Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, the budget is the most important challenge that every Congress faces year in and year out. It reflects our priorities, it shows how we deal with war and peace, the economy, education, and the environment, who pays, and who benefits.

Under the Constitution, this is a uniquely congressional responsibility. The power of the purse is reserved to the United States Congress.

I have been disturbed lately to find one political party being AWOL. In fact, Republican Leader Boehner famously announced earlier this month that he wanted the people that he leads in the Republican Conference not to be legislators but just communicators, not be involved in the give and take of the legislative process. And as if to drive the point home, the Republicans last week released a budget proposal that the Associated Press summarized as, and I quote, ``a glossy pamphlet, short on details, and long on campaign-style talking points.''

There wasn't any substance there. There were no hard numbers talking about what they would do to reduce the deficits and what the deficit would be, what programs they were going to cut. Very, very disappointing to see a pamphlet that basically recycled the policies of the last 8 years of the Bush administration and Republican leadership that drove us into the economic ditch. They proposed their same old tax cuts for people who need them least, and offered an alternative that would provide 25 percent less in tax reduction for lower income Americans than is proposed by President Obama and would run up the deficit even higher than it already is.

We are going to have a week that is dominated by budget discussion. We Democrats are going to bring our budget to the floor on Thursday that builds on the President's challenge: Health care for all Americans; education reform, investing in the needs of education for our children and for people that have lost their jobs or need to change their career track; investing in reducing carbon pollution, climate change, and energy independence to create green-collar jobs that will be sustainable and provide value to the economy while we protect the planet. Our budget is serious about deficit reduction, after President Obama inherited from the Bush administration the largest deficit in United States history.

It is ironic, because when the Bush administration took office, they were facing a projected $5.2 trillion budget surplus, and Republicans had control of all of the levers of power here in Washington, D.C. Their control created economic problems, the budget deficit exploded, and taxes were cut for people who needed it the very least.

Ours is, I must emphasize, a budget outline that will enable Congress, at least those who want to be legislators and not merely talk about it, to roll up their sleeves and deliver on the challenges that the President made in health care, education, climate, deficit reduction, and tax reform.

There are no specific policy decisions made in the budget outline. That is not what a budget is for. Rather, it is to provide the framework. Budget decisions will be made by the people here who decide to be legislators over the next 6 months. There is still time for people on the other side of the aisle to reject their leadership, roll up their sleeves, and work with us to deal with specifics on carbon pollution, on health care, on education.

It was a little disorienting to hear at the Budget Committee late into the night last Wednesday Republicans talking about objecting to the President's proposal to reform student loans because they were afraid it would cost some bankers some jobs. I did the math. According to their figures, those jobs were at the expense of $133,000 each, money that the Democrats and the President think ought to be loaned to students, not to subsidize bankers.

We look forward to a spirited debate this week.

Madam Speaker, as we approach health care reform, there is no area that is more vital for honest discussion and careful analysis than what happens at end of a patient's life. For most of us, we will get the majority of our lifetime health care in that last year. Indeed, for many it is just the last few months of life, we use the most doctor care, the most intervention in terms of medical procedures, the most days in a hospital. This is clearly the time of greatest stress both for the patient and the family as they watch their loved one enter what is often a struggle in these last few months.

The evidence is that this is the hardest period to be able to make those critical decisions. We don't want to force spur-of-the-moment action for families when they are talking about things that have great consequence for the quality of life for not just a ``patient'' but a family member, the ability to extend the quality of life, and perhaps deal with recovery. This is also the worst time for people to go on autopilot check out, to have a default option where they just turn decisions over to whatever the local medical activity may be on that site without a thought and consequence to what the individual wishes of the patient and their family may be.

There is strong evidence that in many cases the very intensive activities--the tubes, the procedures, the operations, the ventilators--actually don't prolong life, and they certainly impact in a negative sense the quality of life, the way that the patient may be able to interact with their family and friends in those last few days and their mind-set and their pain level.

This research has sparked action from coast to coast. Many States have developed a new end-of-life care directive called Orders For Life Sustaining Treatment. They are being developed in over 30 States. They help the seriously ill patient identify their treatment preferences using clear, standardized language. It is written as actionable medical orders signed by a physician, and they help communicate patient preferences regarding the intensity of medical intervention, transfers to hospitals, use of antibiotics, artificially administered nutrition and resuscitation.

Members of my family and I have concluded that we don't want those extraordinary measures as our default, and have signed instructions accordingly.

What we find, however, is that too many people don't have access to the counseling and activities for them to be able to make an informed decision. The irony is that the Medicare system will spend thousands and thousands of dollars on intense medical intervention, intense medical activities, but they won't spend a few dollars to pay a doctor to have a conversation with a patient and the family about what they can expect, what their choices are, and to be able to engage with the patient and the family to decide what they want to have happen.

I guess that we don't do it to save money; but the evidence suggests that when people actually have a choice, they choose things that not only improve their quality of life, but actually save money. Why don't we give individual patients and their families that choice under Medicare?

That's why I will be introducing the Life Sustaining Treatment Preferences Act which will provide coverage under Medicare for consultations regarding end-of-life treatment options. It is time for Medicare to be able to address the needs that will truly reflect the preferences, the wishes, and the quality-of-life choices for Medicare patients and their families. It is the humane, compassionate thing to do. It will help us allocate our health care resources more appropriately to treat what people want, and it will relieve the pressure on the health care system so the default isn't always the most intensive, expensive interventions that often deteriorate the quality of life in those final days.

I would urge my colleagues to look at this option and join me in making sure that we modernize Medicare to meet the needs of patients and their families in their final hours.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentlelady's courtesy in permitting me to speak on the rule and support for the underlying bill.

This morning marks hopefully the culmination of 7 years of work that I have been involved with in the State of Oregon to preserve one of our special places, the Mount Hood wilderness. It has been a bipartisan effort. Indeed, I hiked around Mount Hood with my good friend and colleague, Greg Walden, 5 years ago now, with our staff. We have had countless meetings with stakeholders, with Native Americans, with cyclists, with all of the special interests that care about this icon of Oregon, Mount Hood. And it took us a lot of hard work to reach the sweet spot where we had bipartisan support. We actually got it through the House once, and it stumbled in the Senate.

Madam Speaker, it is too important for us to start down this trail of starting to tweak the legislation now, because I have watched the Mount Hood wilderness be tied up in Senate politics and procedural activities for a half-dozen years now. I strongly urge that we support this underlying bill and be able to bring in millions of acres of America's special places to give them wilderness designation.

I want to thank my friend, Greg Walden; the dean of our delegation, Peter DeFazio; and in the other body, Senator Wyden; former Republican Senator Smith; and new Senator Merkley. All of us have joined together on this landmark legislation for Mount Hood. I see my good friend and colleague Congressman Minnick from Idaho here. This is a journey in Idaho that Representative Simpson has been working on for years as well. Members should come together and pass this legislation.

The rule does matter. We have watched one single Member of the other body tie up critical wilderness legislation for years. We have got it through the Senate, finally. We have broad bipartisan support for special places all across America. I strongly urge that we resist the temptation to tinker with this bill now. I would like to think that my colleague on the other side of the aisle is offering this from the purest of motives, but the fact is that we have watched delay and amendment foul up the wilderness legislation procedurally for a half- dozen years.

By approving this rule, approving this legislation, we can move forward with these protections for special places all across America. And then we can go back and deal with any unresolved issues. Heaven knows, I want to make sure that we take care of issues that relate to cyclists, for instance. Vote for the rule, vote for the bill, and get on with business.

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my good friend from Utah. You know, the irony is that all the lands we are talking about are already publicly owned. They are not on the tax rolls. They have been publicly owned since the United States first acquired them. We give these states 25 percent of timber receipts, 50 percent of oil and gas, and Federal payment in lieu of taxes (PILT).

I come from one of those States where there are some serious questions about the Federal balance of resources, but I just want to say that adding the 126,000 acres and 80 miles of wild and scenic rivers has no effect on the revenue flow to our State. In fact, I would be prepared to make the argument that having this certainty, having this enhanced protection, is actually going to add value. It is going to protect water resources. It is going to encourage tourism. It is going to enhance both the environment and our economy.

That is why my colleague Greg Walden, and I, spent 7 years on this piece of legislation. We had the bipartisan support of former Republican Senator Smith and Senator Wyden and new Senator Merkley. We had Native Americans, environmentalists, local government, bicyclists-- a wide range of people who came together--realizing this is a vision for the future.

Now, Mr. Chairman, you have put together a piece of legislation that goes

far beyond preserving our special places in Oregon. It is an opportunity not only to save hundreds of thousands of acres across America, but it is an opportunity to develop an approach where we can come together. This legislation is going to get broad bipartisan support, and I think it is going to show a way where we can protect more of America's special places and not disadvantage anybody economically but actually strengthen the economy, strengthen the environment and preserve these areas for generations to come.

I thank the committee for the work they have done. I look forward to this bipartisan support.

We have a lot of controversies here in Washington, D.C. There's even controversy over whether some of us should be legislators or communicators. But there's one area that we all can be policymakers, come together, make the economy stronger, and improve the quality of life for all Americans.

In every congressional office there's a copy of the Congressional Quarterly Weekly. The current issue on page 656 has an article about the EPA dealing with the Pentagon pollution. I invite every Member, every legislative director, every staff member who's responsible for dealing with defense or dealing with the environment to pick up this article and read the two pages.

It illustrates a bigger issue here--not just a dustup in the last administration between EPA and the Department of Defense--but the role that we will all play with thousands of time bombs literally ticking in every State and most of our congressional districts.

It's embarrassing that we still have almost 10,000 toxic sites with unexploded ordnance and military toxin scattered in every State of the Union, and 3,449 of these sites are Superfund sites. Amazingly, 2,600 of them are formerly used defense sites that, at the current rate-- these are bases that have been closed--at the current rate, it will take more than half a century to get rid of these dangerous elements and return the land to productive use.

This is not just a serious problem for every State and almost every community. First and foremost, it is a danger to our military, to their families, and to their neighbors, having these toxic and unexploded ordnance lying around. It also is a serious problem for military readiness.

One of the reasons that States and local governments are resisting the expanding training footprint that our military needs today is because we, the federal government hasn't been a very good neighbor. People don't know how long they are going to be left with a landscape that is littered with explosives and toxic substances.

Three times since I have been in Congress, we have had to pull forest firefighters out of raging flames in the forests because bombs were exploding because past military training had left shells behind. There's a subdivision in Pennsylvania on a former military site that does not have fire service because they're afraid that the heat from a fire will explode a bomb.

This is a problem of military readiness now. It's also an opportunity--if we solve this problem--with the techniques and technology that will help us determine whether it's a 105-millimeter shell or it's a hub cab, can also be used to make our soldiers safer overseas from improvised explosive devices. It will save money in the long run because as these shells and contaminants break down and leach into the groundwater, it will be more expensive to solve the dangerous pollution in the future.

It's not just a problem of the Department of Defense and the Pentagon and administrations past and present--it's a problem for Congress. We have been missing in action. It's time for us to put a reasonable amount of money in cleaning up these Superfund sites and getting rid of the unexploded ordnance.

I don't want to read another story of where there are children, like those in San Diego, who found a bomb playing in a field behind their subdivision. It exploded killing two of them. News accounts of a bomb washing up on a beach in Florida or explosives discovered near a school are stories that we don't want to hear again.

It's past time that we own up to our responsibilities, that we solve the problem that will help military readiness today, technology that will save the lives of our servicemembers overseas, make our servicemembers at home and their families and the people who work with them safer, and meet our responsibilities to the environment. Oh, by the way. We will put tens of thousands of people to work cleaning up land and returning it to productive capacity all across America.

It's time that Congress is no longer missing in action in this serious problem of military contamination. Look at the Congressional Quarterly Weekly that is on your desk, page 656. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to address the House this evening because tomorrow is going to be a very important day as we move forward with a markup in the Budget Committee to deal with priorities that are going to be facing this Congress.

Before I begin my presentation, I would like to recognize the gentlewoman from Houston, Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), if I could yield to her for a 3-minute presentation. I know she has some information that she would like to share with the House, and I would recognize her at this time.

Dr. Dorothy Height's 97th Birthday

Thank you. I appreciate the gentlelady making that presentation.

Madam Speaker, the President of the United States has issued a challenge to this Congress and to the American people that is embodied in the budget that he outlined before us when he addressed this Chamber in his first joint session of Congress and has followed up with in his budget submission. He has given a challenge to us to deal with the great interrelated problems of the day.

He has suggested that we move forward to deal with health care in terms of fundamental reform for all Americans, for dealing with energy instability and global warming, to deal with the incredible budget deficit that he has inherited to try and stabilize the fiscal situation of the United States, and to deal with investing in education in the future.

What I would like to do this evening is address the element of the budget that speaks to climate change, global warming, energy independence, and investing in our energy future.

It has been interesting listening to our Republican friends who have been told by Mr. Boehner, the Republican leader, that they are not to be legislators, that they are to be communicators, evidently deciding that dealing with the messy problems of government with energy, with the budget, with the nuts and bolts that the American people sent us here to address might be a little too risky. So, instead, they're talking about communicating some of their concerns.

We have heard the mantra about the President's budget--taxing too much, spending too much and borrowing too much. We have not heard constructive alternatives, and they certainly have not acknowledged that the policies of the Republican majority and the Republican President, when they were in charge for the last 8 years with the Bush administration and in charge for a dozen years in the House of Representatives, actually created these problems.

Spend too much? These are people who understand spending. They produced record budget increases, increasing spending faster than Bill Clinton, faster even than one of the favorite whipping boys they have-- the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson.

Borrow too much? Well, these are people who, when President Bush took office, were faced with the daunting prospect of a $5 trillion budget surplus. That was the official estimate. Remember, there were smart people concerned with what would happen if we paid off the national debt. What would be the instruments for insurance and pensions and other commercial transactions? Well, they solved that problem by turning a $5 trillion surplus, with a pattern of reckless spending and ill-considered tax cuts, to a record deficit. It was a $5 trillion surplus, and they added $5 trillion to the national debt. They have given President Obama a record $1.8 trillion deficit that he is struggling with now.

They know about spending too much. They know about borrowing too much because much of this was money borrowed from the Chinese, the Japanese and the Europeans. Under their watch, the current accounts and the balance of all of the goods and services and trade in and out of the United States increased from 3.6 percent to over 5 percent, a 40 percent increase--rather sobering--and it is contributing to the instability that we face.

Well, these people are, hopefully, going to stop communicating long enough tomorrow to maybe roll up their sleeves and help us deal with very specific opportunities as part of the

President's challenge dealing with climate change, carbon pollution and the opportunity for energy independence.

This is critical for the same reasons that the Republican talking points are circulated because the situation today--with our carbon pollution, energy instability, climate change--is a tax on the future.

Last year, we shipped some $700 billion overseas to pay for imported oil, a sum that was taken away from our economy, much of it borrowed money. It is, in the future, it is a recipe for disaster as we move forward. They know that as we are in a situation today where we're talking about disasters that are consequences of this climate instability--we have seen a dramatic increase in weather-related events in terms of drought just in terms of natural disaster. We saw last year $200 billion of costs associated with natural disasters, much of which is related to this climate instability, unpredictable weather events, and 220,000 lives were lost. And, going forward, we know we are facing greater and greater challenges.

The budget that has been advanced by the President that we will be discussing has the opportunity for us to carve out some room for some area that deals with--whether it's cap-and-trade, a carbon tax--some mechanism so that it is no longer free for people to pollute the atmosphere with carbon.

We know that it is not free in terms of environmental consequence. We know that it is not free in terms of weather instability, in terms of drought, the permafrost in Alaska that is no longer perma, roads that are buckling, seaside villages that are washed away, and we watch as sea levels continue to increase in the United States placing millions of Americans at risk who live immediately adjacent to our coastlines and people around the world who are going to be susceptible to storm surges. We're looking at a situation now where these challenges are going to bear directly on the quality of life of Americans and our economic stability.

It is clear that over the last 20 years, these concentrations of gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere, raising the temperature of the planet, the case now is largely settled. The consensus of the environmental community is that we have--global warming is a reality and we have consequences that we must deal with.

It is important that we have an opportunity in this Congress to exercise our responsibility to do something about the costs and consequences of climate change. We are feeling them today, and they are going to be even more devastating on people in the future.

Lake Mead is less than half the level that it has been in recent years, putting tremendous stress on water supplies in the southwest. The City of Las Vegas, for instance, is looking at rather elaborate and expensive alternatives to try and maintain their lifestyle in the middle of the desert.

We're watching increased forest fires year after year. These costs are increasing exponentially placing large areas, not just in the southwest, but the flame zone is stretching across the country.

There is increased damage from forest pests that are moving into new habitat as a result of the climate change.

And then there are the costs that we bear to national security. As we look at conflicts that relate to water and drought in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Middle East, these bear a cost burden on the United States. We very likely have to deal with those conflicts in the future.

There is also a very critical cost that is occurring. As the ocean absorbs increasing amounts of carbon dioxide, the ocean acidifies. We're bleaching the coral reefs--the coral reefs that have been likened to the rain forests of the ocean; that reduces the ability of plankton to form calcium carbonate, reduces the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon and threatens the food chain on which not just aquatic life, but increasingly large numbers of people around the world rely.

There are significant health consequences as we look at the impact of severe heat waves. We watched thousands of people die in the Midwest, in Europe, particularly in France, with heat waves of just a few years ago. We are quite certain, and the research is clear, the models predict, and are, in fact, proving to be the case that as these intensify in magnitude and duration, we're going to have further increases in mortality and morbidity especially amongst the young, the frail, the elderly and the poor.

We're watching impacts on air quality, a tax on Americans now, dealing with regional ozone pollution, respiratory infection, aggravation of asthma and premature death.

These extreme weather events are having, especially along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, severe events that have intensity of precipitation that is increasing the risk of flooding, greater run-off and erosion, and the potential for adverse water quality.

The people who are--increasing numbers of whom are who are subjected to these problems of disease and injury to floods, storms, droughts, and fires, this is a real cost today and is one that is going to increase in the future.

Madam Speaker, there are opportunities for us to be able to make a difference, restructuring our economy, dealing with climate change, reducing carbon pollution, in ways that will make a fundamental difference in terms of how America works. At a time when our economy is in free fall, what better opportunity for us to be able to create economic opportunities at home, new green jobs that can't be exported, building a smart grid, weatherizing homes, new jobs from exporting green technology that we create, and reducing the costs for American families through energy efficiency. Remember, it is not the rate but the bill at the end of the day.

We have an opportunity to increase economic competitiveness with a more efficient economy, and energy independence means we can stop sending our money overseas to people who don't like us.

Now, I see that I have been joined by my colleague from New York. Mr. Tonko has been a leader, both in terms of the private sector position, and for years in the New York Assembly before he joined us in Congress. He chaired relevant legislative committees dealing with these issues.

And we're honored to have him join us this evening, and I would like to recognize him for his observations about the opportunity as we move forward with a new budget, dealing with opportunities to reduce carbon pollution and usher in a new economic era.

Well, I appreciate your sketching that vision of the future with a look towards the past. And if there was ever a time that the American economy needs a little rebalancing, it is now. We're looking at a financial services sector that is going to be shrinking. I think we've seen the consequence where there is a certain amount of this economic growth, which was a result of developing exotic financial products, having desk jockeys figure out new ways to charge fees, and subprime loans, what happened with predatory loan lending, and in some cases, outrageous credit card practices.

Well, this is not arguably adding to the store of national wealth. And what you described was several instances in our history where we were developing and implementing new technology. We were adding value to the economy, real value to the American productivity. The family had more tangible activities. And people were involved with jobs that created value.

Well, we have seen study after study that indicates precisely what you have described is going to occur if we are able to make that transition.

The State of California is already one of the most energy efficient in the Nation. In fact, if the entire United States was as efficient on a per capita basis as California was just a few years ago, energy consumption in the United States would be reduced 32 percent.

Well, one wonders, well, then California may not have the economic upside of dealing with a cost-effective energy reduction. Well, that would be wrong. California has analyzed the economic impact of their plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels in the course of about the next decade.

That's a 30 percent reduction from business as usual emission levels projected for 2020, about 15 percent below today's level, and they found that the economic benefits would increase economic production overall for their State $33 billion. It would increase their gross State product $7 billion. It would increase personal income--and this is critical in terms of the savings to individuals and increased earnings from green jobs--$16 billion. On a per capita basis, Californians would be ahead $200 each per year, and there would be more than 100,000 new jobs. Oh, and by the way, they calculate billions of dollars--between $4 and $5 billion--a year savings in health costs.

So I think what you have described, we can see in a State like California where there's been extensive study, that there's an opportunity to really realize that vision.

That's a very impressive story, starting with reducing environmental pressures to right through the food chain, production chain, reducing costs, increasing productivity. And I would assume that it is also safe to say that there is a hidden advantage in the long term because application of strategies like this reduce long- term demand.

Nothing is more costly for individual consumers than having to go and make massive capital investment for future production capacity. The cheapest kilowatt is one that we don't have to generate, and this would be an example where you were saving future generations as well.

I love the phraseology, ``a golden opportunity turned green.'' I think that is well-said, and your analogy to the space race that we had with the former Soviet Union I think is a perfect analogy. It sparked a birth of technology. It encouraged us to invest in education in grade school, high school and college and post-secondary. It was a spurt of innovation that led to a whole host of new products and increased productivity.

And you rightly point out that we are currently the largest consumer of energy in the world on a per capita basis. Sadly, we waste more energy than any other country on the face of the planet. It doesn't have to be that way, and in your State and mine, there are people hard at work developing new technologies and techniques to be able to essentially mine these energy sinks that we have with old residential and industrial buildings, wasteful practices, to be able to harvest the energy, to be able to recycle it, to lower bills and be able to have longer term productivity. This new energy opportunity seems to me to be unparalleled.

I want to just make one additional observation about the fact that change is coming. Now, there are some that say, well, maybe we don't want it in this budget, maybe we are not ready for cap-and-trade or a carbon tax or facing up, as virtually every other developed country has done, and indeed over 900 cities across the country decided they weren't going to wait for the Bush administration. They were going to be Kyoto compliant. They were moving ahead with their own plans, including mine in Portland, Oregon, where we reduced greenhouse gas emissions for four consecutive years and actually are almost Kyoto compliant now.

Well, the Bush administration not only turned its back on its global responsibilities by not only not ratifying Kyoto and working with it, but not offering an alternative, just basically saying we'll go our own way, we'll ignore it. They ignored the problem in this country. The EPA administrator, Johnson, was in the most effective witness protection program in history. I think he appeared before one congressional committee. I only saw him once during his tenure, but they refused, EPA under President Bush and Administrator Johnson, refused to accept their responsibility under the Clean Air Act. You know, the Massachusetts Supreme Court case said don't delay further on dealing with tailpipe emissions, don't deny a decision to the State of California to try and do something about it.

Well, the Obama administration understands that nonaction is not an option and that they are following the law finally and dealing with the potential of regulating carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Well, I think if we took a census of people in the business community, they would rather that Congress stepped up with a regulatory process, whether it's cap-and-trade or carbon tax or some variation, so that they had certainty and that we have a chance to move forward rather than just doing it in a regulatory process administratively.

But one way or another, the head-in-the-sand approach of the prior administration and former congressional leadership that was going to deny the reality of global warming and our responsibility is a thing of the past.

The question is: How are we going to do it and how soon will we move forward so that we can reap the benefits and avoid the consequences?

Congressman Tonko, we are fortunate to have your 15 years of committee leadership and your work at NYSERDA to be able to bring to bear in a practical sense how we implement that vision. I could not agree with you more. Frankly, I am excited that the American public understands this.

Now there are those that try and distort what public opinion is, what the public will or will not do. You have given concrete examples in your State of New York of how these pieces fit together. We find that more than 75 percent of the Americans in Gallup's annual environmental poll for this year say they are in favor of increased government financial support and incentives to produce energy from alternative sources, while just 8 percent say that government should do less. Thirteen percent said the government has it right exactly.

The same survey showed that Americans largely endorse government efforts to increase alternative energy production through the use of financial support or incentives directly in line with the stated objectives of this administration.

Now these are majorities of Democrats, 86 percent; Independents, 79 percent; even Republicans, 63 percent, all support these renewable energy investments like you describe.

I was also struck by a second poll of over 2,000 Americans conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication where they found that the American public strongly supported a wide variety of climate change and energy policies.

Ninety-two percent supported more funding for research on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind; 85 percent supported tax rebates for people buying energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels; 80 percent said the government should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant; and 69 percent said the United States should sign an international treaty that requires the United States to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by 2050, not the 80 percent that we deal with.

And we find in the same survey a large majority of Americans also supported policies that directly stated, told the Americans that there would be an economic cost. Seventy-nine percent supported a 45-mile- per-gallon efficiency standard for cars, trucks, and SUVs, even if it meant that a new vehicle would cost $1,000 more to buy. Seventy-two percent supported a requirement that electric utilities produce at least 20 percent of their energy from wind, solar, or renewable sources, even if it cost the household $100 a year or more.

Seventy-two percent supported government subsidies to replace old water heaters, air conditioners, light bulbs, and insulation, even if it cost the average household $5 a month in higher taxes. And 63 percent supported a special fund to make buildings more energy efficient and teach Americans how to reduce their energy use, even if that added an extra $2.50 a month to their electric bills. Finally, 67 percent said the United States should reduce its emissions of greenhouse gasses, regardless of what other countries do.

It seems to me this is pretty compelling evidence that the American public is starting to get it.

I love your verbiage, including ``thinking outside the barrel.'' I think that is a very powerful concept. I think you sketch the larger challenge that we face. We are addressing with the President and with our leadership in Congress a threat to our planet, as you say--national security, shipping lots of money to people who don't like us very much, financing both sides of the war on terror; and, dealing with fundamental restructuring of our economy.

There aren't very many times when people in Congress--there have only been less than 12,000 men and women who have ever served in this body for the entire history of the United States. There are few times when there are fundamental existential challenges to our society, to our way of life. We are in one of those moments right now with the economy, with our national security, and with the threat to the planet.

As you have described, there is an opportunity now for the United States Congress to lead. In a sense, part of it, and I know from a little experience with some of the civic leadership in the State of New York--and it's certainly true in my home State of Oregon--that there is leadership in the private sector, in churches, in synagogues, college campuses, in businesses large and small. People who are young, who are of a real activist environmental bent, but also people of the greatest generation, people who grew up in the Depression and World War II, who understand about conservation, understand about recycling, understand about working together to meet challenges. We have a

wide range of Americans that are already out there.

It will be interesting, in my judgment, to see if Congress is able to exercise the courage, the vision, and the leadership to catch up with our constituents.

Congressman Tonko, well said. I deeply appreciate you joining me this evening.

We are going to have an opportunity to deal with these issues tomorrow with the budget markup and this next week. And as we have committees moving forward, as you say, moving in these various directions, I look forward to working with you and deeply appreciate your reasoned voice and your experience. It is going to make our legislation better.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, for the past year we have been on an economic roller coaster, with scary turns and falls coming ever faster, making the sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs even worse.

Along the way, the Federal Government, spurred by the most-dire predictions, has taken sweeping actions. Some, like the bailout, I opposed; others, like the Economic Recovery Package of President Obama, I supported. But action was warranted to help the struggling economy and restore public confidence. Yet we continue to react to part of the problem with partial stopgap actions.

This week, Congress has an opportunity to deal with the bigger picture and comprehensive solutions as we consider President Obama's budget.

For decades we have been living beyond our means and the environment's capacity to be a dumping ground for toxic waste, and air and water pollution, especially carbon pollution, that is destabilizing the climate, raising global temperature and sea levels, and changing things we rely on, like growing seasons and water supply.

We have been living on borrowed time and borrowed money. The previous administration cut taxes for those who needed help the least, increased spending but avoided long-term investments in education and our infrastructure like roads, bridges and rail.

The day of reckoning is here, accelerated by the global financial meltdown, the causes of which are clearer than the remedies. The sad truth is that the geniuses who figured out how to enrich themselves were clueless about the broader implications. Too much energy, brain power and lobbying has been spent on making money for a few, not on creating underlying economic value for the Nation. We have been left with two starkly different paths: we can muddle on through doing what we have done, only less of it, with a battle over who will take the biggest losses while continuing these past patterns. Given the array of special interests and the history involved, we have a pretty good idea what that path will look like.

The other approach is outlined in the President's budget: tackle comprehensively the challenges of health care, education, the long-term fiscal stability of the United States and global warming and its real costs and danger.

The health care system is the biggest opportunity for savings. We spend more money than anyone else in the world for health care, but ours is a system where Americans are sick more often and die sooner than people in most developed countries and in even some poor ones. It is not just foreign countries that have figured this out, but many American communities provide better health care while spending less money than the Nation as a whole. We as a Nation can do this.

Energy dependence and carbon pollution doesn't just threaten our way of life in the future, it attacks our pocketbook and our communities now. The President's plan will save families money, make America more secure, and protect the planet.

In the middle of the economic meltdown, we shouldn't and we won't raise taxes. But over the long haul, we are going to have to pay our debts and find money for rebuilding and renewing America. There are areas in the budget that point the way, like keeping some portion of the expiring tax cuts on the most well-off and reinstituting the Superfund tax to clean up toxic waste.

Finally, there is the question of tackling unnecessary spending. The President points out agricultural subsidies for the rich agribusiness interests, while shortchanging most farmers and ranchers. There is a way to make more rational our support of agriculture. We need to support him as we all face the question whether Cold War weapons that the military doesn't need, and in some cases doesn't even want, are worth the costs to the American taxpayer.

The path contained in the budget will be the first chance for Congress, the administration, and, most important, the public to weave together the elements of change and reform. There are short-term political risks, to be sure. But the long-term benefits are breathtaking, especially when compared to

continuing the short term, business as usual, unsustainable course that has led us to this point of economic and fiscal disaster.

My hope and prayer is that Congress will be able to meet the President's challenge and work with him to refine his bold budget, treat our problems with the gravity they merit, and the public with the respect that it is due.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your leadership and the ability to work with you on this bill on what has been a sharp reversal of past practice.

In most of my career here, we have watched the Tax Code twisted, stretched, bent to lavish rewards on a tiny minority of Americans, a few thousand of the richest Americans, and the favored special interests.

Today, in a sharp reversal, under your leadership, we used the Tax Code to rebalance the scales. We will use the Tax Code to strip away the outrageous benefits of these bonuses to some of the people who helped drive the economy into the ditch in the first place.

We are helping protect taxpayers, get their money back, and I hope, Mr. Chairman, sending a message on how the Tax Code will be used under the Obama administration and in your work on the Ways and Means Committee to be able to help the American public as we move forward to protect and rebalance the American economy.

Mr. Speaker, not quite so fast on the AIG bonuses. The weasels who drove that company into the ground may not even be entitled to the bonuses in their contract based on their performance. And a failed company rescued from bankruptcy by the United States Government may not be obligated to pay them anyway.

Thankfully, there is also the power of the tax code. Let's return to the Eisenhower tax rates of 90 percent for people who receive bonuses from companies that we already own 50 percent or more of with taxpayer money.

For years the tax code around here has been tortured to reward people who need tax cuts absolutely the least. Hopefully we can use it this time to impose a little tax justice.

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed listening to my colleague from Illinois. In fact, this is the second time today I have heard him speak on the floor and I have seen him point to the picture of the coal miners and talk about the problems of the Clean Air Act. And I hope every American was listening to that because that is exactly what we are talking about today.

We had, for decades, people burning dirty coal, turning rivers and lakes in other parts of the country, acid rain, destroying forests, posing problems to people's health. And what this Congress did, in a bipartisan effort, was create a mechanism to make it so that it was no longer free to pollute the air with dirty coal that created acid rain and destroyed lakes and forests.

My friend didn't want to talk about the problems to health, didn't want to talk about the issues that relate to the damage to the environment, or the fact that we were able to create the most effective market system in history that was able to solve a real problem to the environment, to health. Life went on. Yes, there were some changes in terms of the economy. There were some people who didn't--when it became too expensive for them to foul the air, spoil our lakes, and destroy our forests, then they shifted. Well, I would suggest, Madam Speaker, that any independent observer would suggest that that was a solid program and a good tradeoff.

I don't hear my friend from Illinois coming to the floor and saying, repeal the Clean Air Act so we can have a few more miners at work creating dirty coal that is going to ruin our environment and destroy health. That issue is over.

We are facing a very real challenge today about what we are going to do to protect the future of the planet. I will get into, in a moment, talking about some of the discussion that we have heard from our friends on the other side of the aisle, but one of the things that is very, very important to note is that they have no answer in terms of what we do to the slow cooking of the planet. They ignore the costs that are being incurred right this minute. Temperatures in Alaska have already gone up several degrees, permafrost is no longer permanent, roads are buckling, coastal villages washed away. These are costs and consequences that we are already seeing as the ocean levels slowly, imperceptibly to most of us, but very clear to scientists when they see the fabled Inland Passage in the Arctic Ocean free of ice, when we watch the habitat shrink for arctic animals, when we watch diseases shifting from vector control--West Nile disease, for instance, popping up in places where it shouldn't be, where invasive species are infesting our forests. These are costs and consequences that we are seeing now that my friends on the other side of the aisle refuse to come to grips with.

But we are not going to be able to have the same head-in-the-sand attitude that we saw from the Bush administration alone--of all the major governments in the world, alone--denying the imperative of global warming, withdrawing from opportunities to be collaborative on a national scale.

What we had to have in the last 8 years, where the other side of the aisle simply accepted that sort of behavior from their administration and, in fact, aided and abetted and supported it, we had over 900 cities across the country come forward and say wait a minute, we're not going to wait for the Bush administration and the Federal Government. We are going to take it upon ourselves to deal with climate change and global warming and move to change our local economy, to prepare it for the future, and to help slow this damage to the environment by carbon pollution.

I come from a community in Portland, Oregon, where we have actually reduced greenhouse gas emissions for 4 years in a row. We're very close to being Kyoto compliant. It gave us an opportunity, frankly, to create new green jobs. We were competing with Houston and Denver for being the wind energy capital of the United States because we've been serious about energy conservation, transportation choices, land use, all of the things that are going to be part of a comprehensive solution to the threat of these changes to the climate and the carbon pollution. We've actually been able to make some progress and be positioned to deal with a carbon-constrained economy.

We need, Madam Speaker, for people to reflect on what is happening now. Just like my friend from Illinois didn't talk about the cost of acid rain. It didn't matter to him. He was concerned about a few miners in his district and didn't care about the damage to forests and human health and lakes and fishing. But we are already seeing the damage that is occurring as a result of climate change.

Speaking of acid rain, one of the things we are seeing is that the ocean is slowly becoming more and more acidic. This increased acidic content of the ocean is having a consequence in terms of damaging coral reefs. I mean these are the rain forests of the ocean. This is where billions and billions of different animals and plants reside up the food chain throughout the ecological system of the ocean that makes a difference in terms of how people on this planet are going to be fed. We are watching what has happened. There may be consequences in terms of the Earth's climate because of the change in the ocean's current and acidic level.

We are seeing across the country increases in extreme weather events, exactly what the scientists told us would happen. Yes, the world's atmosphere is increasing in temperature. Yes, we're seeing an increase in the sea level that could be 2 to 6 feet by the end of the next century. But we are already seeing vast stretches of this country in the flame zone being subjected to increased forest fires, to drought. In your areas in the Southeast, you have seen drought where it has not been a problem for years. In the Southwest, Lake Mead that supplies the city of Las Vegas is going down, causing massive disruption. We are watching changes that are taking place in terms of snowpack. My good friend and colleague from the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Inslee, and I depend on snowpack for water supply and energy production. This makes a great deal of difference.

Madam Speaker, one of the concerns I have as I am listening to our friends on the other side of the aisle make things up about what is going to happen with a proposal to reduce carbon pollution and put a price on it, they assume somehow that this is going to result in money disappearing, that somehow this is just a tax that goes into the great government maw and there is nothing that comes out the other end. Well, as a practical matter, and I'm confident that in the course of this hour as I work with my friend Mr. Inslee, who I see poised here in the front of the Chamber and I am hoping that he's willing to enter into this conversation with me because he knows a great deal about it, we hope that we will be able to encourage, if not our Republican friends, at least the American people to look at the President's budget. Look at what he has proposed to begin a comprehensive approach to transform our energy supply and slow global warming.

Yes, he recommends putting a price on carbon pollution, but he also recommends that this money would be generated by having the carbon polluters pay for the privilege, just like we did with acid rain so successfully that my friend from Illinois now is against. There are opportunities to be able to put this back into place because the program, and I'm just quoting from the President's budget, would be implemented through a cap and trade, like we did with acid rain, that will ensure that the biggest polluters don't enjoy a windfall. The program will fund vital investments in a clean energy future, which I think my friend Mr. Inslee may have some thoughts about, $150 billion over the course of the next 10 years. The balance of the auction revenues are to be returned to the people, especially vulnerable families, communities, and business, to help the transition to the clean energy economy.

You know, there's a great NRDC blog that talks about Newt Gingrich's assertion that climate change will result in a $1,300 tax per household. And they point out it's simply voodoo economics.

First of all, he ignores the value of the carbon market. It just disappears.

He assumes that the money doesn't get returned to the taxpayers. Well, based on what New Gingrich and the Republicans did with their bridges to nowhere, with their profligate spending in Iraq, with their driving up the budget deficits and giving benefits to a few taxpayers at the expense of the many, I can understand the skepticism. He assumes that it won't be invested in energy conservation, saving us money. He assumes that communities aren't being helped. He assumes that it's not going to address regional differences in the cost of cutting global warming. He just assumes that somehow it's locked up someplace in a vault. Well, that's wrong. The President has outlined an approach that captures the value and makes America stronger, more energy reliant, and allows families the tools to reduce their escalating energy costs.

And I will conclude on this point and then yield to my colleague from Washington State if he's interested in joining in. But I want to say that we are facing now the consequences of an energy policy that was designed looking in a rear-view mirror for failed fossil fuels, lack of energy conservation, and not dealing with the technologies of the future. And as a result, energy bills are going up. As a result, we saw $4.11 a gallon gasoline last summer. We saw $700 billion leave this country to petroleum potentates when there's a different vision of the President and of those of us who want to do something not just about global warming but to retool and revitalize our green economy.

And with that I would like to yield to my colleague Mr. Inslee, who's an author in this arena, a noted spokesperson who has been working for years in Congress before, as they say, it was fashionable, to talk about how our economy and our environment could look different.

Congressman Inslee, welcome.

I very much appreciate the perspective you bring to this discussion, and I very much appreciate you referencing the Stern report. This is an opportunity, we both serve on the Speaker's Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, having a chance to deal with the British Parliament hearing and Sir Nicholas Stern lay out the result of his research.

And by a 5-1 margin, the cost, the risks, the costs that we are looking at were far greater than any cost of implementation, and as you have outlined in great detail, there are many opportunities, if we do this right, to revitalize our economy, to reduce costs right now to American families.

Just four categories of climate damage alone, hurricanes, higher energy bills, property lost to rising sea level and water-supply impacts are predicted to cost the average family $2,000 a year by 2025; by 2050, that increases another 50 percent to $3,000 a year; and by the end of the next century, $11,000 per family, just for those elements.

Now, those estimates ignore, because they are a little hard to quantify, but as you pointed out, they are real. The added cost of drought, flood, wildfires, the mud slides that follow, agricultural damage and the value of lost life. We saw thousands of people lose their lives a few years ago in Europe, in France. We saw hundreds of people die in the Midwest.

These are real problems that our friends on the other side have no answers for. They are, instead, paying--I am stunned that they would come to the floor and argue against.

Well, I appreciate your clarification and amplification. It is stunning to hear my friend on the other side of the aisle think that the Clean Air Act failed, and because a few people admittedly lost their jobs mining dirty coal, that somehow it wasn't worth stopping the damage to lakes and forests and human health. We put a price on a pollutant, as you pointed out, sulfur dioxide.

People paid and pretty soon we had reversed the damage and we were cleaning it up. There are costs now that the American public is paying. There are greater, future costs that we can avoid, an opportunity to strengthen America and strengthen our economy.

I see we have been joined by our colleague from Colorado, Congressman Polis, if you would wish to enter into this dialogue, I know you have been an avid supporter of a strong environment. You come from a community that cares deeply about this, and we would welcome your thoughts and observations if you would care to join us.

I very much appreciate your observations. We have been joined by my colleague from New York, Congressman Tonko from Albany who, in a prior life, as I recall, was CEO of the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority. You have got some practical applications, both in your private sector experience and your work for years in the New York State Assembly. We will welcome thoughts and observations that you would have to add to the conversation.

We deeply appreciate your adding a voice of experience as somebody who dealt not just with the policy but the practice to demonstrate how this money somehow doesn't disappear, but is reinvested, creates wealth, creates economic opportunities for a wide variety of people.

I appreciate that very much.

Mr. Inslee.

Super. As we move into our last 10 minutes, I would like to turn again to my colleague from Boulder to share some of your further thoughts in terms of where you think we are now and how we move this forward.

I appreciate you zeroing in, both of you, talking about the value that is added. A wind turbine, for instance, has more than 8,000 parts. There's cement, steel, ball bearings, copper, wiring. It goes up and down the production line. As soon as that order is placed, it moves out throughout the economy.

Congressman Tonko.

I appreciate that. And as I turn to my friend from Washington to conclude this session for us this evening, I do hope that our friends who are watching this program on TV, on C-SPAN, go to the President's budget. I hope they look on page 21. It is available at www.budget.gov. There are copies available in libraries. Look on page 21 where the President outlines his goal. He is talking about putting a price on carbon pollution, yes, returning the benefit to the American consumer, the American economy to be able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to reduce costs for paying for utilities, to be able to spark that green economy.

You know, I am struck by people who are making things up about what is in the President's plan and outlandish numbers that are associated with it, and I think we have gone a long way tonight towards debunking that and talking about the real cost that the American consumer and the environment is paying right now. But I am hopeful that people will embrace this, like we embraced the Clean Air Act where, on a bipartisan basis, people decided that it wasn't fair to pollute the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide; that we were going to have acid rain, that we are going to poison lakes in your area and kill forests. We put a price on it, and we were able to make remarkable progress with a very light touch as far as the government is concerned. We have this opportunity with carbon pollution to do exactly the same thing. The stakes, if anything, are higher.

I hope that our friends on the other side of the aisle stop this line of argument that somehow the Clean Air Act was a mistake, that a few polluting jobs were worth the damage that it inflicted on the environment, and ignore the lessons that we have learned.

Congressman Inslee, I would appreciate it if you would kind of take us home.

Well said.

Mr. Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time.

I prefer, Mr. Chairman, to think of myself as an associate member of the committee. It is a source of great pride and interest for me to have served under your leadership for 12 years on that committee and with Eddie Bernice Johnson on this subcommittee.

I rise in support of this bill today. I take modest exception to my good friend from Florida talking about the problems of prevailing wage. We have only to look at Louisiana and New Orleans, and the post-Katrina debacle where we suspended Davis-Bacon, What happened? The work was done for people literally who were working in many cases for barely minimum wage, there was all sorts of money involved went to subcontracts and we had a lot of shoddy workmanship.

In my State, the voters took this on directly, voting 60/40 to have a State prevailing wage. This protects working men and women and helps provide better quality of workmanship on these critical projects. We need the best workmanship, and we need this bill.

Our Nation's water infrastructure has grown while funding has declined. The American Society of Civil Engineers came out with their 5-year report card, and guess what--water infrastructure: D-minus. And some would say they were grading on a curve.

We have massive needs in the foreseeable future, and the Water Quality Investment Act is an important step towards meeting those needs. It recognizes the challenges we face and will provide communities with new tools to cope with them.

I particularly appreciate the support for green infrastructure and the general movement towards a more sustainable system, both fiscally and environmentally. Green infrastructure often involves nonstructural approaches that can have added environmental and quality-of-life benefits that save communities money.

I worked for 10 years in Portland as Commissioner of Public Works on cleaning up the Willamette River that flows through the heart of our city. We had to spend $1 billion on a big pipe, because it rains all the time in Portland, and any time it rained more than two-tenths of an inch in 2 hours, we were having overflow into that river. But we also worked on nonstructural approaches. We found that green infrastructure reduced peak flows by 80 to 85 percent. We disconnected almost 50,000 downspouts at $53 per downspout. It cost less than $3 million but reduced over 1.2 billion gallons of runoff. If we had tried to do that only with big pipes, it would have cost far, far more, literally hundreds of millions of dollars.

I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy, because there is one area that I hope to work on with him and the committee, and that is how we make sure we are focusing on clean water infrastructure that makes repairs and enhancement as a priority. In some places we have to go to new construction, but most of the threats to our communities, from Detroit to Cincinnati to Portland, is the existing infrastructure that is in sad need of repair. I hope, as this works its way through the legislative process, that we might be able to fine-tune that a little bit to give priority to fixing it first where there is the greatest impact and the greatest hope.

I deeply appreciate the leadership of the committee once again, and look forward to working with people on both sides of the aisle to get this important legislation passed and to realize these benefits in a way to make all our communities more livable and our families safer, healthier, and more economically secure.

I appreciate the comments from my colleague from Florida, who talked about the Employee Free Choice Act in the same breath as the Davis-Bacon, because it is part and parcel of the same issue.

There has been a concerted war against organized labor for years. Workers have been discriminated against when they have tried to organize, they have been cheated, they have been fired for exercising their rights with little penalties.

And look at what happened during Katrina when the Davis-Bacon provisions were suspended. That didn't trickle down to provide more family wage jobs. It provided more minimum wage jobs, but profit all up the food chain. I invite people to look at the disaster that resulted from suspending these worker provisions.

Mr. Chairman, we in Oregon had a spirited, robust State-wide referendum on this issue. By a 60-40 vote, our citizens, supported by a conservative Republican Governor, decided they wanted these worker provisions. This protection for working people is important, and I hope we keep it.

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen to my good friend from North Carolina with her interpretation.

You know, it's interesting. My Republican friends simply had no solution other than to gut the infrastructure investments that are so critical, the important health care initiatives, and replace them with more tax cuts, most of which would not meet the needs of people who need help the most.

I will tell you, I invite people to look at what we did. Indeed, the $6 billion that is flowing to my State of Oregon

over the next 2 years has made a critical difference to support State services, to be able to invest in cleaning up the environment, to save and create jobs. I've posted a guide on my Web site to each and every one of those provisions--62 pages in all--where people can track for themselves. There are not, for example, tax increases for most Americans. My friend from North Carolina is just flat wrong. If she would research the bill that we approved here on the floor, she would find that in fact 95 percent of the people get tax cuts. Nobody is having tax increases over the next couple of years, even the very wealthy. And it's what, in fact, America has asked for.

I would suggest that it's time for us to step back from some of this goofy back and forth because I think there are a wide range of areas that we can agree that reform needs to be made.

I like what I heard from President Obama on the campaign trail and what I heard from the rostrum here when the President addressed his first joint session of Congress. There are a number of areas of health, energy, tax, and agriculture that actually can bring people together. Now is not the time for commissions and study groups or for mindless political bickering; now is the time to actually do what we know we can accomplish.

There are multiple areas where it isn't so much picking low-hanging fruit, it's actually picking that fruit up off the ground. We need to articulate a vision of how we're going to accomplish that. For example, in the area of agriculture, it's not just the problem in the past that rich sugar farmers have had more clout than poor hungry children. There are ways in reforming agriculture that we can put more money in the pocket of more ranchers and farmers and less into the pockets of the wealthy few who don't need it.

We can implement reforms to help change the bureaucracy with things like crop insurance reform, that independent observers have identified for years, but Congress hasn't had the will to follow through on fixing it. We can pay farmers and ranchers to protect the environment, not to damage it. We can concentrate on strengthening American agriculture and producing more healthy food rather than a few commodities, frankly, that the world has enough of.

In the area of health, the research is in. There are a number of communities across the country that are low cost, high performing where people live longer and get sick less often. In fact, we see some of the areas of the country where we are spending the most government money in Medicare actually is not helping people. Rather, many of those areas actually have worse results because people get unnecessary tests and procedures, not concentrating on things that will make them healthy. We can reward the low-cost, high-performing areas while we send signals to those that are spending lots of money and not performing very well. Let's send the message there's a bipartisan consensus that we're going to fix that.

In the area of transportation, there is a vast coalition that has emerged around the country that wants to help the Federal Government get more money and streamline the Federal partnership. They are willing to work with us so that there are more choices, higher standards, and sustainable revenue. The Chamber of Commerce, organized labor, environmentalists, transit advocate bicyclists, all combine in an approach to make America's transportation partnership with State and local governments better and stronger.

We don't need to rely on the same old patterns. We can, in this Congress, take action that unite people all across the spectrum all across the country. We've got a President who can use the bully pulpit. I strongly urge that we work with him for a new vision, more value, better choices for Americans, and to do it now.

Madam Speaker, occasionally there is some controversy and conflict here in our Nation's Capital, but this week we have an opportunity for celebrating events that bring people together. We have the ninth annual National Bicycle Summit, which will be welcoming people from 47 States and four foreign countries who will be fanning out across the Capitol to talk about the opportunities for this country in promoting bicycle activities.

This has been an exciting period for people who believe in cycling. Under the leadership of now Chairman Oberstar, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the last reauthorization celebrated the most significant biking, hiking, and walking bill in history. Now, as Mr. Oberstar is chairman, we anticipate that there will be even more initiatives that will be undertaken. In the economic recovery package, there were $825 million of projects all across the country that are shovel-ready that actually put more people to work per million dollars than highway construction.

Bike partisanship is alive and well on Capitol Hill, with over 200 members in the Bike Caucus. There is a reason why people are focusing on cycling activities. Since 1980, the number of miles Americans drive has increased three times faster than the population, and almost twice as fast as vehicle registrations. We have reached a point where our roadways simply demand relief.

We have an obesity epidemic. Sixty-five percent of American adults are either overweight or obese. Thirteen percent of our children and adolescents are overweight, due in large part to lack of regular activity. There is an opportunity to burn calories instead of fossil fuel. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that if all these physically inactive Americans become active, we have the opportunity to save over $75 billion a year in health care costs.

The transportation sector contributes one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to cooking the planet.

There are opportunities for individuals to make a difference in their lives. A bike commuter saves almost $2,000 a year in auto-related costs, avoids 50 hours of being stuck in traffic and saves almost 150 gallons of gasoline. And you don't have to be a regular long-distance bike commuter. Forty percent of American trips are two miles or less. Over a quarter are less than one mile.

We all have an opportunity to make a difference. We can start by working with our children. Only 15 percent of students were walking or bicycling to school as we began our new century, yet in an earlier generation more than half the children were able to get to school on their own.

We watch as bicycles have been integrated into day-to-day activities. Right here on Capitol Hill, you will watch bicycle patrols with Capitol police. In fact, more than 96 percent of the large cities in this country have routine bicycle patrols, and they are spreading across the country.

It is also big business. I am not just talking about a bicycle- friendly community like mine in Portland, Oregon, where it is about $100 million dollars of economic activity and employs about 1,000 people. Nationally we are talking about $133 billion, supporting over 1 million jobs, producing over $17 billion in annual Federal and State tax revenue and producing over $53 billion in annual retail sales and services. These are activities that help revitalize the economy exactly at the time we need them. Even those ever-present bicycle rides that are mushrooming around the country support in excess of $100 million a year in critical medical research.

It is time for us to focus on what we in Congress can do to be more bike partisan. We urge you to join in welcoming the cyclists to Capitol Hill and become a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus.

Madam Speaker, today I am pleased to introduce ``CLEAN TEA,'' the Clean Low-Emissions Affordable New Transportation Equity Act, with my colleagues Ellen Tauscher and Steven LaTourett. This legislation recognizes that the United States cannot meet its climate change goals without addressing emissions from the transportation sector. Transportation is responsible for about one- third of greenhouse gas emissions; passenger automobiles and light trucks alone contribute 21 percent. The transportation sector must be responsible for a proportionate amount of the solution.

Since 1980, the number of miles Americans drive has grown three times faster than the U.S. population, and almost twice as fast as vehicle registrations. Although new vehicle technology and low carbon fuel can substantially reduce emissions from automobiles and light trucks, these gains are likely to be offset by continuing growth in vehicle miles traveled. It is critical that legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also provides people with low-carbon transportation options through community design and transportation alternatives. Providing consumers with transportation options will also save them money and provide additional public health, environmental, economic, and quality of life benefits.

CLEAN TEA is predicated on the adoption of a comprehensive climate change bill that would generate revenue for the Federal government. Under CLEAN TEA, 10 percent of the funding generated through this legislation would be used to create a more efficient transportation system and lower greenhouse gas emissions through strategies such as funding new or expanded transit or passenger rail supporting development around transit stops, and making neighborhoods safer for bikes and pedestrians.

In order to be eligible for the funding authorized by this legislation, cities and state departments of transportation would have to review their transportation plans and determine how they could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bill then provides federal funding for projects in those transportation plans to be distributed to states and localities based on the expected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in each plan. States and cities with more ambitious plans would receive greater funding.

As we move forward to address climate change, I hope my colleagues will work with me to align our transportation and climate policy goals. By doing this, we can reduce our carbon footprint, improve our communities, save Americans money, and create a transportation system for the 21st century.