is least ready'' for many years to come.

Mr. Sarbanes, I am sure, is well-intended with this amendment. But I hope the Chair will take note that this amendment is wholly outside the jurisdiction of this committee. And for that reason, it would be subject to a rule, if the rule allowed it.

More importantly, it is very clear that although well-intended, it falls short of its intended mark. Mr. Sarbanes in his comments, rightfully so, said he wanted to establish standards. But I am sure the gentleman wants to establish a standard.

This amendment would establish every agency having a different standard. We already have the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies working to define inherently governmental in a uniform way, and that is critical. We do not want to bring in anything which is less expensive to do out-of-house and is not necessary to bring in-house.

I share with the gentleman the desire to make sure that which must be done by the government, that which is so special that we definitely do not want profit fitting into the equation, we want it done by the government.

I never again want to consider anything being outsourced simply because we don't have the will to build the resources in-house, particularly when it often can cost more, not less, to outsource.

So I would hope that the gentleman would withdraw his amendment, one, because it's outside the jurisdiction of this committee; and, two, because there is a time and a place to get a standard. We already have an effort under way by this administration to establish a single standard, one that could be uniformly executed that would save money and save confusion.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Beaumont Elementary School in Vista, California and congratulate them on their 50th year of educational service.

Beaumont Elementary School has continually responded to the needs of our communities, families, and students by promoting the principles of a quality and challenging curriculum. Through Beaumont's devoted teaching staff, students receive instruction utilizing the best, up-to- date materials and curriculum available along with hands-on learning opportunities.

The school recently celebrated by turning their annual fair into a community celebration. The event was bustling with hundreds of visitors and alumni reunited to mark the 50-year anniversary of the school.

I would like to commend Beaumont Elementary School's leadership and its teachers for their consistent dedication and for inspiring their students to pursue a well-rounded, life-long education. Madam Speaker, I applaud Beaumont Elementary School and its students, parents, alumni, teachers, and administrators for their ongoing contributions to the education of future generations.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is an important and bipartisan bill being brought to the floor today. It has been well thought out and well crafted, and I want to thank Mr. Murphy and Mr. Bilbray for their diligent work on this subject, also Mr. Todd Platts, who has worked in this area for a number of years and has brought to light this failure of government.

Mr. Speaker, when there are $2 trillion worth of payments being made and $100 billion worth of improper payments being noted, one would say we must be doing a good job of finding improper payments that would allow us to get to the bottom of this large amount of money. But, Mr. Speaker, without this corrective action, it is clear that what we are seeing is the tip of a very large iceberg.

Under the current law, since you must have the greater of both $10 million and 2.5 percent in order to trigger reporting, this only really triggers $10 million events with very small agencies. As we look at the Department of Defense and other large agencies, realistically the 2.5 percent becomes the trigger. If I were able to, with a stroke of a pen, change things from day one, I would look and say the American people consider not only $10 million a lot of money, but $2 million and $1 million, $100,000.

We cannot quickly make those kinds of changes in reporting, I am told. However, today we are taking a fairly significant step. By automatically having anytime when $100 million is at stake be reported and by reducing from 2.5 to 1.5 percent the program outlays, we are catching an unknown amount of greater waste, fraud, and abuse in government. These improper payments will undoubtedly rise, perhaps double, perhaps triple in reporting as a result of this new law, but it is not enough. As this reporting becomes more widespread and we're able to investigate extremely large but smaller than today programs, I hope that we will see that we must find all, all, improper payments in government and set them right. The American people expect no less.

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

At this time I would yield 3 minutes to the coauthor of the bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

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

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I'd like to share with you something that happened this morning. I was on C-SPAN and a woman named Betty called in and was very concerned that we were not working on a bipartisan basis; that there was no consensus or compromise; that we were paralyzed. It's sometimes hard to answer somebody on the other end of a telephone line, but I would like to today take note that this is an example of the dozens of times every week that we come together, the chairman and myself, members of the committee, and we find things we can agree on that are good for America, the common good, and they will not usually be noted.

So today I would hope that we all note that--and for Betty who called in this morning--that in fact this is an example where we can find compromise. We can find a win-win for the American people. I would hope that we would do more of it. Chairman Towns has been good at looking for those examples, and I pledge to be better at looking for opportunities like this. I'd like to, lastly, thank Leader Hoyer and Leader Boehner for the help they gave us in expediting this to the floor.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge support and passage of the bill and yield back the balance of my time.