Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, for many, tomorrow is just an ordinary Thursday, like any other day. But for hundreds of millions of people who lack access to clean water and billions who lack access to adequate sanitation, this ordinary Thursday is part of the daily struggle.

But this Thursday is World Water Day, where those of us fortunate enough to live in developed countries are encouraged to reflect on just how fundamental freshwater is to our health, our children's well-being, and how much we take for granted. We've never had to try to work that hard to find drinking water. We don't have to choose between drinking dirty water and going thirsty. For many of us, freshwater is so safe, abundant, it's hard to even imagine life without it.

But on this World Water Day, we should reflect that every 20 seconds a child dies needlessly from waterborne disease. Today, and every day, women will spend 200 million hours collecting water. This week, 3 million students will miss school because they lack access to clean water or sanitation. Indeed, half the people who are sick around the world today are sick needlessly from waterborne disease.

There is a vision, there is a knowledge to do something about it, but, sadly, we don't have the resources, and we actually don't have the plan. The United States does not only have an obligation to do the right thing and save lives, but it's also in our self-interest to provide access to safe water.

United States security experts testified before this Congress that water problems will contribute to the instability in states important to United States national security interests.

With all the problems the world faces, Congress needs to prioritize programs that deliver the highest return on investment with substantial multiplier effects. And when it comes to foreign assistance, increasing access to clean water is perhaps the most effective use of taxpayer dollars. The World Health Organization estimates that up to $34 is saved for every dollar invested, saved from health care costs and resulting in increased economic productivity.

Indeed, it affects other efforts of our aid. We're involved with trying to eradicate diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, but taking the medicine with dirty water compounds the problems in terms of diarrheal diseases that result from that dirty water.

Madam Speaker, since we've passed the Water for the World legislation 7 years ago, where Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Henry Hyde, Senator Reid, and Senator Frist were my partners, we've increased our leadership globally. We owe a debt of gratitude to Secretary Clinton, who has made water a cornerstone of her work while at the helm of the State Department. But we do need to do more; and one simple step, an area where we find broad bipartisan support, is the Water for the World Act that is cosponsored with my friend and colleague from Texas (Mr. Poe).

This legislation strengthens the capacity of USAID and the State Department, increases aid effectiveness, transparency, accountability for sanitation water and hygiene, and it has no net cost, according to the CBO.

I strongly urge my colleagues to cosponsor this legislation and hope that we can move it forward in this Congress, as there has been movement in the Senate. Millions of lives will be transformed.

Madam Chairman, I come to the floor coming from the Budget Committee, where my Republican colleagues are busy at work breaking the commitment that we all made to one another establishing a path forward on deficit reduction. It wasn't just a commitment that was made amongst legislative leaders; we wrote it into law. Now they're breaking that commitment.

They are involved with the budgets that are going to actually reduce health care in this country, and yet they would come to the floor and ask us to get exorcised about something that may happen 10 years from now.

I find the language curious. You could just as easily say, instead of the Supreme Court, you could talk about nine unelected judicial hacks meeting in secret that have no judicial review. They're a power unto themselves.

Get a grip, people.

IPAB comes into play only if we are unable to deal with controlling costs. Remember, our Republican friends--I voted against it--set up the SGR so that we have to have a doc fix every year, putting cost control on automatic pilot, because they didn't have the gumption year after year to deal with the policy changes to make a difference.

We have MedPAC for Medicare that gives us recommendations, but Congress blinks.

What's going to happen maybe 10 years from now, if costs are not under control, then there will be 15 people who are experts, who are recommended by congressional leaders, nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, who will make recommendations if Congress doesn't do its job. Then Congress will be able to take those recommendations and put in place alternatives. Nothing is going to happen here without Congress having the ability to match and do better.

But because Congress historically hasn't had a backbone and has failed miserably in areas of cost control and reform, we put into the health care reform act a fail-safe, not unlike what we've had to do to take base closing out of the hands of the logrolling in Congress and have a streamlined procedure. This is a fail-safe. This makes sense. It's not going to happen unless Congress fails in its task.

I strongly suggest that what we ought to do--rather than trying to unravel health care reform on this floor and in the Budget Committee-- is accelerate it.

Remember, the elements in the health care reform, when you unwind them, virtually without exception, have their roots in a bipartisan consensus of what needs to happen to make our health care system more efficient.

Many of these pilot projects, these demonstrations have actually already been at work in States across the country, including some that have Republican Governors. We're doing some of it in the State of Oregon. It has the dreaded mandate, which was a Republican think tank option that was an alternative to HillaryCare 20 years ago, and, in fact, was put in place by Governor Romney, who is going to be, by all accounts, the Republican standard bearer for President.

This is an example of Congress at its worst, making up a problem, attacking something that would help us do our job better. They are trying to demonize it in a way that you could do with virtually any other board or commission, ignoring the safeguards, ignoring the fact that the statute says specifically that it shall not ration. Instead, they are willing to allow insurance companies to ration and ignore the need for reform.

I strongly urge rejection of this misguided proposal. Let's get back to work. Let's do our job. It will never come into play if Congress does its job, and Congress will always have the last say.

Mr. Chair, I strongly support the installation of small scale hydropower in water canals, pipelines and other Bureau of Reclamation facilities. A small investment could go a long way in helping farmers and rural communities produce homegrown energy to help power their farms and irrigation systems and even sell power to the grid. The Three Sisters Irrigation District in Oregon is pursuing such a project, which could eventually create over 3 kilowatts of clean renewable power for the local community.

These innovative projects should move along as quickly as possible. Because they would be installed in existing facilities, extensive environmental review is not needed. However, I cannot support this bill because it includes an unnecessary waiver of the National Environmental Policy Act. Environmental review for these projects can be expedited through the existing process, which allows categorical exemptions by the appropriate federal agency. A blanket exemption to NEPA would set a bad precedent, and history has shown that short-circuiting environmental and public reviews typically delays rather than assists project development.

I supported an amendment by Rep. Napolitano that would have struck language in the bill that waives NEPA. Because this amendment did not pass, I must reluctantly vote no. However, I stand ready to work with my colleagues to promote development of small conduit hydropower without undermining environmental safeguards.

Mr. Speaker, everywhere you go in America, education is a hot-button issue. Everyone has opinions about what should be emphasized, changed, adjusted, where we should spend more, where we should spend it differently. This is a reflection that Americans know what goes on in our schools is very important. That's where we're building America's future for our communities, our economy, for our families.

This deep commitment to our children should extend to one area in schools where we should be building a future that is focusing on the health of these children: physical fitness, their health habits, and importantly, their diet.

When it comes to the health of our children, our legacy is unfortunate. Too many come from families that are food insecure. One- half of American children will, at some point in their life, be on food stamps. Sixty-three percent of American teachers report that each month they buy food for children in their classroom. Over 20 percent of American households are just plain hungry.

Sadly, in my State, those percentages are even worse. Many children who aren't hungry per se, are hungry for the right foods. They consume far too many empty calories. Pizza, soda, and baked goods are the top three sources of calories for our children.

Since 1980, childhood obesity has doubled, so that today one in three children is overweight or obese.

One of the most direct ways to attack the problem is in our schools, where over 31 million children receive over five billion meals every year for free and reduced lunches. Actually, they are not just fed lunches anymore. They are increasingly getting school breakfasts and now school dinners. For far too many low-income children, this is frankly the only place that they're going to get the food they need.

We have to attack this problem because food in school is too often high in starch and does not feature fresh fruits and vegetables. Indeed, 40 percent of American children do not get fresh fruits and vegetables every day in school.

Congress held up funding for the new nutritional guidelines. It's time for us to get our act together here in Congress. I would suggest that we might honor this National School Lunch Week and build upon the Hunger-Free Kids Act that we had last Congress. Don't we think we can do more than adding 6 cents per meal to the reimbursement rate? Can't we allocate more than $40 million for mandatory farm-to-school funding to help promote the use of local fresh fruits and vegetables? Isn't it time to establish stronger national nutritional standards for all foods provided throughout the school day? Maybe even the House would reconsider and pass my amendment to declare that pizza is no longer a vegetable for school-lunch purposes.

We know what to do. I see it in my community in Abernathy School, as well as more than 40 other schools that are providing education and nutrition and gardening, as well as the math, reading, and science skills, that help kids grow, prepare, and learn to appreciate healthy food. This is healthy not just for the kids, but for the local economy; not only strengthening local farms and ranches, it creates more than 1\1/2\ other jobs off the farm. There are now over 9,000 school programs nationally that are dealing with providing this vital connection between food, nutrition, and how kids learn.

I think that it is time for us in Congress to stop being AWOL, to step forward, be more deeply involved, resist the special interests, and make kids' nutrition a priority.

I think our generation ought to be thinking about what we're feeding kids now, when you think about what kids might be feeding us later.

Recently, there has been a series of very powerful articles in the popular press about what we call ``end of life.'' The most recent was by Dr. Ken Murray in The Wall Street Journal last week, entitled, ``Why Doctors Die Differently.'' This series of articles focuses in on this end of life period--usually the most intense, the most painful, the most expensive. It's too often confusing for patients and their families. Too often, we find that people don't get the care they want and they need.

This has been a passion of mine for years now to make sure that families and patients are equipped to deal with the end of life. It was my legislation that was in the health care reform that was, unfortunately, not in the final legislation because the reconciliation process wouldn't allow the Senate to consider it in the House bill. We're working on it again with legislation entitled Personalize Your Health Care, H.R. 1589, to make sure that these provisions that are strongly supported by the public finally become law.

I think, perhaps, the best case that I have seen for this legislation is found by Dr. Murray in his article, ``Why Doctors Die Differently.'' It is a simple, powerful, two-page statement explaining the hows and whys.

Doctors actually do pass away, but they pass away differently. What is interesting is that, of these who are well off and connected to the medical care profession, it's not how much health care they get in their final months but actually how little. They do have more information than the average member of the public. They know their choices, and they act to make sure that their choices are respected. Doctors are more than three times likely than the average member of the public to have an advance directive that instructs families, doctors, hospitals how they want to be treated. That percentage is even higher for older doctors.

They know, for instance, in their last moments, most doctors don't want CPR performed on them. Unlike on television, where 75 percent of the CPR instances that the American public watches are successful and patients go on to lead happy, normal lives, doctors know that after the ribs are broken, which is what happens normally in CPR that's done properly, that fewer than 8 percent live even another month.

Doctors understand the facts. They tell their families. It's probably not accurate to say they get less care, but what is accurate is they get different care. They're more likely to use hospice services. They're more likely to have palliative care to make sure in their final moments they're not in pain. They're less likely to have invasive, painful, expensive treatment, particularly if they don't want it, because they've taken care of making sure that their wishes are known and respected.

Now, I don't want everybody to ``die like a doctor,'' but I do want everybody to have the knowledge and the power so that their wishes, whatever they are, are respected. It is time that Congress passes legislation to make sure the American public has the information and that their wishes, whatever their wishes may be, are respected, because those final months or weeks or days of life deserve to be gentle, thoughtful, respectful, and people having whatever care they and their families want.

I strongly urge my colleagues to look at H.R. 1589, Personalize Your Health Care.

Thank you, Mr. Levin. I appreciate the fact that our chairman, Mr. Camp, and our ranking member, Mr. Levin, are here today advancing H.R. 4105.

We are not going to unring the bell.

The Chinese Government is an important part of the world economy. We are interrelated and interdependent. American people buy things from China every day. I was happy to have them be part of the WTO so there would be rules of the road.

It's not about protectionism for the United States. It is making sure that our competitors in China play by the rules. Too often we have seen that they don't. We've seen their massive unjustified subsidies. We've found cheating in the international arena in terms of stealing intellectual products, stealing Web sites. The Chinese Government needs to be encouraged directly to play by the same sorts of rules.

If America is on a level playing field, our manufacturers can work and compete against the best the world has to offer. But, unfortunately, related to China right now, it is too often not a level playing field. This is an important step going forward to make sure that we can rebalance the equation.

I hope that the administration will be aggressive in using the tools that it has to make sure the rules of the road are observed. This has been a frustration I have had since I have been in Congress with both Republican and Democratic administrations. I don't think we have done all, in fact, that we could. I hope that we will.

I think this bill is a step in the right direction, and I appreciate the bipartisan show of support from our committee to move it forward. I hope that the House passes it overwhelmingly, and that it is something that the other body moves on, so that we can have this tool back in our tool kit.

Today we mourn the loss of a colleague and friend. Newark lost its champion. Africa lost its informal ambassador, as Donald Payne exercised tremendous leadership and influence as a senior member and chair of the African Subcommittee.

But with the passing of Donald Payne, I think it's important to note one other loss, because for millions of people around the world who never knew Don Payne, they lost a hero. Don knew that almost a billion of the world's poorest people lacked access to clean drinking water, that almost three times that number lacked access to sanitation resulting in the death every 15 seconds of a child needlessly to waterborne disease.

One of the great privileges of my career in the House was working with Don Payne on the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. Don Payne was a quiet Member of Congress, but he knew what was important. He was clear in expressing those needs, expressing what needed to be done; and his leadership, his work behind the scenes, as well as on the front lines, made it possible for the first time in our history for the United States to have a cohesive policy towards meeting the unmet needs of water and sanitation for these poor people, to set a very clear objective that within the next 4 years we would cut in half the number of people who lack access to this fundamental.

Because of the leadership of Congressman Donald Payne, literally millions of lives have been touched, improved, indeed, saved.

We thank you, Congressman Payne, for your leadership and influence that extended far beyond your district in New Jersey, and we thank his family and constituents for sharing him with us and sending him back repeatedly so that he could do his important work.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, Senator Olympia Snowe announced that she wouldn't run for reelection--not that she couldn't win, but that she didn't want to, not in this environment. This storied representative will be a loss to the institution here. But it doesn't have to be that way, Mr. Speaker.

This week on Capitol Hill we have friends who have joined us from the public broadcasting community, representing public television stations across the country. Today, the Women's Garden Club of America are here in force.

Now, these are people that have an approach that can help us unwind the problems that we have here in Congress. Public broadcasting is America's voice, and for most of America it's the only locally owned and managed source of news and local interest. It's commercial free. It is focused on our kids, our culture, our environment.

Last year, amidst the Tea Party effort to defund public broadcasting, we had a poll that showed 78 percent of Americans wanted the funding to remain the same or be increased. Two-thirds of Republicans wanted it to be held steady or increased. Now, from this year's budget it hopefully appears that we've dodged that bullet--maybe some people have come to their senses. Americans were heard from coast to coast: Don't play games with public broadcasting.

We've got a few minor holes in the President's budget, but I hope we can come together in a bipartisan way, listen to Americans, listen to these representatives, and do it right.

With the Women's Garden Club of America, we have a group--primarily women--who are focused not just on a garden club, but a fight for civic improvement through the connection to nature and to one another. Their work in policy is broad and deep. Their position papers on supporting clean air, clean water, climate change, public lands take issues that around here get lost in a partisan theological fog and make clear why they're important, how to represent American interests, and not the narrow theological, the partisan that get us bogged down.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that Members will listen to groups like our public broadcasting supporters and the Garden Club about simple, commonsense approaches to support fundamental American values and get off the partisan merry-go-round. We should listen to them. We should work with them. America will be a better place, and so will Congress.

Mr. Speaker, today I voted against H.R. 2117, the ``Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act.'' This bill infringes on the duties of the Department of Education and it undermines efforts to reduce fraud and waste within the federal financial aid system.

The legislation would prohibit the Department of Education from issuing regulations regarding the definition of a credit hour and regulations requiring institutions of higher education to comply with the state laws in which they offer educational services. In effect, it undermines efforts to demand accountability in the federal financial aid system. There is a clear federal interest in establishing consistent definitions for a credit-hour, the underlying unit used to determine federal financial aid benefits.

In addition, requiring institutions of higher education to continue to register with the state where they teach distance or correspondence classes will help ensure that basic accountability standards are being met. We have a responsibility to taxpayers to ensure that the institutions receiving support through the financial aid system are in compliance with state laws. This bill restricts the Department of Education's attempts to reduce fraud and waste within the financial aid system, and makes it difficult to ensure that our financial aid systems support the institutions that are effectively educating tomorrow's workforce.

The institutions in my district will benefit from a more fair financial aid system, as it will ensure long term viability of the system and protect their students' access to the very important financial aid benefits.

Thank you. I deeply appreciate your courtesy in permitting me to speak, and I appreciate your leadership in focusing on the need to rebuild and renew this country, putting Americans back to work, being able to not just revitalize our economy, but our neighborhoods and strengthen our families. It is true that there are some areas where there are some great opportunities for healthy competition. The gentleman may be referencing the fact that recently we have started manufacturing a streetcar in the United States for the first time in 58 years, and it's being manufactured in Portland, Oregon. But I would note that that project, manufacturing streetcars, includes the work of subcontractors across the country, including 40 in the Midwest that had been so hard hit by some of the decline in manufacturing activity.

The point is that being able to make goods in this country, whether it's light rail, streetcar, heavy rail, whether we're dealing with fabricating steel for bridges and roads or rebuilding the power grid, these are all areas that are a tremendous source of family-wage jobs. I find no amount of irony that one of the major Republican candidates for President somehow thought that President Obama was being--and I'm using his direct word--``elitist'' by advocating that young people have the chance for a college education or going to a community college. My goodness, how out of touch can you possibly be? I don't know any American that doesn't want his or her child to be able to have the opportunity for further education and training. This is part of an agenda here. I look forward to the conversations this evening.

At one point, I'd like to cycle back to the spectacle we had on the floor of the House the week before we recessed for Presidents Day where we had the most partisan transportation bill in the history of the House--narrow in focus, small in vision, dividing the various elements of transportation--that was so bad that our Republican friends were embarrassed to even have a hearing on it. Never before in the history of the House have we had a major surface transportation reauthorization that never even had a hearing.

Well, mercifully, our Republican friends have decided that that wasn't getting them anywhere. The outcry from transit agencies across the country, from cyclists, even from the people who advocate safe routes to school, the program designed for our children to be able to get back and forth to school

safely that they eliminated--so they've put that on the back burner. But the point is, you are right. We've enjoyed, if I can use that term, their Republican leadership of the House for 14 months. We have no economic development plan, we have no transportation bill, and we continue to have an opportunity to rebuild and renew America languishing.

Well, I appreciate the invitation.

You know, today, as we speak, the people in Michigan are voting in a Presidential primary to help determine the Republican nominee. I just mentioned one of them. My friend and former colleague here, Rick Santorum, with whom I served in the House, is the person who thinks it's elitist that American families have an opportunity for their kids to go to school. The other major contender, the gentleman who is likely to even win the ballot in Michigan today, more Republican votes, has been quoted as saying one of his top targets, if he's elected President, would be to eliminate Amtrak.

Yesterday he was on the trail. This is one of his top five projects.

Mr. Romney wants to eliminate the funding for Amtrak. This is one of his targets.

Well, the United States is--in the past, I have actually been brought up short when I've talked about the United States having a third world rail passenger system, because I've ridden railroads in places like Malaysia or Thailand, and we do an injustice to their rail systems.

The United States is the only major country in the world that does not have higher-speed rail passenger service. It is the only major country that has no plan to move forward. The President, to his credit, put forth $14 billion to be able to strengthen our rail passenger system, some of which, several billion would have helped with a California vision; the California voters have approved an opportunity to go forward.

It is frustrating for me because there is no doubt that Americans will have higher-speed rail over the course of the next quarter century, no doubt. But the question is, coming back to the point that you have so relentlessly and eloquently developed on the floor here, Congressman Garamendi, is the notion of: Where will America's rail system come from? Because the path we're on, if we follow it with Romney, who would zero it out, with Republicans who have fought these investments every chance they get, the high-speed rail we'll have will be built and operated by the Chinese. They will design it; they will build it. The value will be added in another country, and we'll pay for the privilege.

The alternative is to invest here in the United States in the tracks, the signals, the equipment, to be able to revitalize a vital system of transportation, taking pressure off of airports and roads. But, as I say, the choice is whether or not we're going to build it, we're going to own it, and it will accrue to the benefit of the American public.

One of your points about the impact, that one piece of the bridge project, the $400 million element of steel, it wasn't just the steel itself. Had we been developing that portion of the steel for the project in the United States, there would have been thousands of other jobs that would have been related to it to support that effort, in terms of the manufacturing, the development, the people who provide the equipment to manufacture the steel and put it in place, and the tools. It is a dramatic ripple effect.

You referenced 150,000 miles of road in critical need of repair. What's under the surface is even in worse shape. We

have, in the United States, every day 6 billion gallons of water that leaks from water mains that are old, in some cases unsafe and unhealthy. That's the equivalent of 9,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Lined end to end, it would go from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It's a lot of water that's wasted.

It is a problem in terms of undermining roads. We've all seen these terrible pictures of sinkholes that develop. I used to keep them and use them for presentations. I stopped when one of the sinkholes was actually in my old neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, that opened up in the middle of the street and swallowed a maintenance truck. This is serious business.

The American Society of Civil Engineers, every 5 years, does a report card on the state of American infrastructure. Their most recent report card showed that we have $2.3 trillion unmet need, and the grades ranged from C-minus to an F in terms of water, the electrical grid, transit, roads and bridges. This is serious business in terms of American quality of life. And think about the hundreds of thousands of family-wage jobs if we were investing in rebuilding and renewing America.

I know you appear to have a little statistic here.

That's a very important point. The Society of American Civil Engineers has produced another fascinating report about what the cost will be if we don't invest in the water infrastructure. They have documented tens of billions of dollars of extra cost if we do not take care of these problems. It is not a problem that is unknown to American homeowners, who quickly find out if you don't fix the hole in the roof, you end up with massive structural damage.

The damage that you mentioned earlier in terms of the roads that are in need of critical repair, the cost to the American motorists in terms of the damage to car suspension systems and tires, that wear and tear wears out cars more rapidly. Delays in traffic for something like UPS--a 5-minute delay I think translates to something like $100 million of costs to them over the course of a year. This $1.57 of economic impact for every dollar invested translates into over 25,000 jobs for each billion dollars that is spent on infrastructure. A far greater rate of return than on military spending, on a lot of the other things--tax cuts, for Heaven's sake. This is real economic benefit, particularly when we've got a building trade sector where unions are looking at 20, 30, 40 percent or more unemployment. These are opportunities to put people to work tomorrow on things that people in America need today.

The gentleman is absolutely correct. There are lots of ways of going about this.

Ronald Reagan in 1982 understood that the gas tax, a user fee, could be used to help the country, which at that point was in a serious economic recession. Ronald Reagan signed into law a nickel-a-gallon increase in the gas tax that helped spur economic development activity.

If you don't want to raise a tax, there are unnecessary tax benefits that are flowing, for instance, to the largest oil companies that no longer need these tax breaks. In fact, George Bush the younger was famously quoted as saying when oil prices got to $50 a barrel that oil companies didn't need incentives to drill for the most profitable commodity on the face of the planet. Where we've watched it go to $100 a barrel or more, we could completely capitalize the infrastructure bank the gentleman talked about just by unnecessary tax benefits to oil companies, which the majority of the American public would approve in a heartbeat. There are also the expiring tax provisions on the wealthiest of Americans where just half of that would enable us to fully fund the transportation gap over the next 10 years.

I have bipartisan legislation that would deal with a water trust fund that would leverage close to a trillion dollars because of what the gentleman said--that there are other funds flowing for infrastructure like that, a trillion dollars of development over the next 20 years. There are opportunities here for us to step up and meet the needs of America and to rebuild and renew it.

Well, it is one of the very real problems we are facing in terms of building it in America. We are in the process of constructing a wind energy in the United States. It's been remarkably successful over the course of the last 20 years.

We've watched the price per kilowatt-hour produced by wind drop dramatically. At the same time, we are watching these wind turbine farms--you have them in California. We have them in the Pacific Northwest. They're in the Midwest. They're in Texas. They are providing revenue to rural America. Farmers and ranchers are being able to harvest the wind, literally.

At the same time, this is low carbon. This is not adding to our greenhouse gas effect. It's not something that is being exported overseas, giving money to people who don't like us very much.

At the same time, it is building this infrastructure: people who are now manufacturing wind turbines in the United States; people who are putting up, fabricating these towers; people dealing with the transmission capacity.

But I will say that one of the things this Congress should do is to extend the production tax credit. We've talked about benefits that flow to the oil industry long past time that they were necessary to provide incentives for them to develop oil resources, but we have provided a little bit of an incentive to help get the wind energy business competitive.

Well, that production tax credit expires at the end of the year. Already, we are watching investment patterns start to pull back because people are uncertain that they can go ahead with large-scale projects, investing tens of millions of dollars not certain that they will continue to have this tax benefit. That's outrageous.

Of the $4 trillion of tax provisions that are going to expire at the end of the year, the opportunity for us to actually have deficit savings by recalibrating some of those--at a minimum, we ought to step up, and we ought to step up now, to be clear that the production tax credit is, in fact, going to continue so we don't shut down the wind energy industry, we don't lose the manufacturing and the construction, to say nothing of clean, renewable energy. That would be a tragedy.

We have bipartisan legislation I've introduced with my friend from Seattle, Congressman Reichert. We have a number of very distinguished cosponsors, including yourself. This is something that shouldn't be languishing. There's a bipartisan interest in making sure that the wind energy industry doesn't shut down and that we continue making it in America.

Mr. Speaker, it's interesting listening to the fantasy Republican talking points. The fact is we are now drilling more oil in the United States than ever before. The inconvenient facts get in the way of political talking points. But what is not a fantasy is what is happening on the political screen.

In the final 3 months of 2011, the campaign to reelect President Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised $68 million, an impressive sum, all the more impressive because it was donated by 583,000 Americans who gave an average of $55 each. But earlier this month, at a retreat at the exclusive Renaissance Esmeralda Resort in southern California, the conservative billionaire Koch brothers said they would donate a combined $60 million to super PACs to defeat President Obama. Two billionaire brothers with opinions radically at variance with most of America are poised to cancel out the efforts of half a million American citizens.

To understand this gross perversion of the political process, we don't have to wait for the general election and the avalanche of negative campaign ads against the President. We can look right now at the primary election for the Republican Presidential nomination, where we've seen a handful of billionaires and their super PACs outspend all the Republican candidates and help turn that contest into a circus.

The sad reality is that the super PACs have shaped the political campaign more than the candidates. That's the world we live in since the Supreme Court's tragic decision in Citizens United, which overturned a century of settled law and opened this floodgate of unlimited campaign spending, drowning out small donors and individuals that most of us learned in school were the cornerstone of our democracy. This Supreme Court ruling was based on the perverse idea that the Court's out-of-touch majority somehow felt corporations should enjoy the same constitutional rights as people. This threatens the integrity of the political process, not just from the appearance of corruption, but actually, blatantly, distorting the process.

As companies and sham independent organizations that are actually run by candidates' friends and employees blanket the airwaves with an avalanche of vicious negative advertising, now somehow they are protected under a First Amendment right of free speech which would be beyond the comprehension of our Founding Fathers. Mitt Romney may believe that corporations are people, but do the rest of us need a comedian like Steven Colbert to remind us that only people are people?

There's an outside chance of relief from a century-old Montana law banning corporate corruption in their political landscape, which was passed after the most egregious and well-documented abuse in Montana. A case about this law would provide the Supreme Court a lifeline to climb down from the precarious and dangerous constitutional ledge, a ledge that they have not only crawled out onto, but they dragged the American people and the political process with them with their Citizens United decision.

There's a chance that the Supreme Court will use this Montana law to reestablish the basic parameters protecting the political process from the corruption of vast sums of unregulated corporate money. But in the meantime, it's important that we advance a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the notion of corporate personhood, explicitly stating that the rights of natural persons may only be afforded to real people, not corporations.

As we work to overturn Citizens United and ban corporate personhood, people should not have to wait to judge whether a candidate is representing the public or representing their benefactors. We should pass the DISCLOSE Act, H.R. 4010, to require political spending by corporations and individuals to be fully transparent. We should be unstinting in other efforts in the regulatory and legal process to make sure that shareholders of corporations have an opportunity to at least know, and maybe even have a say, about what the corporations that they are supposed to own are doing on their behalf. We should support H.R. 1404, the Fair Elections Now Act, to promote public campaign financing to ensure the public's voice is not drowned out by moneyed special interests.

The Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United was based on fantasy, the fantasy that vast sums of money from hidden special interest are not inherently corrupted; the fantasy that corporations should be afforded all the rights of citizens; the fantasy that super PACs run by individuals who are the closest allies, friends, and employees of candidates are somehow independent.

What is not a fantasy is what we see right now on the political landscape, the terrifying effect of super PACs and the flood of money hopelessly distorting the campaigns. We should all fight to change it.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose H.R. 1433, the ``Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2012.'' This bill is a solution in search of a problem. Its sweeping prohibition against the use of eminent domain for economic development that would cripple community efforts at a time when they're needed more than ever.

There are time honored principles for the exercise of eminent domain by State and local governments. I support the Constitutional protections already in place to prevent taking of private property without fair compensation. Governments should certainly exercise great care in using eminent domain.

Many major economic and ecological initiatives would be difficult, if not impossible, without eminent domain. I believe economic development is a legitimate use of this tool; my community has used it for a number of critical developments, including key high tech projects that have laid the foundation for decades of prosperity.

I would support action to prevent abuse and capricious use of eminent domain. But this bill would make it nearly impossible for communities to use it. This bill is too restrictive and will become an impediment to economic development. Its financial penalties could bankrupt communities and even the risk of potential future violation of the law could affect a jurisdiction's borrowing power today.

I urge my colleagues to reject this bill.

Mr. Speaker, as Congress adjourns for the week for the Presidents Day Recess, I'm hopeful that Members will go back to their districts and talk to them about the failed transportation bill that has mercifully been pulled back from the floor.

My Republican colleagues decided, for the first time in history, to put forth a partisan transportation bill, never had a hearing, that would have gutted transit. It would have reversed 20 years of transportation reform. It would have even eliminated the wildly popular Safe Routes to School program.

I would hope that they go back and they talk to their contractors, their local government officials, parents, and the PTA to understand why those programs are important, why that bill is flawed, why America deserves a better, bipartisan, visionary transportation bill to rebuild and renew America and put our people back to work.

Mr. Speaker, when nearly one in four homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth, I am pleased to introduce the Bankruptcy Equity Act. ``Underwater'' mortgages are a tremendous source of financial stress for families. While some are able to continue making their payments, others are so overwhelmed by debt that they lose their home to foreclosure, to a ``short sale,'' or by simply walking away. Bankruptcy should offer a legal means to escape from debt and get a second chance, but ordinary homeowners are denied this opportunity with their mortgages.

Current bankruptcy law prohibits modifying mortgages for people who live in their homes but allows modification for vacation homes or investment properties. For instance, if a speculator whose investment property lost half of its value files for bankruptcy, a judge can modify the loan, including reducing the balance to its fair market value and lowering the interest rates.

The Bankruptcy Equity Act allows a bankruptcy judge to modify a homeowner's mortgage, bringing fairness to ordinary people who cannot afford payments on the inflated value of their homes, but can make payments if their mortgages were fairly valued. It helps keep families in their homes and prevents the foreclosures that are driving down home prices and creating vacant properties that can devastate communities. It will also help prevent the buildup of another housing bubble by encouraging financial institutions to take greater care to ensure they are lending to only responsible borrowers. The securitization of questionable mortgages would not have been possible if homeowners were treated as businesses.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect America's homeowners.

This week, we watched the settlement unfold between the Department of Justice, the State attorneys general, and the major banks. Twenty-six billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but given that almost one in four homeowners owe more on their mortgages than the values of their homes--overall losing some $700 billion in value. This is a step in the right direction that will help some people but is not really a major correction. There are still far too few real pressures to get the market right.

There is a simple answer that won't cost the taxpayers a dime and which will stabilize the housing depression within a year. It would help reestablish home values and encourage banks to work with their customers whose mortgages are ``under water''.

The recent decision of American Airlines to pursue bankruptcy is illustrative. This corporate giant could actually pay its bills. It had some $4 billion in cash and was still taking in revenue, but it made a strategic judgment to use the bankruptcy laws to reposition itself to win market rate loan terms, to modify its union contracts and the pension obligations to its employees because, under the law, a bankruptcy judge can adjust these business relationships to reflect current market conditions--for a business, that is. Curiously, homeowners are treated differently.

A business speculator could buy 10 units in a condominium in south Florida when the housing bubble bursts and could get bankruptcy relief on all 10 units--but not Sally Six-Pack, who bought an identical unit to live in.

What is it about the homeowners that makes them less worthy of relief of the fresh start of bankruptcy than the speculator or American Airlines? The answer is right here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Congress has decided to look out for business, not the homeowner. The daisy chain of profit we saw collapsing under the weight of colossal greed and bad judgment was protected at the expense of the homeowner, who was trapped, with limited options to renegotiate, with no leverage, who simply faced foreclosure, a short sale, or what is described as jingle mail: send the keys back and walk away.

It's interesting that homeowners have been urged that it's their moral duty, their obligation to pay, even as the Mortgage Bankers Association, itself, reneged on the mortgage on its headquarters and stiffed the lender to the tune of $30 million. Homeowners are expected to do the right thing, even if we're seeing a cavalcade of financial misdeeds, shortcuts, and, in some cases, outright fraud.

I've been unable to find any good reason that homeowners should be discriminated against in bankruptcy. If it's good enough for business, it should be good enough for the homeowners.

There are lots of reasons to change that policy. First, it's simple equity, the same treatment. In addition, making bankruptcy relief available to homeowners will make the system respond to reasonable requests for renegotiations, which would be cheaper, faster, and easier than the foreclosure process for everybody. The simple act will stem the flood of foreclosures and uncertainty, which will help stabilize home values currently in free fall, and it will make it harder for another speculative bubble to be created. Knowing that homeowners will be treated the same as business in bankruptcy will make people think twice about aggregating vast numbers of dicey mortgages, simply taking a profit, and passing the package on to others.

I am introducing the Bankruptcy Equity Act to provide bankruptcy judges the power to align the homeowner's mortgage to its current value and terms and put ordinary homeowners on the same playing field as speculators and businesses. It makes sure private and federally insured mortgages are eligible for modification, allowing FHA, VA, and the Department of Agriculture to pay out claims on insured mortgages modified in bankruptcy.

For an immediate solution to the foreclosure crisis, allowing families to stay in their homes, to be treated equitably, and prevent the next bubble from forming, I strongly urge my colleagues to examine the Bankruptcy Equity for Homeowners Act and join me in treating homeowners as fairly as we treat speculators and investors.