Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in strong opposition to this rule, and very strong opposition to the underlying bill.

And let me just say from the outset that I used to take care of AIDS patients before I came to this Congress back in 1994. I was one of only two physicians in a county of 400,000 people that was seeing AIDS patients. And I have announced my retirement, my intent to leave the House of Representatives at the conclusion of this Congress, and I will most likely go back to seeing patients in January. And I may, indeed, be seeing AIDS patients again.

Let me additionally say that I'm very concerned about the situation in Africa. Indeed, I have gone to Africa twice in my term of service here in the Congress specifically to look at the issue of helping in Africa with the issues of AIDS and malaria and TB, and so I think I have credibility to be able to say I care, I'm concerned. But this underlying bill and this rule that restricts any cutting amendments, in my opinion, is just excessive.

Years ago, when the President originally came up with PEPFAR, he came to me and asked me to help him with his plan, and I did. And I actually thought his plan was very, very generous, $3 billion a year. And when he gave his State of the Union message just a few months ago indicating that he wanted to double the size of this from $3 billion to $6 billion a year, I personally thought that was excessive. When you look at all the problems we have with health care access for Americans, the problems that we have with transportation infrastructure, the problems that we have in fighting the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, the homeland security issues, I thought to take this program from $3 billion a year to $6 billion a year was excessive and over the top.

But now we have before us today an underlying bill to not increase it by 100 percent, which is what the President was asking for, but to increase it by over 200 percent. That's the underlying bill. And the Democrat leadership of the House under the Democratic Rules Committee is saying, well, no, we don't want any cutting amendments.

Now, let me tell you a little bit of why I am so passionately upset about it. Yesterday, NASA announced that, with the retirement of the space shuttle, they are going to be laying off over 6,500 people in east central Florida, my congressional district. That is a huge amount of people. It has a huge economic impact on the State of Florida. And for us to be putting our astronauts on Russian rockets, we're going to have to sign a contract with the Russians for the construction of these rockets, we're essentially going to be laying off people in Florida and hiring people in Russia with U.S. taxpayers.

Now, this Congress, under this Democratic leadership, is saying that we have no choice, we cannot afford to continue to fly the shuttle in 2011, 2012, 2013. We cannot afford to bring the new rocket system online any sooner than 2005 or 2006, we don't have the money, while we have all this money to send $50 billion to Africa for AIDS. Now, again, let me just say, I understand this is a terrible problem. I don't even mind increasing the Africa AIDS account. And what, to me, is insult on top of injury, my staff has informed me that they have $1 billion in this account unspent that they are working to try to spend. So, they can't even spend all the money that we're sending them over there, and we want to send them a 240 percent increase?

Now, I know every Member of this House can get up and give a speech like this; they have water projects in their district, they have health care clinics in their district. In my particular case, it's pretty significant. We've got over 6,000 people who are going to get a pink slip. So, for us to say we can't fly the shuttle beyond 2010 because we can't afford it, but that we can somehow find $50 billion to send to Africa, to me is just way over the top. I can't justify that back home.

I'm opposing this rule. I'm going to vote against the underlying bill. And I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I appreciate it.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 16 for the Capito amendment to H.R. 3524 I voted ``no'' but my intent was to vote ``aye''. I ask that the official Record reflect that my intent was to vote ``aye'' on the Capito amendment.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 18 for final passage to H.R. 3524 I voted ``aye'' but my intent was to vote ``no.'' I ask that the official Record reflect that my intent was to vote ``no'' on final passage.

Madam Speaker, today I rise to bring to the attention of the House an important new plan that seeks to bridge the longstanding divide between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The plan is titled ``The Right Road to Peace,'' and it is a comprehensive proposal for finding an avenue to peace, as well as addressing the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people.

As we know, the Palestinian people have, for nearly three generations, languished in U.N.-run refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank. The author of the proposal, Mr. Binyamin Elon, a highly respected member of Israel's Knesset, he, at the heart of this plan, has offered an innovative approach for providing opportunity, housing and education to a population which, for a long time, has lived as a ward of the international community. Mr. Elon's proposal would end the cycle of dependence that long has shackled Palestinian development.

Madam Speaker, I will include a summary of the document entitled ``The Right Road to Peace'' into the Record after my remarks.

Today, there are approximately 1.3 million registered Palestinians being cared for in 59 camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or the U-N-R-W-A, sometimes referred to as UNRWA.

Nearly 60 years after the first of these camps were established, virtually nothing has been done to return this population to a settled existence. The 1.3 million Palestinians living in these camps live in a world of poverty, their day-to-day existence solely reliant on international handouts.

The history of Palestinian refugee problems clarifies why the Elon peace plan is so needed at this time:

Following the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced. At the time, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled also or were ousted from their homes in Arab lands. The U.N. established the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in 1949 to care for the Arab/Palestinian refugees. The U.N. has never created an agency solely to serve the interests of one displaced group of people.

Many of the refugees do not even have historical roots in the territory now known as Palestine. Many of those residing in the West Bank are descendants of those who came from Syria and the Trans-Jordan area.

While the displaced Jews of the region settled in Israel and were integrated into the Israeli society, the Palestinians remain sequestered in these refugee camps. Why the Arab community that perpetually talks about the welfare of the Palestinians does nothing to relocate these people out of these camps is strange and, for many, it's considered no mystery. Many of these regimes fought against Israel in 1948, seeking to destroy Israel, and their desire is to perpetuate the camps and to perpetuate the terrorism the camps breed.

This, in my opinion, is unfortunate, and UNWRA is a U.N. agency established purportedly for the benefit of the refugees. However, in my opinion, it serves to perpetuate the terrorism problem.

While UNWRA lets camp residents run their own activities, under its own oversight, the camps have become centers of terrorism, lawlessness, and crime. This further victimizes the Palestinians in the refugee camps who have no involvement in these criminal activities. Palestinian terrorists operate freely in many of these camps, coordinating attacks against innocent Israeli civilians and Palestinians who oppose their terror agenda.

In 2004, the UNWRA commissioner, Peter Hansen, admitted in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the agency employs individuals who are members of groups like Hamas, a group the U.S. Government considers to be a terrorist organization.

Madam Speaker, it is high time that the truth be told and that the UNWRA mandate come to an end. In its place, a proposal should be adopted that would

truly resolve the Palestinian refugee question, regardless of whether there is ever a formal resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

There is no reason why generations of Palestinians must continue to subsist in squalor and deprivation just so regimes in the Arab world have a diplomatic foil with which to attack Israel.

The Elon plan is simple. Working cooperatively with nations around the world, Israel and the international community will assist the Palestinian refugees to find new homes outside the camps.

Why should Palestinians continue to languish? Support the Elon plan.

The Israeli Initiative: The Right Road to Peace

principles of the israeli initiative

(1) Rehabilitation of the refugees and dismantling of the

camps. Israel, the US, and the international community will

formulate it multi-year program for full and rapid

rehabilitation of the Palestinian refugees. while absorbing

them as citizens in various countries. During the

rehabilitation process, UNRWA, an organization that

perpetuates the status of the refugees, will be dismantled,

and all residents of refugee camps will be offered permanent

places of residence, citizenship, and a generous

rehabilitation grant. The refugee camps will also he

dismantled following this process.

(2) Strategic cooperation with the Kingdom of Jordan,

Israel, the U.S., and the international community will

recognize the Kingdom of Jordan as the sole legitimate

representative of the Palestinians, and Jordan will again

grant citizenship status to the residents of Judea and

Samaria. The Palestinian Authority in Judea, Samaria and Gaza

will no longer be recognized as a representative body, and

all weapons will be collected from armed organizations.

Israel, the US, and the international community will invest

in the long-term development of the Kingdom of Jordan to

restore and strengthen its economy.

Israel and Jordan, together with Egypt, Turkey, and the US,

will create a strategic organization to halt the Islamic axis

based in Teheran, and to promote overall peace between Israel

and the Arab countries.

(3) Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. In

coordination with Jordan, Israel will extend its sovereignty

over Judea and Samaria. Arab residents of these areas will

become citizens of Jordan (Palestine). Their status, their

relationship to the two countries, and the nature of the

administration in the populated areas will be formulated and

set forth in an agreement between the governments of Israel

and Jordan.

Madam Speaker, earlier today in this body we observed a minute of silence to honor the great life of Henry Hyde, our distinguished former colleague from Illinois. Henry Hyde clearly established himself in America as one of the great defenders of the sanctity of human life. He was eloquent on a host of issues in his outstanding rhetorical skills, but perhaps none was he more able and capable than in defending the dignity and sanctity of human life. And this body has been engaged in a tremendous debate involving the sanctity of human life as to whether or not for years now the Federal Government should fund the experimental research called human embryonic stem cell research, which involves creating human embryos for the purpose of killing them.

President Bush, in what I believe to be one of the finest moments of his Presidency, decided to let the research go forward at the NIH, but denied funding to any more research which involved killing human embryos which had been occurring prior to the beginning of his term. This body has been engaged in a tremendous debate for years now as to whether or not the Bush policy should be overturned.

And the defenders of overturning the Bush policy have contended for years and years and years now, number one, that there was great potential from human embryonic stem cell research, which is something I and others have questioned for years. Adult stem cell research and cord blood stem cell research have been showing great potential and clinical utility cures. Embryonic stem cells form tumors. They have never been shown to be safe or useable.

But nonetheless, many people felt, myself included, that the science would outstrip this debate; and recently, I was very pleased to see the publication in two publications, Cell and Science, from two different research labs, one here in the United States involving Dr. Jamie Thompson, the researcher who originally was credited with discovering human embryonic stem cells. I would disagree, he didn't really discover them; we always knew they were there. He was just the first one to isolate them. The other is a research lab in Japan, I believe, and they have shown that you can create human embryonic stem cells from skin cells.

Why is this so important? Why is this so significant? Well, for years in this body, in this Congress, we have been trying to pass a bill to ban human cloning. Everybody agrees human cloning is bad, but there have been people in this body and in the other body contending that we only want to ban attempts to create a baby; we shouldn't ban the creation of human clones in the lab because embryonic stem cells can never be used in therapy. I could never be treated for a disease from some other embryo because my tissues would reject it; but through embryonic cloning, we could do something called therapeutic cloning.

Now, I have contended that was a science fix in that it had never been done in a research setting involving animals; and, furthermore, that it was not necessary. Now, this research shows you could scrape my skin and create embryonic stem cells from that skin scraping that would be genetically identical to me and could be used in therapies.

So why is this important? Number one, I think President Bush has been vindicated. We shouldn't be funding this research. It is ethically questionable research, and it is unnecessary.

Number two, it is now time for the Congress of the United States to put on the desk of President Bush a bill to ban all forms of human cloning because it is just not necessary.

I started out talking about Henry Hyde and the sanctity of human life. Even if you don't believe in the sanctity of human life, one thing is absolutely certain: to create embryonic stem cells in the old way you needed human eggs. Where were we ever going to get all of these human eggs from? You have to get them from women, a very ethically and morally questionable thing for us to be doing, to ask women to donate through a painful, difficult surgical procedure, to donate their eggs for a form of research that has never been validated in the lab, in animal models as being viable in clinical therapeutics.

So you don't have to invoke the sanctity of human life, but I must say I personally believe in the sanctity of human life. I believe Henry Hyde was right when he spoke over and over again on the importance of this. And it is now time for the Congress of the United States to act, put a bill on the President's desk to ban human cloning. The science is finally with us now.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor our veterans.

This Sunday is Veterans Day. As a veteran myself and the son of a combat-wounded veteran, I believe it is very, very important that we as a nation take time and honor those who have served in our armed services.

It is a fact that we all understand that freedom comes at a price and that it is those who put on the uniform and serve that preserve freedom for us and so many others around the world.

It's unfortunate that I have to rise as well and express my concern over our failure to move a veterans bill through this body to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs. Thanksgiving is less than 2 weeks ago, and as a physician who volunteers his time in a veterans clinic in his congressional district, I can say that I know that we can put our partisan differences behind us, put them aside, and we can come together and finally pass a veterans funding bill. I regret that we have not been able to do that today so late in the year right before Veterans Day.

Let's see if we can get that work done next week.

Madam Chairman, I rise to express my concerns about H.R. 3685, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Unfortunately, this bill goes far beyond simply providing protections against discrimination. If that had been the sole purpose of H.R. 3685, the authors would have closely tracked the Civil Rights Act. The fact that they chose not to follow the Civil Rights Act, but instead create a whole new statute belies their true motives. Because H.R. 3685 does not consider the rights of other protected classes by giving them less protection than have already been provided for them under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, I believe this legislation is unfair and unwise.

Again, as has become the common practice with the new majority, this bill is on the floor with little review, no committee hearings, and little input from religious organizations and employees that will feel the largest impact from this legislation. Having a one-sided piece of legislation rushed to the floor is no way to pass legislation whose implications will be deeply felt by all Americans. This haste to the House floor, fear of constructive criticism, and failure to model this bill after other successful Federal civil rights legislation, is unwise and is plagued with pitfalls.

The Committee summarily rejected amendments to (1) broaden the exemption for religious schools not covered by the definition in H.R. 3685 to make it consistent with Title VII exemptions; (2) strike the vague and confusing ``perceived'' sexual orientation language; (3) prohibit retaliation against employees who may not agree with employer policies relating to this bill on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs and; (4) remove the provision making it unlawful to condition employment in a State in which a person cannot marry a person of the same sex. One wonders why in the quest to protect one group, the authors of this bill are so willing to infringe and discriminate against the rights of others. In fact, I do not believe it is going too far to say that the authors of this bill are willing to infringe on the consciences of others in their attempt to create new protections.

H.R. 3685 contains a much narrower religious exemption than is provided under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which broadly exempts religious corporations, associations, societies, and educational institutions. There is strong evidence to suggest that non- denominational independent religious schools will not be exempt from complying with H.R. 3685 even though they are under Title VII. This issue has been glossed over by the Democratic leaders even though Congress specifically amended the Civil Rights Act in 1972 to forthrightly protect the mission-critical hiring rights of religious organizations.

A significant concern over H.R. 3685 is its inadequate protection for religious employers and those with deeply held religious convictions. Under Title VII, religious corporations, associations, societies and educational institutions are given broad exemptions. H.R. 3685 contains insufficient exemptions for religious organizations and companies with sincerely held religious beliefs. While houses of worship, missions, and some religious schools would be exempt, H.R. 3685's definition of ``religious organizations'' is a two-part test to determine if an educational institution qualifies for an exemption. In light of the broad exemptions provided in Title VII and the successful management of competing protections, why does H.R. 3685 feel it is necessary to subject religious organizations to intrusive snooping of the Federal Government to investigate if the organization is ``religious enough?'' This requirement indeed constitutes an excessive government entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment, and it is doubtful that it would survive scrutiny by the Supreme Court.

H.R. 3685 is vaguely drafted to prohibit employers from discriminating against an individual's actual or ``perceived'' sexual orientation or the actual or ``perceived'' sexual orientation of a person with whom the employee associates. Again, someone's ``perceived'' status is not included in any other civil rights legislation, including Title VII, which protects race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Employers will now be subjected to claims and potential liability based on the highly subjective standard of someone's perception. With this legislation applying to essentially every company in the country with more than 15 employees, exposing employers to the threat of liability based on ``perception'' seems highly unwise and will create a lawyer's bonanza. This will force employers to defend themselves in claims and litigation by having to prove a negative--that they weren't able to perceive someone's sexual orientation. I'm sure this is welcome news for the nation's trial bar who will welcome vague loopholes to create Title VII claims to litigate. We should not open employers up to lawsuits because they were unable to ``perceive'' a person's sexual orientation, but that is what this bill does. This is especially an unfair burden on our small business owners, who will not be able to afford lengthy and costly litigation. This bill allows individuals to file suit, if their claims aren't resolved by the EEOC, for punitive damages up to $300,000.

H.R. 3685 will also needlessly create hostile work environments, as religious employees protected under Title VII will have their right to free religious expression challenged by the new rights created in ENDA for individuals based on their ``actual or perceived sexual orientation.'' The balancing of these two will lead to an impossible balancing test of which law to follow and which to violate.

While I strongly oppose intentional discrimination in the workplace to anyone, H.R. 3685 would favor some classes of citizens over other already protected classes. I cannot support a bill that does not provide adequate and equal protections to religious organizations, especially religious educational institutions that will be forced to act against their consciences if this legislation becomes law.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise to say while I am pleased with many of the provisions in this bill, and I certainly want to commend the chairman particularly for a hard-fought negotiation with the other body on the issue of getting a toxic substance, mercury, out of the injections that we give little babies, I have to vote ``no'' on this conference report. I want to make very clear that there is an important, I think, distinction. There has been a lot of discussion back and forth about how we had combined appropriations bills in the past as the majority is doing today. At least my recollection of the facts in the past, we were forced to combine appropriations bills typically because there was a problem getting these bills through the other body because they wanted more spending and we wanted less spending.

The purpose of the combination here tonight is to achieve more spending. Now, I saw a poll recently, and it truly amazed me, if you asked the American people a question, do you think the Federal Government taxes and spends too much, you get about 85 percent of Americans agree with that statement. Indeed, a majority of Democrats feel that we tax and spend too much. This bill increases spending $21.2 billion over last year.

Now, the majority has been very quick to point out this is less than what we will spend in 2 months in Iraq and Afghanistan as if we can't deal with those problems and we can walk away from them. I think we have all agreed in this body, we have to try to see the war on terror and the challenges we have there through. But the important point with those conflicts is they will some day end; whereas, the money that is going in this bill will be incorporated in the baseline, and next year, all of these dollars will be increased another, I don't know, what, 3, 4, 5 percent. Depending on how you do the calculations, this $21 billion of increased spending could be $200 billion

in 7 years, 10 years, and in my opinion, we have a responsibility to make tough decisions. And this bill is an attempt to achieve additional spending over and above the President's request. In my opinion, it just goes too far.

I also want to just mention one other item. There are a lot of items in this bill. We cut the Department of Labor 20 percent that oversees our unions. When I first got on this committee, I have to say, I was shocked to see the loose degree of regulation and oversight that we have. The unions have to file a document called an LM-2, which details all their spending. And I saw a document from one union. It was a big union. They had taken in about $78 million. It was one page on one side. The reason it had gotten so bad is because, under the previous administration, oversight had been very, very lax. And this administration, because it is the union workers' money, and how it gets spent needs to be monitored because sometimes it is abused, and it is funneled into political operations inappropriately, this bill reduces that level of oversight. Now, I think that is taking us in a wrong direction.

While there are a lot of features in this bill I think are good, I am forced to vote ``no'' on the conference report.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

As a physician who practiced medicine for many years prior to coming to the House, I dealt with the issue of the uninsured on a daily basis. Indeed, I used to see it regularly, up close and personal. And certainly I think it is a noble endeavor for this body to try to address this issue.

But I would have to say I think it is really shameful and disgraceful the way the majority has proceeded in this whole process. The first time they brought the bill forward they gave it to us at the 11th hour with no opportunity to amend it. They did it the second time. They did it the third time now. Never, as I understand it, sitting down and seriously trying to discuss this issue with the President. The President needs to sign it.

And people keep coming to the floor and saying we need to do this for the children. What about the children who have to pay for this? I mean, let's talk about all of the children. The way this bill is crafted, the nonpartisan CBO has estimated it will migrate 2 million kids in middle- class families who currently have insurance onto the government payroll. And, jeepers, we can't afford Social Security. We are told that that is going to be insolvent. We can't afford Medicare. Under the current Medicare formula, doctors in this country are supposed to get a 10 percent cut in reimbursement. And now we are going to expand this program.

And the other thing I just want to point out, we are really creating a new entitlement. And one of the very reasons I came here is that this body year after year was creating entitlements that it didn't have the ability to pay for. And all I can say is here we go again. We are expanding this program, we are making it like an entitlement, and we are saying over and over again we are doing it for the children.

What about the tens of millions of children, the hundreds of millions who are going to have to clean up this mess?

I am against this rule. I am against this bill. I'm going to vote against it again.

Madam Speaker, I rise as a supporter of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP, which focuses on covering children in families at or below 200 percent of the poverty level, $41,000 per year. I have voted to extend this program and to provide additional resources to ensure that those living in families below 200 percent of the poverty level, $41,000, have access to affordable health insurance through the SCHIP program.

Before sharing my concerns over the bill that was vetoed by the President and that we are voting on today, I would like to share with my colleagues an overview of the SCHIP reauthorization bill that I am joining in introducing today. Our bill will provide families with health care choices, health care transferability and health care security.

The bill I have cosponsored would ensure that all children between 100 percent and 200 percent of poverty are eligible to enroll in SCHIP. In addition to being able to enroll in SCHIP, these families could also decide to use their SCHIP credit to pay for the additional costs of enrolling their children in the parent's employer provided health plan. For those making between 200 percent and 300 percent of the poverty level, our bill would provide a $1,400 per child health care tax credit. This credit would be refundable for those who have tax liability less than the amount of the credit. Parents could use this credit to pay the additional costs of enrolling their children in an employer provided health care plan or in another state licensed health care plan. This plan borrows from the proposal put forward by a broad range of organizations that run the political spectrum--from the liberal Families USA, to the Chamber of Commerce, and the American Medical Association, AMA.

The biggest question remaining after this vote is taken today is whether or not our House Democrat colleagues will do something that they have by and large failed to do so far with regard to SCHIP: invite House Republicans to participate in developing the legislation. To date, House Democrat leaders have abused the rules of debate to totally shut Republicans out of the legislative process.

Two weeks ago, rather than having an up or down vote on the President's veto, the Democrat majority chose to put off the final vote for two weeks in order to engage in political posturing and partisan attacks. Today we are holding that vote and the outcome today is no different than what it would have been two weeks ago. So, why the delay? Solely for partisan posturing. Madam Speaker, our children deserve better and it is time to stop using them as political pawns. Unfortunately, recent press reports are filled with quotes from Democrat leaders stating that they want to keep this alive as a political issue, calling for ``repeated votes'' and temporary extensions of SCHIP over the next year, rather than approving a long- term bipartisan bill that secures SCHIP coverage for those it was intended for--children in low-income households with family incomes of less than 200 percent of the poverty level.

I would now like to address once again, why I cannot support the bill before us. This bill: 1. Fails to place a priority on first enrolling uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year, 200 percent of the federal poverty level; 2. Expands government SCHIP subsidies to those making far more than the Federal poverty level; 3. Spends half of the additional SCHIP dollars to enroll children in the government SCHIP program who are already enrolled in private insurance; and 4. Uses budget gimmicks--like booting millions of children off of the program in 2012--in order to fool the public into believing they can fund the program for the next 5 years.

It is fiscally irresponsible to expand this program by enticing millions of children in families earning far above the poverty level to drop private coverage and enroll in the SCHIP program that cannot be sustained. In August, House Democrat leaders forced an earlier version of SCHIP through the House that cut over $150 billion from Medicare and moved that money into SCHIP so that they would have a way to pay for millions of new SCHIP enrollees over the next 10 years, including millions of currently insured children from middle and upper middle class families.

Their plan to cut Medicare was rejected not only by Republicans but by the U.S. Senate, and most importantly by the public at large. The bill that the President vetoed is a bait and switch. This nearly triples the size of SCHIP over the next 5 years--including enrolling millions of children currently insured by private plans--only this time they have chosen to hide from the public how they plan to pay for the program for the next 10 years. They ramp up the annual SCHIP budget to nearly $14 billion a year, and then they simply leave it to a future Congress to find a way to continue paying for the massively expanded SCHIP program. And they hand the bill to future generations of Americans. It turns out that their nearly tripling of the Federal cigarette taxes still leaves them tens of billions of dollars short. Americans should be on notice that in 2012 the Democrats will ask for another $180 billion to continue SCHIP for another 10 years.

Particularly troubling is that by significantly expanding SCHIP enrollment eligibility to those far above the poverty level, the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, estimates that millions of new SCHIP enrollees will be children that move from private coverage to the SCHIP program. By moving children from private insurance onto the government program, this bill essentially enrolls 5 uninsured children for the price of 10. Enticing millions of children to drop private coverage and sign up for SCHIP is shortsighted and irresponsible, particularly given the multibillion dollar SCHIP budget shortfall that hits in 2012.

What we should be doing is focusing this program on enrolling uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year. Madam Speaker, our children and the American taxpayers deserve better than what the Democrat leadership has put before us today.

In February of this year, States that had overspent their SCHIP funding grants came to Congress begging for more money to ``insure uninsured poor children.'' The root problem in many of these States was the fact that they had used their Federal grant to enroll children in the SCHIP program who were neither poor nor uninsured. New Jersey, for example had used their grant to enroll children in families with incomes of more than $72,000, even though there were and still are over 150,000 children in New Jersey in households earning less than $41,000 who are uninsured.

I offered an amendment in February that would have refocused SCHIP to make sure that children in families under 200 percent of the poverty level were covered first. My amendment was rejected by the liberal majority on the Committee, who Stated that they had no intent to refocus SCHIP on lower income children. Rather, they planned to continue expanding the program to those well above the poverty level-- to include adults and illegal immigrants--as a step toward universal government-run health care. A recent op-ed in the Washington Post, by liberal columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., removes any doubt of this goal by writing: ``This battle [over SCHIP] is central to the long-term goal of universal coverage.''

While the press releases about today's bill focus on uninsured low- income children, the language in the bill is about much more than uninsured low-income children. If the bill before us was focused on low-income uninsured

children, I would be voting for it. The bill before us does the opposite. It repeals recent rules requiring States to ensure that at least 95 percent of those under 200 percent of the poverty level are insured under their State SCHIP programs. Democrat leaders in Congress have responded to the rule by arguing that there is no way to ensure a 95 percent enrollment rate of uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year. They argue that since they cannot achieve the goal we should simply expand the program to those in households earning more than $60,000 a year or more.

They use budget gimmicks to say that their bill is balanced and paid for through higher cigarette taxes. The Heritage Foundation has estimated that the amount of money Democrats estimate they will raise from higher cigarette taxes comes up billions of dollars short and that over the next 10 years they will have to find 22 million new smokers to bring in the amount of cigarette tax revenue they hope to raise. It is also noteworthy that lower-income Americans pay a higher percentage of cigarette taxes, but it is middle-income Americans that will receive most of the expanded SCHIP benefits under this bill.

I am also concerned over provisions included in the bill that repeal the requirement that individuals must prove citizenship in order to enroll in Medicaid and SCHIP. This opens the program to fraud and the enrollment of illegal immigrants. In 2006, the Inspector General, IG, of the Department of Health and Human Services found that 46 States allowed anyone seeking Medicaid or SCHIP to simply State they were citizens. The IG found that 27 States never sought to verify that enrollees were indeed citizens. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that repealing this requirement will cost $1.9 billion.

And finally from a Florida perspective, Florida taxpayers come up short. Florida taxpayers will send $700 million more to Washington than we will receive back in SCHIP allocations. Where will Florida taxpayer dollars end up going? Residents of California, New York, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and New Jersey will be the biggest recipients of Florida tax dollars. Yet, Florida has a higher rate of uninsured children than several of these.

Florida voters will also be asked to foot part of the bill for a $1.2 billion earmark inserted into the 300-page bill at the last minute by the powerful chairman of the committee for his home State of Michigan.

Madam Speaker, let's open up the legislative process and develop a strong bipartisan bill. It is time to end the politics around this issue and ensure that low-income children have access to this program.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to take the opportunity to recognize the importance to our Nation of what happened 50 years ago today.

On October 4, 1957, Russia launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to successfully be placed in orbit around the Earth. On that day, Americans were shocked, and many believed that we were no longer the technological leader of the world.

On that day Americans realized that, like never before, our homeland was threatened. This was significant, because the leader of the Nation that launched Sputnik, Nikita Khrushchev, less than a year earlier had aggressively delivered to America the now-famous threat, ``We will bury you.''

To many Americans, Sputnik was a major step showing how the Russians were starting to make good on their promise, and it was a promise that America had to counter and nullify before it was too late. The reverberations of Sputnik and its launch were felt many years thereafter.

Thankfully, our Nation got busy after October 4, 1957, to ensure that our space program became second to none. We began an aggressive effort to educate and train a new generation of engineers and technicians, and we began the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs and ultimately, of course, putting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully on the Moon and bringing them home safely.

Since then, of course, we have built the most versatile and complex machine ever made by man, the space shuttle. We have constructed the International Space Station.

I am proud of what we have accomplished with our space program, and now we are moving forward with the next step in human space flight, the Constellation program, which will, again, carry us back to the Moon and, with international cooperation, on to Mars. But we are, today, facing another watershed moment in the history of our space program.

By 2010, the space shuttle is scheduled to end its over quarter century of operations. While this is a sad time for many, it will also allow us to continue on into the future with the Constellation program. Unfortunately, Constellation is not set to begin space flight until 2015.

What will America's manned space flight program be doing to put men and women into space between 2010 and 2015? Quite puzzlingly, we will be asking the Russians, the country that agreed to bury us 50 years ago, to launch our astronauts into orbit.

Now, I supported President Bush's announced plan in 2004 to someday retire the space shuttle and replace it with a new, safer and less expensive system to operate that could go back to the Moon and on to Mars, but I was critical of the President at the time, with his notion that we retire the shuttle in 2010 and not launch the new system until 2015, and that we rely, of all places, on Russia to launch our astronauts into orbit. Yet, today, that is what we are planning on doing.

What is very troubling about our relationship with Russia, while we have had good cooperation with them in recent years, there have been problems, problems with proliferating weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations such as Iran. Indeed, this body passed the Iran Nonproliferation Act, and then we had to go back and amend it to allow our current cooperation with the Russians.

Then, of course, more recently, the Russians have engaged in a number of behaviors that I consider to be very ominous for our future relationship with them, placing a Russian flag on the bottom of Arctic Circle and claiming the Arctic bottoms resources for Russia.

The Russians have bitterly opposed our deployment of missile defense systems to protect us against Iran in Europe. The Russian leader, President Putin, has claimed that it will lead to a new missile race, and he has, indeed, threatened to specifically target European capitals. Is Russia trying to bring back the Cold War? It has reinitiated its bomber patrols, patrolling our NATO allies.

I think if you add up all of these things and their recent abrogation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which placed restrictions on conventional forces, I think this does not bode well to our continued reliance on the Russians in the years ahead, and we need a new plan to deal with our manned space flight program in the years ahead.

Mr. Chairman, I am very concerned about the need to enhance access to affordable storm damage insurance, particularly for those living in communities like the one I represent in Florida. Indeed I have cosponsored and authored legislation that would do just this and compliment the steps that have already been taken by the State of Florida to address this issue.

Asking American taxpayers to assume $19 trillion in potential liabilities under a program that the Government Accountability Office, GAO, has already deemed insolvent just does not make good common sense. If an insolvent private company came before the regulators asking the regulator to further expand their liabilities, as is being done in H.R. 3121, the regulators would reject the application outright.

Increasing the potential liabilities of the National Flood Insurance Program, NFIP, as is done in H.R. 3121--without first paying off the NFIP's $19 billion debt--is unwise. Furthermore, the GAO and the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, admit that the $2 billion in annual premiums that NFIP takes in each year makes it virtually impossible for the NFIP to pay off this debt. No rational person would buy insurance from a private company who was $18

billion in debt or has borrowed from the U.S. Treasury (taxpayers) 14 times just to keep from going bankrupt.

Forcing H.R. 3121 to the floor while blocking amendments from Republican Members of Congress, especially from Members from Florida and other States who deal with hurricanes on a regular basis, does not speak highly of the integrity of this program.

As a father, I worry greatly about the burden we are passing onto our children. With reckless abandon, this Congress is rushing headlong into the future without any thought of what the ramifications of our decisions will have on our children and grandchildren. With every indication that Social Security will be bankrupt by 2042, with the Medicare program $17 trillion short already, the House passed another massive spending program with unfunded liabilities estimated at $180 billion this week in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP. In the college student loan bill that we passed earlier this year, this Congress added tens of billions of dollars in potential liabilities. Today this House is going to ram through another massive spending program where, as stated in a study by actuaries Towers Perrin, payouts to insurers for wind damage in a given storm could be $100 to $200 billion.

The GAO estimates that the current unfunded liability that our children face is over $46 trillion, amounting to nearly $375,000 per full time working American. Adding the additional potential liability of $19 trillion in this bill would raise that to more than $500,000 per full-time working American. We need to face reality and begin to think about our children and the America that we are going to leave them.

As we think about the type of America we are creating for our children, I am reminded of a warning given years ago:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy . . .

That is what this bill before us today does. It votes largess today, for political gain, while saddling our children with the debt. In good conscience I cannot do that. We owe it to future generations of Americans to turn the corner here and put their interests above our own.

As the Comptroller of the GAO stated in his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2005, the United States is on an unsustainable fiscal path and our future standard of living will be gradually eroded--if not suddenly damaged--if we continue on this path.

Reforming the NFIP is necessary, and this bill includes some important reforms, such as a phase-in of actuarially determined rates for some currently subsidized property owners. However, this bill does nothing to address the concerns raised by the GAO in the 2006 report that outlines the management and accountability problems after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The easy thing to do would be to simply vote for this bill and put the burden of paying for it on our children and grandchildren, much like Washington has done already with dozens of other insolvent federal programs. But that would not be the right thing to do, and it is for that reason that I cannot vote to further burden our children with costs that we are not willing to pay for ourselves today.

Mr. Speaker, I rise as a supporter of the State Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which focuses on covering children in families at or below 200 percent of the poverty level ($41,000 per year). I have voted to extend this program and to provide additional resources to ensure that those living in families below 200 percent of the poverty level ($41,000) have access to affordable health insurance through the SCHIP program.

What I cannot support is the Democrat's SCHIP bill, because their bill: 1. Fails to place a priority on first enrolling uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year (200 percent of the federal poverty level); 2. Expands government subsidies to those making nearly $80,000 per year; 3. Spends half of the additional SCHIP dollars to enroll children in the government SCHIP program who were otherwise enrolled in private insurance; and 4. Virtually eliminates all funding for SCHIP beyond 2012 because they have no way to sustain funding for SCHIP beyond that date.

It is fiscally irresponsible to expand this program by enticing millions of children in families earning as much as $82,000 per year to drop private coverage and enroll in the SCHIP program that cannot be sustained. In August, House Democrat leaders forced an earlier version of SCHIP through the House that cut over $150 billion from Medicare and moved that money into SCHIP so that they would have a way to pay for millions of new SCHIP enrollees over the next ten years, including millions of currently insured children from middle and upper middle class families.

Their plan to cut Medicare was rejected not only by Republicans, but by the U.S. Senate,

and most importantly by the public at large. But now the bill before us is simply a bait and switch. They have brought a bill before us today that nearly triples the size of SCHIP over the next five years-- including enrolling millions of children currently ensured by private plans--only this time they have chosen to hide from the public how they plan to pay for the program for the next ten years. They ramp up the annual budget of SCHIP to nearly $14 billion a year, and then they simply leave it to a future Congress to find a way to continue paying for the massively expanded SCHIP program. It turns out that their nearly tripling of the federal cigarette taxes still leaves them tens of billions of dollars short. Americans should be on notice that in 2012 the Democrats will ask for another $180 billion to continue SCHIP for another ten years.

Particularly troubling is that by significantly expanding SCHIP enrollment eligibility those in families making upwards of $80,000 per year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that millions of new SCHIP enrollees will be children that move from private coverage to the SCHIP program. By moving children from private insurance onto the government program, this bill essentially enrolls five uninsured children for the price of ten. Enticing millions of children to drop private coverage and sign up for SCHIP is short-sighted and fiscally irresponsible, particularly given that it goes bankrupt in 2012.

What we should be doing is focusing this program on enrolling uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year. Mr. Chairman, our children and the American taxpayers deserve better that what the Democrat leadership has put before us today.

In February of this year, states that had overspent their SCHIP funding grants came to Congress begging for more money to ``insure uninsured poor children.'' The root problem in many of these states was the fact that they had use their federal grant to enroll children in the SCHIP program who were neither poor nor uninsured. New Jersey, for example had used their grant to enroll children in families with incomes of more than $72,000, even though there were and still are over 150,000 children in New Jersey in households earning less than $41,000 who are uninsured.

I offered an amendment in February that would have refocus SCHIP to make sure that children in families under 200 percent of the poverty level were covered first. My amendment was rejected by the liberal majority on the Committee, who stated that they had no intent to refocus SCHIP on lower income children. Rather, they planned to continue expanding the program to those well above the poverty level-- to include adults and illegal immigrants--as a step toward universal government-run health care. In today's Washington Post, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., removes any doubt of this goal by writing: ``This battle [over SCHIP] is central to the long-term goal of universal coverage.''

While the press releases about today's bill focus on uninsured low- income children, the language in the bill is about much more than uninsured low-income children. If the bill before us was focused on low-income uninsured children, I would be voting for it. The bill before us does the opposite. It repeals recent rules requiring states to ensure that at least 95 percent of those under 200 percent of the poverty level are insured under their state SCHIP programs. Democrats leaders in Congress have responded to the rule by arguing that there is no way to ensure a 95 percent enrollment rate of uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year. They argue that since they cannot achieve the goal we should simply expand the program to those in households earning more than $80,000 or more a year.

They use budget gimmicks to say that their bill is balance and paid for through higher cigarette taxes. The Heritage Foundation has estimated that the amount of money Democrats estimate they will raise from higher cigarette taxes comes up billions of dollars short and that over the next 10 years they will have to find 22 million new smokers to bring in the amount of cigarette tax revenue they hope to raise. (It is also noteworthy that lower-income Americans pay a higher percentage of cigarette taxes, but it is middle-income Americans that will receive most of the expanded SCHIP benefits under this bill.)

I am also concerned over provisions included in the bill that repeal the requirement that individuals must prove citizenship in order to enroll in Medicaid and SCHIP. This opens the program to fraud and the enrollment of illegal immigrants. In 2006, the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Health and Human Services found that 46 states allowed anyone seeking Medicaid or SCHIP to simply state they were citizens. The IG found that 27 states never sought to verify that enrollees were indeed citizens. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that repealing this requirement will cost $1.9 billion.

And finally from a Florida perspective, Florida taxpayers come up short. Florida taxpayer will send $700 million more to Washington than we will receive back in SCHIP allocations. Where will Florida taxpayer dollars end up going? Residents of California, New York, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and New Jersey will be the biggest recipients of Florida tax dollars. Yet, Florida has a higher rate of uninsured children that several of these.

Florida voters will also be asked to foot part of the bill for a $1.2 billion earmark inserted into the 300-page bill at the last minute by the powerful chairman of the committee for his home state of Michigan.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Local Law Enforcement Restoration Act of 2007 in response to the recent decision by a federal judge to strike down a local ordinance in Hazleton, Pennsylvania aimed at addressing out of control illegal immigration in that community. The purpose of that local ordinance was to keep illegal aliens from taking up residence within the town's jurisdiction or taking local jobs. I believe that my legislation is necessary at this time in order to provide clarity and ensure that local elected officials are able to enforce ordinances against illegal immigration in their communities. Immigration enforcement has already overburdened our federal law enforcement agencies, and state and local governments should not be hampered when they want to step in where the federal government has failed. The federal judge misread current federal immigration law and communities should not be penalized by over-reaching federal judges. My legislation simply clarifies the right of local communities and states to address the consequences of illegal immigration within their jurisdictions.

A number of other communities and several states have taken similar approaches to address illegal immigration in their communities. Given the Federal Government's failure to act to enforce the laws already on the books to combat illegal immigration, a growing number of state and city officials across the United States are pursuing laws similar to those enacted in Hazelton. These elected officials are driven by Washington's failure to control our borders or deal with the more than 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S.

It is important to remove any ambiguity about the ability of states and localities--the ones who bear the financial costs associated with illegal immigration--to enforce their local ordinances aimed at addressing illegal immigration in their community. In many ways, illegal immigration is the ultimate unfunded mandate--the federal government fails to control the border, but then saddles states and localities with the costs imposed by illegal aliens (in the form of education spending, public services, and law enforcement costs).

It is important to clarify that states and localities are not preempted by federal law from imposing civil or criminal sanctions upon those who employ, recruit or refer for a fee for employment, unauthorized aliens. In the case of the ruling against Hazleton, the judge went well beyond the intent of federal law. Essentially, he said that cities and states are powerless to discourage illegal immigration within their jurisdiction. The good news is that by amending the INA we can address this problem and provide the degree of clarity to this issue that would remove any ambiguity in the law. My legislation does just this, and makes sure that cities and states have leeway to reinforce federal immigration law.

If you believe that the Federal Government has failed to effectively enforce our immigration laws, and believe that the Federal Government should ensure that states and local communities have the ability to discourage illegal immigration consistent with federal law, then join me in passing the The Local Law Enforcement Restoration Act of 2007.

Mr. Speaker, I join with my colleagues in support of efforts to make college education more affordable for more Americans. Indeed, earlier this year I voted in support of H.R. 5, the College Student Relief Act of 2007. I believed that bill took some positive steps.

Unfortunately, the bill that is being brought before the House today for consideration, H.R. 2669, is full of budget gimmicks, creates five new entitlement programs, spends tens of billions of dollars, and shifts from the private sector to the taxpayers the potential liability for billions of dollars should student loans borrowers default.

I am very disappointed that the bill before us, H.R. 2669, falls far short of its goal. While those who drafted the bill assert that it is a comprehensive solution to making college more affordable, H.R. 2669 fails to address the core problem of access to U.S. colleges and universities: sky-rocketing rates of tuition and room and board. In just the last 7 years, annual inflation has increased on average 2.7 percent. However, higher education costs for students have increased an average of 4.2 percent--a rate that is 55 percent higher than regular inflation. This bill takes a pass on addressing that fundamental issue, and simply makes it easier and more likely that students will borrow more money and accumulate a larger debt by the time they graduate from college. H.R. 2669 completely ignores the root problem. The end result of this bill will be that the average college student graduating from college 4 years from now will still face a higher college debt than those graduating this year--even with all of the billions of dollars included in this bill.

Under H.R. 2669, those attending college in the future will be able to borrow more money and perhaps pay a lower interest rate for a short period of time, but with college expenses growing at a rate that far exceeds the annual inflation rate, students will end college with a significantly larger debt.

This bill creates five new Federal entitlement programs, costing tens of billions of dollars. In an attempt to feign compliance with the pay- as-you-go rules adopted by the current Congress, the Democrats include a provision that sunsets these new entitlement program. This is a budget gimmick designed to fool the American people. Does anyone really think that when these programs expire and students are half way through their college education, they will simply be allowed to expire? Of course they won't, and taxpayers will be forced to hand over tens of billions of additional dollars to continue these programs. Incidentally, this will come at about the same time when the House- passed state children's health insurance program, SCHIP, funding dries up and Congress will be looking for tens of billions of dollars to extend that program. Creating five new entitlement programs and spending tens of billions of dollars puts this nation on a path to financial ruin.

The bottom line is that H.R. 2669 enables students to take on more debt which will further burden them for many years past graduation. In 2006, the Higher Education Price Index, HEPI, calculation showed that inflation for colleges and universities jumped to 5 percent. This is 30 percent higher than the consumer price index, CPI--the regular inflation rate. When colleges and universities know that students have access to more funds through financial aid, loans, and grants, they have simply seen this as an opportunity to raise costs for students. This was the case in the past when college loan limits were significantly expanded and it will be repeated after this bill is passed.

The bill takes a pass on encouraging colleges and universities to put a lid on uncontrolled tuition increases. But it's not surprising given that this is the same Democrat majority that created a massive $100 million lobbying loophole for public universities. If we truly want to help our students go into the world with a good education saddled with less debt, we should hold colleges and universities who take government aid more accountable and not allow them to continue their excessive increases in college costs. Colleges and universities have an obligation to exercise fiscal responsibility rather than simply seeing these new student loans and grants as an opportunity to shift more of their fiscally irresponsible costs onto the backs of students and taxpayers.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to express my concerns about the bill before us (H.R. 3221 and H.R. 2776). While there are a number of good provisions in the bill, including the incorporation of several renewable energy provisions from legislation that I have cosponsored, these bills also contain seriously objectionable provisions.

As a member of the House Renewable Energy Caucus I am supportive of many of the renewable energy provisions in the bill. I have been very supportive of securing funding for solar and hydrogen energy research nationally and in my congressional district.

I also believe that conservation is important and am pleased that several important conservation provisions are included in the bill. Certainly conservation remains an important part of meeting our future energy needs and energy independence. I am disappointed, however, that while pursuing conservation initiatives this bill takes unnecessary steps that hamper our Nation's domestic energy production.

I am disappointed that this bill not only does very little to enhance domestic energy production but is counterproductive in that it takes a number of steps that will raise the cost of energy on the American people and American businesses. One provision in the bill will cost Florida consumers alone, over $4 billion. Furthermore, through its restrictions and higher taxes on domestic production of fossil fuels, this bill will result in increased imports from overseas.

At this time when American consumers and businesses are being taxed due to higher energy prices the Democrat bill that is being brought to the House floor will actually exacerbate this problem. It is also troubling that the Democrats have denied Members of the House the opportunity to offer and discuss over 100 amendments that they filed to this bill. Furthermore, of the 23 amendments that were allowed to be considered under the Democrat rules only five of them were offered by Republicans. The American people deserve better.

This bill: Locks up additional reserves so that we cannot extract oil and natural gas;

Raises taxes on domestic energy suppliers--giving foreign oil and gas producers a competitive edge over U.S. producers; and

Raises the costs of all energy projects undertaken in this bill-- costing billions of dollars--by applying Davis-Bacon wage requirements for any energy project undertaken through this bill.

Additional specific provisions in the bill that will do nothing to increase domestic energy supplies and in fact increase energy costs for the American people include:

A $15.3 billion in tax increase on domestic fossil fuel producers;

Sunsetting tax credits for refined coal at the end of 2008;

Banning natural gas drilling for 4.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Roan Plateau in Colorado;

Applying Davis-Bacon (union wage) requirements to all projects resulting from the tax credit bonds authorized under this bill--raising labor costs on such projects by 20 percent-30 percent;

Giving New York City $2 billion to use for any transportation project of their choosing--the Chairman of the Committee represents New York City;

Phasing out the tax credit for hybrid vehicles after more than 60,000 of them have been sold--discouraging further production and purchase of the most popular hybrid vehicles;

Raising taxes on oil and gas companies for the costs of oil and natural gas exploration;

Restricting the tax credit on biodiesel produced in the U.S.;

Creating a $1 billion foreign aid program for energy efficiency programs in developing countries;

Allowing individuals to sue the Federal Government for damages caused by global warming;

Giving bureaucrats a longer time period in which to approve oil and gas drilling permits;

Imposing Federal building energy codes on States;

Permanently authorizing the expenditure of $125 million a year for a grant program;

Creating a new global warming bureaucracy in the U.S. Department of State that will cost American taxpayers $750 million;

Putting the government in the role of picking winners and losers which leads to serious inefficiency;

Directing the U.S. Government to negotiate costly global warming treaties with developed countries--leaving developing countries like China and India free from such costly mandates on their competing industries;

Cutting $1.2 billion from agriculture producers and shifts it to already subsidized biodiesel companies;

Spending an unlimited amount of money on a cap-and-trade program whereby Federal agencies can purchase greenhouse gas emission offsets-- already proven to be very expensive for consumers in Europe;

Making it more difficult to develop oil and gas on Federal lands by closing down Bureau of Land Management offices;

Slowing the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, tar sands leasing program; and

Including dozens of additional costly mandates on businesses and individuals that are essentially hidden taxes.

It is no wonder that this bill is opposed by a host of organizations, including businesses, seniors, and energy organizations. This bill

does little to relieve the high energy costs that consumers and businesses are paying today, and in fact; it raises the cost of energy for consumers, businesses, State governments, and the Federal Government. This bill does nothing to enhance our access to oil and natural gas. It does nothing to enhance the development of clean coal technology--a supply of which we could meet our nation's energy needs for the next 200 years. The bill does nothing to enhance our use of nuclear energy--a source of energy that produces zero greenhouse gases.

It is important that we not view this bill in a vacuum. We must consider it along with other steps the current Democrat majority has taken that hamper our ability to move toward energy independence.

Earlier this year the Democrat majority voted to prohibit the Department of Interior from issuing oil shale leases in Utah and Wyoming. They defeated an amendment that would have permitted offshore drilling. They voted to shut down the state of Virginia's plan to allow for drilling solely along their own coast. They voted against allowing drilling for oil in a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, which has oil deposits large enough to replace our imports from Saudi Arabia.

I urge that this bill be rejected and that provisions that hamper our energy independence be removed. The President has said that he will veto this bill because it ``would lead to less domestic oil and gas production, higher energy costs, and higher taxes . . .''

Higher energy costs for American consumers will tax the family budget and will jeopardize American jobs by making it more difficult for American businesses to compete in an increasingly competitive international marketplace.