Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, today, I was disappointed that the House passed the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2012 (H.R. 4402). Like many people, I am deeply concerned about our country's, and the world's, increasing dependence on unstable and unreliable Chinese mining practices to provide the ``rare earth minerals'' that our industries need. However, the legislation passed by the House waives almost all environmental laws for all types of hardrock mining, even though the mining of these materials can be extraordinarily dangerous and toxic. This incredibly broad waiver hurts communities, public lands, and the environment, and supports big, mining industries at the expense of the American taxpayer.

I had hoped that H.R. 4402 would serve as an expression of our commitment to make sure the United States is properly supplied with these minerals that are essential for the economy and our national security. Instead, I am disappointed because my colleagues failed to tailor the legislation to specifically meet this need and included an overly broad definition of ``rare earth minerals.'' This bill would have benefited from a clear definition of what the rare earth minerals are, which would have been achieved by an amendment offered by my colleague, Representative Tonko. Instead, the sweeping exemptions from environmental regulations have created a partisan issue where none existed before.

I sincerely hope that when this issue is revisited in the future, we are able to work in a bipartisan manner to strike a balance that allows us to acquire our necessary supplies in a way that is efficient, safe for our workers, and protects the environment.

Madam Speaker, Priscilla Dewey Houghton, beloved wife of our dear colleague of 18 years, Amo Houghton, passed away last Friday.

She was a playwright, a linguist, a poet who, together with Amo, formed a special type of power couple. Priscilla was intelligent, curious, and gracious. She was the perfect partner for Amo.

While her efforts 40 years ago led her to introduce children and adolescents to joy and creativity in Massachusetts, here in D.C., with Amo, she fought against rancor and mean spiritedness in our Nation's capital.

Priscilla was the first honorary member of the Congressional Bike Caucus. Cycling was significant to her because of an early bout with polio that left her bedridden for a year. Priscilla was a very special woman whose battle with adversity never slowed her down or dimmed her spirits.

Our hearts go out to Amo and her family and friends gathering for her memorial service in Boston this Saturday.

Mr. Speaker, Portland was saddened by the loss of longtime civic leader and community activist Harold Williams.

Harold was best known as the longest serving board member of Portland Community College with over two decades of outstanding service. But he was already a fixture in our community long before that.

Harold earned two degrees, both his bachelor and masters degrees, at Portland State University where he was Director of the Education Center and where he exercised a strong voice on behalf of inclusion. From the very beginning, Harold Williams was a champion of opportunity for the underserved so it was only natural he would gravitate to Portland Community College. Young African American men received special attention from Harold, but he was a strong proponent of opportunity for everyone throughout our community.

Harold was a large man with an even larger personality and a greater heart until it failed him on July 1st. We extend our condolences to the Williams family and to his much larger family in Northeast Portland which will miss him dearly, but will forever be thankful for his many contributions.

Mr. Speaker, in this time of extreme weather events, our hearts go out to victims of the storms, wildfires, power outages, torrential downpours, the winds, trees crashing into homes. It makes our hearts ache, thinking of the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in sweltering heat without electricity.

Beyond our shores, we see this extreme weather is global in scale, such as the flash floods that killed hundreds in Russia this last week. We must pause, shudder, and feel sadness for those families.

For many, the instinct is to help people resettle, rebuild, and reconnect. But the Nation's elected leaders should do more than comfort those in distress and try to help people recover. As policymakers, shouldn't we act to try and prevent the next catastrophe?

Some of this is relatively simple and straightforward, even if potentially controversial. Don't relocate people right back in the same flame or flood zone. We know they'll be ravaged by fire and flood. At a minimum, we shouldn't have the Federal Government pay to put people right back in harm's way.

This discussion is part of flood insurance reform and national disaster policy that I personally have been working on for decades. We have made some progress, but not nearly what we should.

You would think we would stop making it worse, yet we allow more and more people to move into the flame zone seeking to live with nature, and these people then expect government to prevent nature from doing what it's done for eons. In most cases, the fires in these areas not only cannot be stopped, but we make the next fire worse by suppressing nature's natural fire cycle until there's so much fuel in the forest that the inevitable next fire burns longer and more furiously, putting more at risk.

The more people who are permitted or even encouraged to build homes and live in an area that cannot be defended is a prescription for disaster. It's an example of political malpractice, a head-in-the-sand attitude that many today in this Chamber have regarding climate change, rising sea level and weather instability, which are all completely predictable, foreseen consequences of carbon pollution.

It's being played out in a variety of areas. We're watching oceans become more acidic, bleaching and killing coral reefs, which are the rain forests of the sea. Shouldn't we be doing something to try and prevent it?

On the land, it's becoming clear what warming will mean to our communities with more instability, hotter temperatures, heavier precipitation events, 23,383 all-time heat records set this year.

The worst example of government response, I think, is legislation in North Carolina, and it's already passed the State senate and is working its way through, that would prevent the State and local governments from planning based on the best scientific evidence about the accelerating pace of sea level increase.

In Congress, it's notable that one of our major parties has firm opposition to even using the words ``climate change,'' let alone plan for or prevent it happening. It's not an energy policy to promote more carbon pollution and lavish support for old fossil fuel technology, nor to claim climate science is a hoax.

That's the mindset that puts at risk replacement of a vitally needed satellite providing climate data. With all the ominous signs, horrific events and high stakes, how can we, as policymakers, not at least give weight to the advice of the vast majority of scientists.

I'll tell you, this current generation of politicians will be asked by their grandchildren what could you possibly have been thinking. Indeed, I'll wager that some of today's policymakers, even the most obtuse and dogmatic, will live long enough to regret their hostility to science and their shortsighted devotion to politics of the moment over the future of the planet and their very families.

They are like King Canute, who ordered the tide not to come in until it washed over his feet. Unlike King Canute, today's policymakers could do something about it.

Mr. Speaker, this week, the House Agriculture Committee will consider not just the farm bill, but also one of the most important pieces of health legislation, environmental legislation, and vital economic development for rural America. It should be on the radar screen of every Member of Congress, whether one represents rural or urban districts. All of our constituents benefit from a vibrant agricultural sector.

The House is looking at its own legislation. The Senate has passed a bill. I must say, the Senate bill was a start. There are some provisions in it which I think are worthy of support, but it falls short in overall reform. There is no reason in an era of great concern about reducing Federal deficit spending, about improving nutrition and strengthening rural America that we can't do a better job. Currently, the majority of farmers and ranchers get no support from the Federal Government, and the assistance is concentrated in the hands of a few. This is an opportunity for us to look carefully at the House draft and to, hopefully, improve upon it.

One particular area deals with the cap on commodities and risk management. The Senate bill has at least a modest reduction in dealing with direct payments, but the House draft would increase those provisions to $125,000 and to $250,000 for married couples--an incredibly high limitation. And sadly, the House draft would leave intact current loopholes that would allow many wealthy, nonfarm investors to collect multiples of the existing payment cap.

Another area of significant agricultural subsidy that cries out for reform is the area of crop insurance. This is something that independent analysts have looked at for years. Too much of this is concentrated for a few. It puts too much burden on the individual taxpayer, and there is too much benefit for those who need it the least. In the House proposal, there is no requirement to link the recipient of crop insurance to the protection of soil and wetlands, thereby compounding future losses; and it does not reduce the subsidy rate for wealthy farmers and investors with high adjusted incomes.

Most concerning is the new provisions that are termed ``shallow-loss revenue,'' where they're creating new, long-term protections that really come at a potentially high price tag. Instead of moving forward with this being an area to reduce subsidy, it has been noted by independent analysts that if commodity prices fall over the course of the next decade significantly, all of the purported savings would disappear under this enhanced shallow-loss provision.

There are unwise reductions in the conservation and energy titles. In fact, there's no funding whatsoever in the energy title in the House bill, unlike, at least, the Senate bill with $800 million. But more significant is a reduction in the conservation stewardship program. It would limit the enrollment to 9 million acres, as opposed to the current 12.8 million acres that are available. This is despite the fact that currently with a 30 percent higher acreage level, 50 percent of the farmers who want to take advantage of this to protect the land and promote habitat for wildlife and water quality are turned away.

Another provision that looks like an improvement is actually a problem. It increases the EQIP program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. It increases the limitation by $450,000, a 150 percent increase. What this does is open the floodgates for very large, confined animal feedlots that are going to end up swallowing most of this money and not making it available for others. At the same time, it reduces the amount available for organic farmers.

I hope my colleagues will look carefully at this legislation because we need to do better for America's farmers and ranchers, for wildlife and the environment, and for the taxpayers.

I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy in permitting me to speak on this bill, and I appreciate him framing the difference that the legislation makes.

That's why, in a sense, I welcome the 31st running of this soap opera here on the floor of the House, where our Republican colleagues have attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It would have a little more credibility if they actually had a meaningful alternative that would take the place, that would do the things that this legislation is in the process of doing.

Bear in mind that this legislation, over the course of the next 20 years, is going to reduce overall government spending by over $1 trillion. It reforms Medicare, not by slashing benefits to senior citizens, but by changing the priorities and the overpayment for Medicare Advantage, which does shift, as my colleagues say, a half- trillion dollars, but it uses it to reform Medicare and pay for medical benefits for the American public.

What my friends on the other side of the aisle don't say is that they take the half trillion dollars, but they don't invest it in strengthening Medicare, they use it in their budget--the same $500 billion--to finance tax cuts for Americans who need them the least. The wealthiest, most well off Americans use this $500 billion for additional tax cuts.

What we have done is to move forward, and it has nothing to do with broccoli, because if you don't happen to like broccoli, you don't have to eat it.

What's different is that, under this system, no one can force the rest of us to buy their broccoli.

Unfortunately, the American health care system now is forcing many of us to pay for the uninsured--60 percent of whom go to an emergency room or a doctor's office every year. That's why Governor Romney had a mandate, or a tax--or whatever you call it--to be able to move this forward. That's what the legislation is modeled on. It's making a difference already for Americans in terms of young people on their parents' coverage, small businesses, more than one-third of a million who have been able to have tax credits to extend health care, and there's more along the way.

The more we debate this, the more the American public understands the benefits of the legislation, and the more the support grows.

I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy in permitting me to speak on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, there's no small amount of irony that we are having this discussion today. It's on the anniversary of President Eisenhower signing into law the National Defense Highway Act. This weekend will be the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad Act, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln. There was an era when Republicans believed in infrastructure and development.

In fact, for most of our history, actually, infrastructure has not been partisan. It's been something that people on this House floor could come together to work on. There would be differences, to be sure. But for the 20 years that I've been involved with this issue, we've been working to broaden our view of how to make transportation work better, involve citizens, more flexibility, make the dollars stretch. This came crashing to a halt with this Congress.

Now the bill that's going to come before us, I will very reluctantly vote in favor of it in part because of what's not in it. Remember, our Republican colleagues tried to force through a bill which, for the first time in history, had never had bipartisan work that came out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, that came out of Ways and Means. In fact, it never even had a full committee hearing, rush- to-work session. Mercifully, it collapsed before it came to the floor.

And one of the reasons I'll vote for this bill is because what the Republicans wanted has been rejected. Remember, they wanted to take away all the funding guarantees for transit. Working with the Senate, we were able to resist that effort. They wanted to gut environmental protections.

And while you're going to find that there are some problems with this legislation, at least it's not as bad as what our Republican colleagues wanted. They wanted to completely eliminate the guarantees for transportation enhancements, for bikes and pedestrians. They were even going to eliminate the wildly popular Safe Routes to School bill. Well, most of that has been retained, although they were successful in gutting the provisions, for some reason, for Safe Routes to School.

We have a bill that actually is a little higher in terms of the funding level than what the Republicans wanted, and it is at least going to be guaranteed for 2 years. It has some provisions that are important to those of us who have rural schools, Oregon among them. It's going to make a big difference. Putting this extraneous provision in is going to help. A little help in terms of student loans. And we worked in the finance title to be able to have the money come from something that's actually going to make it more likely that we stabilize some private pension programs.

So it's not without merit. There are important things here. But the main reason to vote for it is because we've been able, working with the Senate, to resist what the Republicans attempted to inflict on the House and the American people.

But make no mistake, it is not a bill to be proud of. As I mentioned, it dramatically reduces the funding for the transportation enhancements. There is no rail title. There will be reductions in citizen opportunities for environmental protection and participation.

It is, sadly, a missed opportunity that didn't need to happen. They could have allowed the Senate bill, in its entirety, to be voted on, and I'm confident that would have passed. Or wonder of wonders, they actually could have worked, like we used to do, in a bipartisan fashion. The last transportation bill under Republican control passed with 412 votes.

Well, we've missed an opportunity. At precisely the time when America needs more investment in renewing and rebuilding, for transit, for roads, for rail, for water and sewer, there are a whole range of things that we should be coming together to work on.

I hope that the American public looks very closely at what was attempted here in the last 6 months, they look at what we managed to stagger through, and that it is a wake-up call for people to be engaged.

I have worked for 5 years with a broad coalition of stakeholders that's not partisan, that are committed to working together on a vision for how we're going to rebuild and renew the country, how we're going to revitalize the economy, and how we make our communities more livable, our families safer, healthier, and more economically secure.

If we're able to use this flawed process and sadly inadequate bill as a springboard, maybe in some ways it will have been worth it.

Mr. Speaker, today, I voted against the House Privileged Resolution holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Never in the 225 years of the House has there been a vote to hold any Cabinet member in contempt, and I will never vote to support such partisan legislation that's nothing short of a race to the bottom for this House.

There are serious questions that remain to be answered about the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) program, infamously know as ``Fast and Furious,'' started in 2005 under the Bush administration. The Department of Justice is in the midst of such an investigation, but today's vote will do nothing to further that inquiry, and will instead slow and muddle the process.

The charges by Chairman Issa of a conspiratorial effort by the Obama administration to strengthen gun control laws--are completely unsubstantiated and laughable on their face. When that became apparent, the Chairman turned to blatant political tactics, culminating in a Contempt of Congress resolution that was rushed to the floor.

The Republicans and the National Rifle Association have created a web of constraints that make it almost impossible to restrict these dangerous practices that prompted the program in the first place.

Fast and Furious was a flawed operation. Those flaws, however, parallel the biased, politicized investigation run by House Oversight & Investigations Committee Republicans. During the Committee's 16-month investigation, they refused all Democratic requests for witnesses and hearings. The investigation was closed to the public.

The Republican refusal to even allow those directly involved with the Fast & Furious program to testify before the Oversight Committee portrays their political motivations, not the facts, nor the thousands of innocent civilians in Mexico and on the border who have lost their lives from heavily-armed drug cartels.

Attorney General Holder testified before the Committee nine times. The Department of Justice provided over 700 thousand documents to the House Oversight & Investigations Committee. Despite this broad cooperation, my Republican colleagues kept moving the goal posts, making it impossible to meet their demands. There was no end in sight. President Obama's decision to assert executive privilege was a well- reasoned decision to stop playing the Republicans political game.

I believe deeply in the fundamental responsibility of Congress to provide oversight and accountability for the executive branch. We only weaken that authority by engaging in this partisan stunt Congress and the American people deserve better. We should reject this effort and do our job to find out what really happened.

There's a transportation agreement rumored to be in the works that would be shortsighted in the extreme if these rumors prove to

be accurate. Our problem was created because for years Congress and the last two administrations have been unwilling to deal meaningfully with the large gap of funding for transportation created because we rely on an outmoded funding system based on the number of gallons of fuel consumed. With more efficient gas and diesel vehicles augmented by more hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric cars, the transportation trust fund is locked into an inevitable downward spiral. Like the looming Social Security deficit, the longer we wait, the worse it will get.

Not this year, but over the next few years, we should temporarily increase and then replace the gas tax with a system that is based on the amount of road use. The new legislation should be laying the foundation for this transition. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

The rumored agreement would also take us backward on enabling alternative modes of transportation. In the last 20 years of transportation reform we've used enhancement funding to get more out of the transportation projects. These include long-neglected and wildly popular bike and pedestrian safety programs such as Safe Routes to School. In a recent Princeton survey, 83 percent of the public wanted these programs maintained or the funding increased. They place an emphasis on intermodalism so that transportation modes work together and minimize direct conflict between truckers, rail, and commuters that can paralyze not just transportation but transportation planning.

From what I hear, efforts to provide incentives to ``fix it first'' are being undercut. It's never as popular to maintain what you've got in face of the drumbeat of a few focused special interests for a new particular project. But ``fixing it first'' creates more transportation jobs, provides more safety, alleviates congestion and pollution, and has more overall economic impact. And it, of course, alleviates long- term pressure to create more roads that we can't adequately maintain.

The bill before us also misses an opportunity to reform the system to have more performance-based environmental protections. We absolutely can make the process work better and faster. But the answer is not to gut the protections, which will only create more conflict and ultimately more delays. Projects take more time when they're not done right, when citizens are not involved with the plan, and the myriad of interests aren't working together. Involving the public in the planning process works.

I'll never forget a conversation with a very conservative Republican mayor of Phoenix, who told me that it was only when they got the citizens working together on a balanced transportation program of transit and roads that they were able to get the resources and the momentum to go forward.

I will be extremely disappointed if the legislation shatters the coalition that I have been working for years to develop for the big picture, the big programs, and proper funding that's going to be necessary if we're going to be successful. It will be wrong if we have a scaled-down 2-year extension that will make it harder to give the American public what they need, adequate resources that are sustainable over time, more economic opportunity, and more construction and maintenance employment.

A good transportation program will protect the environment, enhance the quality of life, making our communities more livable and our families safer, healthier and more economically secure.

While there have been occasional steps backward in America's march towards equality for all citizens, progress and understanding have marched steadily onward. As a result, America is more diverse, and it is better for it; but we must continue to work hard to create a truly equal and just society.

Discriminating against an individual based on race, religion, or sexual identity is deplorable and unacceptable. Historically, the LGBT community has faced significant discrimination, but the country has come a long way in recent years in attitude. Most Americans are more accepting regardless of one's sexual orientation, but there remain too many areas where society still must translate the attitude of most Americans into rights and protections for all citizens.

LGBT students should be able to learn in a safe school environment, free of cruel bullying, psychological or physical abuse. The term ``bullying'' actually does not capture the behavior and the threat. Foster children should be adopted by loving families regardless of the parents' sexual orientations. Of course, most fundamentally, Americans should be afforded the right of marriage whether they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transsexual--the same as heterosexual couples.

I've been involved with these issues since I first chaired a hearing in the Oregon House of Representatives on antidiscrimination in 1973, right through today, in advocating the repeal of DOMA. I've been proud to work for equality throughout my career, but there remains much work to be done.

In the name of extending equal rights to all Americans, no matter who they love, at a minimum, we should take the following steps:

Most importantly, we should aggressively support marriage equality for all. The Respect for Marriage Act will repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and will guarantee that the Federal Government will recognize any marriage that is legal in the State in which it is performed;

The lowest hanging fruit is workplace discrimination. It is long past time to enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, ENDA, which would make it illegal to discriminate in the workplace based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity;

Educational institutions must be safe places for young people to learn and grow without the threat of bullying or the risk of being denied the chance to participate in extracurricular activities based on their identities. We

should pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act and the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act of 2011;

We must stand up for real family values and support the Every Child Deserves a Family Act. All parents who wish to adopt a foster child deserve the chance to do so no matter their sexual identities;

Finally, I strongly support amending the Immigration and Nationality Act to grant same-sex partnerships the same rights and privileges as any other partnership.

One of the most important milestones in this struggle was the endorsement recently by President Obama and Vice President Biden of marriage equality for all Americans. With renewed momentum and with continued hard work, we will not only achieve marriage equality for our LGBT friends and families, but equality and fairness in all aspects of life.

Make no mistake, we are not striving just for tolerance; we are striving to make this country more equitable, just, and fair so that every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to pursue their dreams in a safe and accepting environment. Such freedom is the very cornerstone on which a livable community is established, where families are safe, healthy, and economically secure.

I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy.

This bill, sadly, is a missed opportunity. It would have been an opportunity to deal with an all-of-the-above and a jobs bill, but it simply is not.

We're in a situation where domestic oil production is strong. And what we are looking at, currently they're talking about giving out, encouraging more land to be locked up for the future, rather than using the 25 million acres currently authorized for drilling that are not being used by oil companies today. They would allow people to sit on land, paying only $1.50, $2 an acre for up to 10 years.

Now, I think it's wise for us to be able to move forward to encourage energy production. There would be an opportunity here to deal more aggressively with incenting sustainable energy, clean energy, energy that will be with us for decades to come, rather than depleting existing resources and tying up leases in the future.

This is an excuse to undermine existing environmental protections. Why, in heaven's name, would we seek to undermine tailpipe emission regulations that are already supported by the auto industry? It makes no sense at all.

It is not wise to have language that orders the EPA to consider the cost of a clean energy rule, rather than the impact on public health, turning on its head longstanding priorities.

I suppose you could diagnose lung cancer, but say, well, it's pretty expensive, so let's not say that it's lung cancer. Let's call it a cough.

Mr. Chairman, it's important for EPA to make the decisions to protect public health rather than company profits, which are exploding in time.

This is a missed opportunity. I suggest its rejection.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support passage of H. Res. 683, an overdue and needed resolution that expresses the regret of the House for passing laws that targeted Chinese in the United States, including the Chinese Exclusion Act. A previous commitment has prevented me from being present to vote in support of H. Res. 683 today, but had been present, I most certainly would have voted for the Resolution, adding my voice to the Sense of the House of Representatives in expressing regret for the unconscionable Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

That Act stands as an example of the intolerance against which Americans must constantly fight to achieve the ideals on which our nation was founded. We can't ignore our country's history of exclusion and discrimination based on identity and country of origin. But today, the House's expression of regret for the past and apology to Chinese Americans is an important milestone in our nation's ongoing moral journey. This resolution, insufficient to repair the historical harm caused by such laws, does serve to recognize past wrongs and to remind us of our continuing work ensuring inclusion and equality for all.

While I could not be present to add my solemn support to the votes in favor of the resolution, I wish to express my regret for this historical legislation. I join my fellow members of the House of Representatives in recognition of the immense contribution of Chinese- Americans to the success of the United States historically and today, and affirm my commitment to securing the rights of all who call America home.

Mr. Speaker, today on Capitol Hill there are hundreds of nurses, chaplains and social workers, the people who deliver hospice care at the bedside, here to promote an honest discussion and careful analysis of how to help individuals and their families grapple with the final chapter of life. It may be the hardest issue in health care, and the fear that it invokes can be a powerful weapon.

For most of us, the majority of health care we receive in our lifetime will be administered in those last few months. It's when we need the most doctors and nursing care, medical procedures and oftentimes in hospitals.

But we know from scientific studies that when patients are educated about their treatment options, they make decisions that are not only aligned with their personal preferences, but shared decision-making relieves stress and anxiety. Ironically, sometimes getting less intensive help, like in a hospice, not only improves the quality of life, these patients, many of them actually live longer.

From a public policy perspective, it's perverse that Medicare will pay for almost any medical procedure, yet not reimburse doctors to have a thoughtful conversation to prepare patients and their families for the delicate, complex, and emotionally demanding decisions surrounding the end of life.

That's why I sought to direct Medicare, in the Affordable Care Act, to cover a voluntary discussion with the doctor about living wills, power of attorney, and end-of-life preferences. Helping patients and their families clarify what they want and need should be an element of any rational, comprehensive health care system.

Despite our recent history, it's also a rare common denominator in health care politics because it's something that most people actually agree on. In fact, the majority of my Republican colleagues supported a similar provision for terminally ill elderly patients that was part of the 2003 prescription drug bill.

I had a friend of mine, a Republican cardiovascular surgeon here in the House, who told me he had many end-of-life conversations; but, unfortunately, they were often too late. He wished he could have spoken to patients and their families when they could have properly reflected, not just when the surgery was merely hours away.

During the early debates on the Affordable Care Act, I was confident that this was an area where we were making a contribution to improve the quality of health care, but it actually might be something that would bring us together because of the shared agreement. But, unfortunately, battle lines were drawn; and you know how the rest of that story went: death panels, rationing, forced consultation with government-appointed physicians.

In war, truth is the first casualty. The same goes for politics. As a country, we have a difficult time talking rationally and thoughtfully about end-of-life issues. That's why it's so important that we have these dedicated people on Capitol Hill today--the nurses, the hospice workers, the social workers--to have this thoughtful conversation from people who do it every day. Their work to help patients and families can help Congress understand that the work is not finished.

I urge my colleagues to take a look at the Personalize Your Health Care Act, H.R. 1589. Join me in making sure that the Federal Government is a better partner in helping families prepare for this difficult chapter.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend allowing me to speak on this.

There is no one I have more respect for than my good friend from Tennessee. I had a great time working with him on a variety of things when I was on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. But with all due respect, I think the issue here is what we're going to do to renew and rebuild America.

For the first time in history, our Republican friends gave us a partisan transportation reauthorization. Never before have we seen anything like this offered up. There wasn't even a hearing before the full committee before it was advanced. It went right to work session. There was no effort to involve people on the other side of the aisle. We were given a piece of legislation that attacked transit, that scaled down funding, that was against the most popular programs, the ones that have the greatest local involvement, the enhancements. It was an environmental catastrophe. It was so bad that my Republican colleagues couldn't even bring their bill to the floor. They withdrew it. And so we had the ninth extension.

We have been given a bill in the other body that, as my good friend from Minnesota pointed out, received 74 votes. It will give us two complete construction cycles. It does, in fact, accelerate environmental processes. There is a compromise, a bipartisan compromise, on the previous contentious area of enhancements. It is a reasonable way for us to go forward.

Mr. Speaker, in contrast to this, we have a Republican budget that will not even fund the current obligations. It will cut out entirely the ability to move forward with any new Federal partnership for infrastructure.

I think the motion to instruct is a modest step forward. I respectfully suggest that what we ought to do is not just approve the motion to instruct; we ought to approve the Senate bill and get on with business.

I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy in permitting me to speak against this motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I've been through this movie before as a member of the Budget Committee. This is not new ground. When it was first unveiled before us and I looked at the transportation provisions, I asked the Republican staff to pin down exactly the amount of money that is available. This essentially is what the Republican budget is, and it was not enough to meet the current obligations. It meant that there would be no new programming. And now we're bringing it to the floor with instructions to make sure that this is what the conference committee enacts.

Let us be clear. What my friend and colleague from Oregon pointed out is that this is an opportunity for us to empower the private sector. Republicans and Democrats alike have been visited time and time and time again--first of all, you could hear from people in your district that the Recovery Act kept businesses afloat, kept people working, made a huge difference in every State in the union. Even though I agree with my colleague from Oregon that it wasn't enough infrastructure, but the contractors, electrical contractors, unions, and pavers were thankful for it to help many of them not go out of business.

The list of people who oppose this amendment are not opposing it because our proposal is socialism. To the contrary. The Amalgamated Transit Union, the American Coal Ash Association, the American Concrete Pavement Association, the American General Contractors, the Laborers' International, the Portland Cement Association, the Carpenters, and the U.S. Chamber oppose this because it would add to the depression that we have in the construction cycle in the United States right now. We would not be able to keep pace, and it would result in hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost.

We had a proposal that passed the Senate with 74 votes--half the Republicans--that would enable us to have two construction cycles. The Republicans, who could not get the votes to even have the courage to bring their proposal to the floor--it fell apart, having been brought to the Transportation Committee. And I am a proud alumni member of that committee. For the first time in history, it was a blatantly partisan bill that had never even had a hearing. They somehow got it out of committee, and they got it out of our Ways and Means Committee, but the support within the Republican Party completely fell apart before it came to the floor. They were afraid to have it voted on because it would have been defeated because it was bad for America. I had a list of 600 groups when I was arguing against it in our Ways and Means Committee that thought it was terrible policy.

We requested the Republican leadership to at least allow the Senate bill to be voted on, and they were afraid to do that. So we're in conference now merely because the Republicans just had a short-term extension, unwilling to allow this body--and I know there would be a number of my Republican friends who would have joined with us. Not a majority of Republicans, but enough that it would have passed comfortably, and we wouldn't be caught in this Never Never Land.

My good friend from Georgia is concerned that his two grandchildren will be facing debt. Well, the Republican budget would force us to increase the debt ceiling. It will force us to borrow in order to have more unfunded tax cuts, even while it undercuts investment in infrastructure. This was admitted by the Republican chair of the committee in our budget hearing yesterday. He admits that it's not going to balance any time in the foreseeable future, and that it will require the increase in the debt ceiling.

But there's a very different philosophy. It has nothing to do with socialism. My Lord, I thought that the John Birch claim that Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist or a socialist was discredited. The partnership we've had with the highway trust fund and investing in America's future is something that is the opposite of socialism. It is a public-private partnership that has involved people at all levels in government in things that made a difference.

I had a meeting today with 80 stakeholders primarily from the private sector, including environmentalists and unions and businesses and trade associations, who are apoplectic over the

prospect that this House would go on record to shut down all new investment for the next year and further undercut the opportunity of moving a bipartisan Senate bill to at least give us two construction cycles and move forward.

I agree that we need to be concerned about a debt burden, and independent analysis of why we've had an exploding debt includes unfunded tax cuts. Remember, Mr. DeFazio and I served here when the big fear was that we were going to pay off all government debt. What would the insurance companies do? What would the pension plans do if there wasn't government debt to invest in? This is part of the rationale for the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2002, because we were looking at a $5.3 trillion surplus.

Well, they solved that problem. They solved it with tax cuts, primarily for people who need them the least. Yet, we have serious problems with increasing health care costs, and now they are trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which would actually, over 20 years, start reining those costs in. They had not one, but two unfunded wars, which my colleague and I from Oregon opposed. There is the collapse of the economy.

It is interesting that Mr. Romney's adviser, when there was criticism of the Romney record in Massachusetts for debt and problems of job loss, said:

Well, you know, part of that is that's not really a good criterion, because a lot of those jobs were lost in Governor Romney's first year in office, and you shouldn't count those.

There is a certain merit to that, but if you use the Romney standard of not being accountable for the first year as Governor of Massachusetts, the problems with employment and the problems with the debt look much, much different, because this President inherited one of the worst situations in American history.

It is important that we focus on where we need to go forward. We actually had a much higher percentage of the gross domestic product in public debt immediately after World War II. It's much higher than the debt burden today.

How was that solved? Was it solved by cutting taxes to zero? No. They had much higher tax rates for 20 years until the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts. They invested in America, as my friend from Oregon pointed out. They invested in education for returning veterans, they invested in the highway, the transcontinental highway fund, they invested in America's future.

That's what we should be doing now. The absolute worst thing, the worst thing would be to shut down investment this next year in transportation and infrastructure.

That's why companies from A to Z oppose this motion to instruct. I hope, instead, we pass the Senate bill, get 2 years of construction cycle, reject this wrong-headed approach, and get on with the business of rebuilding and renewing America.