Floor Statements

I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy. He is absolutely correct.

What is being dealt with in the Klamath Basin is an unraveling of a serious problem all because the Federal Government has promised more than Mother Nature can deliver. And part of what is being considered-- is being supported broadly by Native Americans and business interests. We have been working with utilities----

A broad range of people in the community. This is something that needs to be seriously studied and done right.

There is a very strong likelihood that if it isn't done properly, there may well be something that happens in the Klamath River Basin where circumstances move ahead and it's not done in the way that I think most people would like.

So I appreciate----

It is a tremendous opportunity for the Klamath River Basin. It's a tremendous opportunity for the Native Americans, for agriculture, for sportspeople and to avoid the litigation and the political squirrel cage that we are in.

If you go down there and visit the Klamath Basin, you would find, as I know my good friend from California has, it's a tremendous opportunity. This amendment really would be a mistake.

I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy, as I appreciate his leadership. Because this is a process that he has been stewarding, being a key congressional partner. I appreciate his referencing what has happened here, dating back to August 2009.

This has been scrutinized. We are friendly rivals in the Pacific Northwest. And it's a rare, rare, rare, rare occasion that any Federal activity ever leaves the Evergreen State and ends up in Oregon, as my good friend, the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, can attest because working with Senator Magnuson, he helped vacuum functions into the State of Oregon.

So you can bet that this was flyspecked to the extreme, but the advantages are overwhelming. The proximity, the technical effort, the local investment has been amazing. So we've been pilloried on this. It's been under a microscope, and we've reached the point now that it's really past the point of no return. If this ill-advised--but I'm sure well-intended--amendment would be adopted by my friend from Washington, the Federal Government would be on the hook for more money; it would be disruptive for NOAA; and, frankly, it would be a disservice to the people who played fair, who went all along the way playing by the rules, making the case.

I strongly urge rejection of this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, no serious effort to reduce the Federal Government is complete without addressing agricultural subsidies. Even in time of record high farm prices and profits, we still gave $16 billion in subsidies last year.

There are no meaningful limits. They are easily evaded, doubled if you are married. They don't cover loan deficiency payments or marketing loans. This amendment would establish a hard limit of $250,000 per entity.

In 2009, almost 1,500 entities got $250,000 or more. Something called Fidelity National Insurance Titles, probably not a family farm, raked in more than $4 million in 2009. For the past 15 years, Riceland Foods in Arkansas has collected a half-billion dollars from the taxpayers.

I strongly urge that you join with me, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Environmental Working Group, Humane USA, a wide variety of groups and organizations, to establish this limit, save $100 million this year and more in the future, and start us on a path of reform that we can realize in the upcoming farm bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the ranking agriculture appropriations member, a champion of agriculture reform and of agriculture, Congressman Farr.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to my friend and colleague, Congressman Kind, who has been a tireless champion of agricultural reform, coming as he does from farm country in the upper Midwest.

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

Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close on this amendment?

Well, I have listened to the language about damaging the farm safety net. There is a massive farm safety net in place. We're just reducing the safety net to a mere quarter million dollars a year.

My friend, Mr. Kind, is absolutely right. Tomorrow never comes here. I've been on the floor of the House when the House instructed the conferees to accept this exact limit. We were rolled by the Ag Committee and ignored.

This is an opportunity for us to not deal with the savings that you're taking away from nutrition and from the environmental titles. Talk about the safety net. What about your cuts to WIC?

For heaven's sakes. A hundred million dollars savings to the taxpayer. Get started on reform now and join in a bipartisan effort. I've been pleased to work with Congressman Flake, Congressman Kind, Congressman Ryan. Year after year we have brought these issues to the floor and been rolled. Now is the time to start by adopting it and changing the system.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate Speaker Boehner and my Republican colleagues providing for an open discussion on this legislation, and

I appreciate the Speaker's request that we be respectful of the process. I think that is important. But I think it is also important to come to the floor at this point to make a couple of observations that are critical to the people I represent.

We are ready to move forward to actually deal with cutting the budget. We have already seen today a significant amendment adopted dealing with defense. There are opportunities for us to accelerate health care savings in Medicare. And from the beginning of my coming to this body, I have been working on a bipartisan basis to deal with reductions in unnecessary and wasteful agricultural subsidies.

There are several items that we are dealing with in the continuing resolution that have nothing to do with saving money. Indeed, they are actually going to cost money in economic impact in my community and around the country.

I note, for instance, the policy rider that would prevent the EPA and the Corps of Engineers from clarifying provisions of the Clean Water Act. As a result, millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of miles of streams will lose Clean Water Act protections. Because these affect so much of the headwater streams supply to public surface drinking water in my State, it could end up threatening drinking water quality for almost 2 million people.

The cut to the State revolving funds are extraordinarily imprudent. This money leverages a great deal of activity and helps us deal with the massive infrastructure deficit with water quality. The American Society of Civil Engineers backs this up. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars we need to be investing in the next 20 years. Cutting the revolving fund is a dramatic step backward.

In the area of air quality, there is a rider that attempts to prevent EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Now I will tell you, on its merits, dealing with greenhouse gases, that this will look foolish for the people who are proposing it to their children and grandchildren. They will wonder, What were you thinking?

But put aside for a moment the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pollution. The language will have far-reaching--and I hope unintended--consequences. It would hinder EPA's ability to relax requirements on biomass plants that matter, for example, to my friend from Idaho and others in the Northwest. Very important to us. In addition, because of the way it was drafted, to prevent the issuance of permits, the language would impose a de facto construction ban on new sources in many States, including Oregon. This could block not only new or expanding power plants but refineries and large manufacturing plants. With unemployment rates high in my State and around the country, this construction moratorium hardly seems to make sense.

The budget decimates the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This was a program that represented a commitment to offset some of the destructive effects of oil and gas production by preserving many of America's high- quality recreational opportunities and vital wildlife habitat.

This is violating a commitment that this body has made to finally allow these funds to flow. Unfortunately, future investments are going to be at risk if this CR passes with the existing funding level, missing opportunities to complete landscapes and protect watersheds and actually preventing agencies from meeting commitments already in place.

My final concern at this point deals with the assault on energy investments. The United States invests approximately 0.5 percent of the trillion-dollar energy sector. If anything, we should be ramping this up. We are losing our competitive edge around the world. We are losing economic opportunities and opportunities to preserve the environment.

Mr. Chairman, I have other concerns. There are other people who have things to say. But I hope that we can reject these provisions in the CR that actually make no difference in terms of reducing the budget and violate commitments that we have made.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I'm sad to have to offer this amendment this evening. It's more unfortunate that if we're going to be subject to a strict interpretation of the House rules, I have a list of provisions already in this young session where time after time the majority has chosen to waive the rules since they were first adopted, when it served their purpose. If our colleagues are serious about cutting the deficit, they will not just allow the amendment to be debated, but they will vote upon it and pass it.

Mr. Chairman, the public doesn't care whether the deficit is reduced by closing a tax loophole or reducing spending. I'll bet it would rather stop another giveaway to large oil companies rather than cutting programs that are important to them. For that matter, I think the voters like public

broadcasting a lot more than they like Congress.

These funds for public broadcasting are absolutely essential to protect. It helps serve 170 million Americans every month. Especially important are the innovative programs for education, culture, and public affairs.

Make no mistake, the reduction of the funds that are contemplated by my colleagues in 2 years, eliminating public broadcasting support altogether, will damage all the stations, and, indeed, I think all of us listen to these stations ourselves. But it would particularly hurt the stations in rural and small town America.

First, small town stations rely more heavily on public funds than the stations in big cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, and even Portland, Oregon.

Second, not only do these smaller communities rely more heavily on the stations that are located there, but in rural and small town America, the circumstance is that it is much more expensive to broadcast to them. Taking an example in a region familiar to the Chairman, in our Pacific Northwest, for Oregon public broadcasting, which serves both our districts, it costs 11 times as much to broadcast to remote Burns, Oregon, than it does in the metropolitan area.

Public broadcasting is also the source of innovative journalism that you're not going to find anyplace else. At a time when large corporate newsrooms are cutting back on foreign affairs, for instance, public broadcasting, because of the generous support of viewers and support from the country itself, is being able to expand its foreign coverage.

I'll bet most of us in this Chamber today relied on NPR first thing in the morning as we were getting ready to go to work to be aware of the recent events, for example, in Egypt. It is particularly important for our children. Public broadcasting is the only source of programming that is geared to educate our children, not try to sell something to them. Pulling out this vital public funding stream is going to undermine that mission of educating our children.

And at a time when I would think that we would want to support public-private partnerships, taking away the essential contributions that the Federal Government has provided since 1967 undermines that public-private partnership where we see six, seven times the funding leveraged as a result of that public contribution.

Mr. Chairman, we've seen this movie before. The Republicans, when they came into power before, tried to shut down public broadcasting, and we have seen the American public push back. Just this last week, tens of thousands of people have called our offices entreating us to allow the funding to continue. I would strongly urge that there not be selective application of the rules to this amendment but waive, as the majority has done time and time again for their purposes, to enable this provision to go forward.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Point of Order

Madam Speaker, the next few days on the floor of the House will be critical for the future of public broadcasting.

With the new Republican majority, people here are hoping for saving less than one cent per day on this ideological assault--on what?-- public broadcasting, for 170 million Americans, their Voice of America and their window to the world.

In an era when local papers and radio stations are being gobbled up by large conglomerates, public broadcasting's 1,300 stations around the country are increasingly the only source of locally owned, locally controlled content.

Now, there is a lot of attention appropriately given to the major stations in America's large cities. We've all seen and heard programming from stations in Boston and San Francisco, New York, even in Portland, Oregon, as Oregon Public Broadcasting is recognized as one of these national leaders. For much of America outside the major metropolitan areas, public broadcasting actually plays an even more important role.

In the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, rural areas, and the upper Midwest, often public broadcasting is not just the best local source. It is the only source of information that relates directly to their communities. The big stations in the large communities are going to be harmed by this assault on public broadcasting.

My own public broadcasting in Oregon will lose $2.4 million. It will really harm the quality of their effort. But it is in rural and small town America that the greatest damage will be done. For example, in eastern Oregon, it costs 11 times as much to get a signal to Burns as it does in the more populist Willamette Valley, and there simply isn't the base of population to make up for the difference with local contributions.

It's ironic that these partisans are attacking one of America's best public-private partnerships. It's not uncommon for the public investment to leverage $6 or more of private investment to make this high quality programming possible.

Now, there are some who claim that in an era of 500 cable and satellite stations that we don't need another source of information. Well, those people fail to grasp the power of noncommercial, public broadcasting, how it is unique today. There are countless shows that are directed towards America's kids, but public broadcasting provides the only children's programming that is trying to educate and entertain our children, not sell them something.

The public supports public broadcasting, not just in opinion polls, but with tens of millions of dollars of voluntary contributions that they make every year to provide the quality programming.

I fear that this reckless partisan assault on public broadcasting is actually going to hurt our long-term efforts to tame the budget deficit. Trading a savings of less than one-half cent per day per American won't offset the damage to public confidence by eliminating what so many people believe in and count upon.

More important, it will be a loss of a valuable tool to educate and inform the public from a respected nonpartisan source, exactly how we're going to need to get information to Americans to deal with this massive deficit problem that we face.

For those of us working to meet America's challenges, public broadcasting is an essential ally; but I will say that with the tremendous outpouring of support that we are now seeing, people calling and writing Members of Congress, stopping them on the street, I think there is a good chance that those 1,300 public broadcasting stations will still be here in the future helping inform the debates of today, if all of us do our job, listen to the public, and do what is in the best long-term interests of this country.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I rise in opposition to the amendment. I strongly support the comments from the gentlemen from New Jersey and the State of Washington. In fact, they understated the case.

Mr. Chairman, the United States Department of Defense is the largest consumer of energy in the world. These, I think, ill-advised efforts to undercut important research areas have significant implications, first and foremost, for the operational activities of the Department of Defense. The Iraq war was four times more energy intense than the first gulf war given what has happened in terms of changing tactics; and, frankly, the danger to our troops was understated. Those tankers might as well have great big bull's-eyes painted on them because they were targets for terrorists, and they put our soldiers at risk; and all of us represent States that lost people because of that vulnerability. It costs over $100 a gallon to deliver this fuel to the front.

I seriously hope that people take a deep breath and listen to the counsel of the people from the committee. This is a long-term threat to our men and women in the field. It is also a long-term threat to the budget of the Department of Defense. If you plot what their energy costs have been over time, it probably rivals only the cost of health care for our troops.

I would hope that we understand the opportunities here. As my friend from the State of Washington pointed out, it is research that isn't going to happen from the private sector. This is the sort of investment that government needs to make up front. It's the same thing that led to the development of the Internet.

It will have important economic benefits going forward because this will not be exclusively the province of the Department of Defense. The extent to which these technologies work and can be brought to scale, they will be developed by private companies. It will make a difference as to how we as Americans live, because, after all, we as a country waste more energy than anybody in the world.

This is a very serious point. I deeply appreciate the wise counsel of the committee leadership, and I strongly urge that this amendment be rejected.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Blumenauer

Amendment No. 436: Page 303, strike lines 3 through 9 and

insert the following:

(b) For payment to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

(``Corporation''), as authorized by the Communications Act of

1934, an amount which shall be available within limitations

specified by that Act, for the fiscal year 2013,

$460,000,000: Provided, That none of the funds made available

to the Corporation by this Act shall be used to pay for

receptions, parties, or similar forms of entertainment for

Government officials or employees: Provided further, That

none of the funds made available to the Corporation by this

Act shall be available or used to aid or support any program

or activity from which any person is excluded, or is denied

benefits, or is discriminated against, on the basis of race,

color, national origin, religion, or sex: Provided further,

That none of the funds made available to the Corporation by

this Act shall be used to apply any political test or

qualification in selecting, appointing, promoting, or taking

any other personnel action with respect to officers, agents,

and employees of the Corporation: Provided further, That none

of the funds made available to the Corporation by this Act

shall be used to support the Television Future Fund or any

similar purpose.

(c) For taxable years beginning after the date of the

enactment of this Act, the allowance under section 611 of the

Internal Revenue Code of 1986 with respect to an oil or gas

well shall be calculated without regard to subsection (c) or

(d) of section 613A of such Code.

Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate tin during the debate on H.R. 1, the Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act, I plan to offer the following amendment to amend Page 303 of H.R. 1 by striking lines 3 through 9 and inserting the attached language.

This amendment would fully restore all funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that H.R. 1 aims to eliminate. A portion of this funding would provide CPB with the funds necessary to assist with the transition to digital broadcasting, provide for the costly infrastructure and maintenance that connects rural to urban, and assist with radio interconnection.

Mr. Speaker, this is going to be one of the most pivotal weeks in the history of American public broadcasting. As early as tomorrow, we will be voting on a continuing resolution that would call for the elimination of all Federal government support for public broadcasting.

Now, I will admit, this is very personal to me. If this reckless act were to be taken, it would mean that my local award-winning public broadcasting station, Oregon Public Broadcasting, would lose $2.4 million annually, funds that we use to invest serving Oregon and southwest Washington and a little bit of Idaho with programs that keep people informed, inspired, that help educate our youngest citizens. Actually, through the magic of Internet, people enjoy programming online across America because of the quality of Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Now, there's no question, as some of my colleagues were just discussing on the floor, that there is hard budget work ahead of us. I look forward to opportunities to eliminate unnecessary agricultural supports and rebalance those efforts. I look forward to dealing with helping rein in spiraling Medicare costs. Not eliminating health care reform, but accelerating opportunities to reform it and make it more efficient.

I look forward to looking at the largest area of expenditure dealing with the Defense Department and discretionary funding. Without question, there are a number of areas there, the American people know and understand, that can be adjusted.

However, we must do this in a way that is thoughtful and does not disproportionately impact our rural communities, our children, and universal access to high-quality TV and radio programming.

Funding for public broadcasting gives our communities a voice by covering local news and events in a way that weekly papers cannot and commercial radio and TV stations do not provide. Today's media is rarely locally owned. Huge corporations send managers to deal with papers and radio programs. Public broadcasting is the only locally owned and managed media in America.

I am joined this evening by a couple of my colleagues, and I look forward to engaging in this conversation with them. I note I could start with my colleague from Kentucky, Congressman Chandler, a champion of public broadcasting, as well as a very fiscally conservative Member of Congress. Welcome this evening. I look forward to your thoughts and observations.

Thank you. I appreciate your eloquence, Congressman Chandler, your long-standing support for public broadcasting, helping us have a constructive dialogue here in Congress to make it better.

Before I turn to my good friend from California, Congressman Farr, I just want to follow up on one point that you made, because this is vital infrastructure that connects Americans, particularly in rural and small town America, people who otherwise would not have access.

There is always going to be public broadcasting in New York, Washington, D.C., or San Francisco. But it is rural and small town America that is going to pay the price if we lose the support for this infrastructure. Again, being very parochial, but it is not uncommon for what happens in the Midwest, in Kansas, in Texas. In rural Oregon, it costs 11 times as much to extend the signal to remote Burns, Oregon, in eastern Oregon, than to deal in the metropolitan area. So these 1,300

independently owned and operated public broadcasting stations are going to be severely crippled in terms of their ability to meet the needs of rural and small town America.

I am going to speak in a few moments about some of the unique programming, but the point is that the signal itself depends on the type of subsidy we are talking about here.

Now, if I may turn to my colleague who has been a supporter of public broadcasting back in the day when he was a local official in dealing in the California Legislature, Congressman Sam Farr.

Thank you for your eloquent statement, your support. And your being with us here this evening is very important. I think your point about how we start the day--how many of us were relying on public broadcasting for up-to-the-minute results of what was going on in Egypt at a time when the large corporate news organizations are cutting back their foreign coverage. Because of the dedication of hundreds of thousands of sponsors, volunteer contributors, public broadcasting has expanded its international coverage extraordinarily so.

But before I turn to my good friend from New York, I would just make one reference, however. Although the international is certainly critical, and it's very important for us here in Congress, one of the things that I think is so essential to zero in on is the local programing for rural and small-town America. Lakeland Public Broadcasting in Bemidji, Minnesota, the only broadcaster--the only broadcaster--for much of their service territory. In Colorado, KBNF is increasingly the point source of news and public affairs programing, emergency preparedness alert, as the print media continues to shrink and corporations kind of move in and automate small radio markets.

I could go on through the list. I won't because I do want to provide time. But there is special coverage in the upper Midwest, in the Northwest, in the Mountain States that is tailored to hard-to-serve areas that no commercial station is willing to invest in this type of quality. And to turn our backs on it is one of the most reckless things that can be done. And, frankly, it's a terrible optic for my Republican friends in their first weeks in power, to turn their backs on 170 million Americans who enjoy and rely on it every month. In fact, if you look at the survey research about what people want to protect, they want to protect our strength in defense. Number two is public broadcasting. Yet this is on the chopping block.

With that, may I turn to my good friend from Upstate New York (Mr. Owens).

Thank you. As only a dedicated volunteer of public broadcasting could come forward with that eloquence and the personal story, I deeply appreciate it.

A couple of facts I think that ought to be on the table. We are talking about less than a half-cent per day per American. We are dealing with organizations that have amazing volunteer support in each and every one of our communities. And they take that half cent a day and they leverage it. Each dollar of Federal funding can leverage $5, $6, $7 of local programming and benefit.

You said something, Congressman Owens, that I thought was very important when you talked about the programming. In fact, each of you mentioned it. This is the only medium that is geared as programming for our children in order to educate and enrich them, not to sell them something. It's the only area that they have access to.

Yes. This is the first time there has been a bipartisan effort, apparently. We've had efforts before. When our Republican friends took over, there were assaults on public broadcasting, but there was ultimately strong bipartisan support that beat it back. At home, these 170 million Americans, they aren't just Democrats or Republicans or Independents. It is a broad spectrum of Americans which relies on information that isn't pre-filtered for them. There are opposing views. We've all heard things on public broadcasting that we don't know we agree with or we've heard things that we never would have listened to in other venues.

I don't want us to close without turning back to our counsel and our volunteer and our spouse of a public broadcasting member.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Any other final words?

We look forward to continuing this conversation on the floor of the House.

There has been an exciting outpouring of support around the country as people have been invited to look at the facts and to share their opinions. I know that this is making a difference because every Member of Congress is hearing from the men and women they represent about the value of public broadcasting, and if what they are hearing is anything like what is coming into my office, it is overwhelmingly in the support of this vital program and in urging us to do the right thing.

I deeply appreciate my colleagues for joining me this evening. I look forward to continuing to spotlight this and to working to make sure that, rather than eliminate public broadcasting, we work to strengthen it so that everyone in America can benefit.

Thank you very much.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Blumenauer

Amendment No. 323: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following new section:

Offered By: Mr. Blumenauer

Amendment No. 324: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following new section:

Offered By: Mr. Blumenauer

Amendment No. 325: Page 303, strike lines 3 through 9 and

insert the following:

(b) For payment to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

(``Corporation''), as authorized by the Communications Act of

1934, an amount which shall be available within limitations

specified by that Act, for the fiscal year 2013,

$460,000,000: Provided, That none of the funds made available

to the Corporation by this Act shall be used to pay for

receptions, parties, or similar forms of entertainment for

Government officials or employees: Provided further, That

none of the funds made available to the Corporation by this

Act shall be available or used to aid or support any program

or activity from which any person is excluded, or is denied

benefits, or is discriminated against, on the basis of race,

color, national origin, religion, or sex: Provided further,

That none of the funds made available to the Corporation by

this Act shall be used to apply any political test or

qualification in selecting, appointing, promoting, or taking

any other personnel action with respect to officers, agents,

and employees of the Corporation: Provided further, That none

of the funds made available to the Corporation by this Act

shall be used to support the Television Future Fund or any

similar purpose.

(c) In addition to the amount appropriated in subsection

(b), for payment to the Corporation for fiscal year 2013,

$61,000,000 as follows:

(1) $36,000,000 shall be for costs related to digital

program production, development, and distribution associated

with the transition of public broadcasting to digital

broadcasting, to be awarded as determined by the

Corporation in consultation with public radio and television

licensees or permittees, or their designated representatives.

(2) $25,000,000 is available pursuant to section 396(k)(10)

of the Communications Act of 1934 for replacement and upgrade

of the public radio interconnection system.

(d) For taxable years beginning after the date of the

enactment of this Act, no deduction shall be allowed under

section 611 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 in the case

of oil or gas wells.

Offered By: Mr. Blumenauer

Amendment No. 326: Page 354, beginning on line 6, strike

``: Provided'' and all that follows through ``Initiative''.

Mr. Speaker, today I voted against H. Res. 72. I am slightly puzzled about why we used floor time for a resolution that directs committees to conduct oversight, which they already have the power to do and

should be doing, but I appreciate this opportunity to highlight how we can change the narrative from good regulations vs. bad or unnecessary regulations to one of better results achieved faster and at less expense.

Through my experience as an administrator responsible for compliance, and as a policy maker at the local, State and Federal levels, I have spent a great deal of attention on regulations.

Commonsense regulations from food safety, to lead-free children's toys, to environmental protections keep us safe and have saved countless lives. They prevent us from prioritizing short-term gains by corporations over the long-term prosperity of this nation. Indeed it was the lack of regulation in the financial industry that led us into this current recession.

I hope we can reframe the regulatory debate to satisfy both sides and better serve the public. I believe we can, and should, move towards the next generation of performance driven regulation. This can reward innovation and increase efficiency while at the same time holding people accountable and achieving better results.

The administration has already made great strides in this area by appointing a Chief Performance Officer at OMB. There is a tremendous opportunity between the White House and other Members of Congress in both parties who want to usher in a new era of more effective government.

Instead of repealing regulations and continuing to rehash old arguments, which will be to the detriment of our constituents' safety and our nation's long-term interests, I hope my colleagues will join me in thinking about how we change the way we regulate to be more effective and efficient.

Mr. Speaker, this next week we are going to have a very interesting conversation here in Washington, D.C., where the zeal that some of our friends have for both an ideological agenda and an effort at trying to cut government spending wherever they can, will put public broadcasting in the crosshairs.

I think it's an unfortunate development, one that's going to be a disappointment to the 170 million Americans who rely on public broadcasting every month. It's going to be particularly unfortunate if this agenda succeeds because it's not going to punish people in New York, or Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, or San Francisco. They will always have public broadcasting, although it will be diminished because of what some of my friends on the other side of the aisle hope to accomplish. But the real losers are going to be people in small-town and rural America. It costs 11 times as much to broadcast a signal to the far reaches of eastern Oregon than it does in the metropolitan Portland area. People should watch this discussion carefully. A lot depends on it.

Mr. Speaker, as Congress prepares to consider a draconian continuing resolution next week that will include painful cuts to important programs, I'm pleased to announce legislation that will save American taxpayers almost $40 billion over the next 5 years.

Right now, Americans are subsidizing some of the largest and most profitable oil companies in the world with their tax dollars.

This bill, the ``End Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act,'' would end 10 of the most egregious tax loopholes enjoyed by the oil industry--tax loopholes that have helped BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell make a combined profit of nearly $1 trillion over the past decade.

In the tax code, we currently subsidize oil injection, extraction, exploration, drilling, manufacturing, pricing, and inventory valuing, by creating price floors, offsetting foreign taxes, providing generous credits and deductions, offering tax shelters, and allowing the valuation of inventories at deeply discounted prices.

The well-established and extremely profitable oil industry no longer needs the help of American taxpayers. Their profit margins are enough incentive for them to keep doing what they're doing. As former President George W. Bush said in 2005, ``I will tell you with $55 oil we don't need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives.''

There are many better ways to spend $40 billion. It could be used to deficit or stave off some of the most painful cuts proposed by my Republican friends--such as LIHEAP funds, which help low-income Americans pay their utility bills so they can keep their heat on in the winter.

We could also redirect the subsidies in the tax code to level the playing field for emerging technologies like wind and solar. This is where the jobs are: A University of Massachusetts study found that investment in clean energy creates anywhere from two to four times more direct and indirect jobs compared to the same investment in oil and gas production.

I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, today I voted against H.R. 514, another one-year extension of three overreaching provisions in the Patriot Act, which are set to expire on February 28, 2011.

I have opposed the Patriot Act since the original, bipartisan version of the bill was hijacked by the Bush administration and significantly expanded without safeguards for the rights of ordinary Americans. This is why it has been consistently opposed by thoughtful members of Congress from both parties.

In a country that prides itself on civil rights and freedom of speech, we must maintain a system with checks and balances to ensure that our government works for our citizens in a transparent way. I have no doubt that we can keep America safe without compromising our liberties. By simply extending this policy for another year, we are forfeiting the opportunity and neglecting the responsibility to have a meaningful review that can bring us closer to a more accountable approach that balances individual privacy with our national defense.

One of the many provisions in need of reform and left unaddressed in this bill is section 215. This provision fails to provide meaningful protection for library patrons, and library and business records. The burden should be on the government to show reasonable suspicion or probable cause before undertaking an investigation.

After a decade it is past time to review and refine this legislation. The intelligence community already has the tools necessary to keep us safe without compromising our privacy. Another one-year extension is a lost opportunity to make sure we protect the liberties of American citizens.