Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and recognize the service of United States Navy Captain Hugh Michael Doherty.

Captain Doherty was born in Medford, Massachusetts and graduated from Malden Catholic High School in 1961. After graduating high school, Captain Doherty began his service by earning a competitive appointment to the United States Naval Academy from my predecessor, Congressman Torbert MacDonald. After graduating from the Academy, Hugh was selected for the nuclear submarine service after an intensive and exhaustive interview program by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.

Captain Doherty devoted his life to serving our Nation on the seas. He served in five different submarines over 14 years, and was the Commanding Officer of the USS Sand Lance during the Cold War. Captain Doherty was recognized for his sacrifice and service to his country through the numerous medals and decorations that he received, including the Legion of Merit and the Meritorious Service Medal.

During Captain Doherty's 1984 ``Change of Command'' speech on the USS Sand Lance, he emphasized the importance of excellence. He told his officers, ``Set your goals high, strive to achieve them, and then when you feel that you have almost attained them, set them higher. Never be satisfied with what you have accomplished.'' Captain Doherty understood that hard work, perseverance, and dedication always paid off. During Captain Doherty's thirty-eight months as commander of the USS Sand Lance, he led his fellow crewmembers to always strive for greatness in every aspect of life.

Sadly, Captain Doherty passed away on May 20 at the age of 69. A devoted husband, a caring father, and a beloved grandfather, Captain Doherty is survived by his wife of 45 years, Mary Pierce Doherty; his sons Sean, Matthew, and Timothy; his brothers John and Kevin; and his six grandchildren. For his honorable military career, Captain Doherty will be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, August 27, 2012.

Mr. Speaker, today I honor the service and sacrifice of Captain Hugh Michael Doherty. We honor his life and his legacy. May God bless Captain Doherty and all our men and women in the United States Armed Forces. And God bless the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, in my home state of Massachusetts, commercial fishermen take pride in the product they bring to the dock. Whether they harvest cod, lobster, or scallops, these hardworking Americans provide consumers with superior quality seafood. Unfortunately, getting a fair price for this seafood has become a challenge. Competition from low quality imported fish and shellfish drives down prices, especially when these imports are passed off on consumers as higher value species.

Unfortunately, this occurs far too frequently. Last fall, an investigation by the Boston Globe found that 48 percent of the seafood it sampled from grocery stores and restaurants in the Boston area was not the species that was advertised. Subsequent investigations in Los Angeles and Miami this year produced similar results. These shocking revelations of seafood fraud have exposed a severe shortcoming in the ability of our nation to ensure the integrity of seafood products offered for sale, especially the 85 percent of those products that come from abroad.

In addition to problems with seafood fraud uncovered by these recent reports, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported last year that we are doing a terrible job ensuring that seafood imported into this country is safe for people to consume. GAO found that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for ensuring seafood safety, inspects only 2 percent of seafood shipments, and that failure to coordinate with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Seafood Inspection Service has led to hundreds of redundant inspections. This unnecessary duplication of effort is unacceptable, especially as difficult fiscal circumstances have squeezed the budgets of both agencies.

The Safety And Fraud Enforcement for Seafood Act, or SAFE Seafood Act--which I am introducing today along with Mr. Frank and Mr. Keating of Massachusetts, Mr. Jones of North Carolina, and Mr. Courtney of Connecticut--addresses the seafood safety problem by ensuring that FDA and NOAA work together to maximize the frequency and effectiveness of seafood inspections, and to prevent unsafe seafood from entering the United States. In addition, it combats seafood fraud by requiring that information such as harvest location, production method, and species name of the seafood stays with that product from sea to sale. The SAFE Seafood Act accomplishes these goals by holding violators accountable with fines and import restrictions if they don't play by the rules.

American consumers have an expectation that the seafood they buy for their families is, in fact, the seafood that is advertised, and that it is safe for them to eat. Similarly, American fishermen, who comply with the most rigorous conservation and quality control standards anywhere in the world, should know they are competing on a level playing field, and not being undercut by an inferior foreign product. Fraudulent and unsafe seafood takes money from consumers and puts their health at risk. The SAFE Seafood Act is an important step toward reducing seafood fraud and increasing seafood safety. We owe it to American families and fishermen to address these problems immediately.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, yesterday, the majority brought to the floor a bill that would replace the Interior Department's 5-year offshore drilling plan. Today, the majority is bringing a bill to the floor that would require the Interior Department to conduct the offshore drilling plan it is already doing.

Now why would we be taking up a bill to replace the plan yesterday and a bill to implement the plan today? Is it because the majority is having buyer's remorse about their own bill that would put drilling rigs off of the beaches of California, the beaches of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia? Are they having remorse putting all those rigs out there off the beaches with no new safety procedures adopted post the BP spill? Overnight, have they had some regret, conscience stricken, perhaps that's not a good idea?

That would be a very hopeful sign, I think, for all of us who care about the environment, care about safety and care about protecting the beaches and the fishing industries of our country.

Or is it because they were so compelled by arguments that the Democrats made during the debate on the floor yesterday that they now intend to reverse their position and actually support President Obama's offshore drilling plan that makes 75 percent of all of our oil and gas resources available for drilling while protecting the east and west coasts?

I don't think so, because I am quite certain that the chairman of the committee intends to vote against his own bill here today and that the only reason the majority is bringing this bill up is to defeat it. It appears that the majority's dislike of President Obama is so great and so overwhelming that they are about to actually vote against more oil and gas drilling offshore even in an era where President Obama has already demonstrated his commitment to drilling. There are more rigs out drilling now in the United States than all the rest of the world combined. We're at an 18-year high in production of oil in the United States. You have to go all the way back to 1993 to find a day where there was more oil being produced on a daily basis than today. We have reduced our oil dependence--that is, how much we have to import from overseas--from 57 percent when George Bush was President just 4 years ago down to only 45 percent during the Obama administration.

Thank you, President Obama. Thank you for the fantastic job you're doing in reducing our dependency upon imported oil. That is something that did not happen during President Bush's years in office. And that's quite a record, isn't it, that we're at an 18-year high for oil development? We're at a point where we've reduced our dependence on imported oil from 57 percent down to 45 percent just in 3\1/2\ years since President Obama was sworn in. We have more rigs than the whole rest of the world combined drilling for oil here in the United States. That is quite a record, and we thank you, President Obama, for your excellent job.

But we know what the Republican majority is trying to do here today. They're trying to re-message here that somehow or other President Obama hasn't done a historically good job. The majority is about to make their own

history here--rewrite history. They are so bent on voting against President Obama that they are going to actually oppose policy they hold most dear--more drilling. We appear to have found the one thing that can stop the majority from voting for drilling over and over again. This would be like Red Sox fans rooting against the Red Sox just because they signed Derek Jeter. All of a sudden, they would want to not support them any longer. And the majority is putting this bill on the suspension calendar today even though we know they have no intention of supporting it.

So why are we here? Why are we wasting the time of this House when there are so many other pressing issues facing the Nation? We should be focusing on creating jobs for our constituents, on passing a farm bill that helps farmers who are being harmed by drought and taking action on a spending and tax plan to avert going off the fiscal cliff of sequestration. But are we doing any of those things? No, we are not.

The majority is not only asking us to suspend the rules to pass this bill, they are asking us to suspend reality. They are asking us to suspend the reality that President Obama has reduced our dependence on oil from 57 percent down to 45 percent, that we are at an 18-year high in oil production in our country, and that we have 50 percent more floating drilling rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico than we did before the BP spill.

Let me say that again: There are 50 percent more floating drilling rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico than before the BP spill, and we have more drilling going on than the whole rest of the world combined. The reality is that President Obama is about ``all of the above.'' That's his energy plan.

What the Republicans do is they just keep bringing out things that really make the oil industry happy but towards the goal of killing the wind industry and killing the solar industry, because they're doing nothing for those industries. And that agenda is, oh, so clear. It's transparently clear what this agenda is.

We actually support an ``aye'' vote on the President's plan and a ``no'' vote on the Republican plan. We should not be drilling off of the beaches of our country when 75 percent of all the oil and gas resources have been made available and the oil industry hasn't even begun in a significant way to capture all those opportunities.

At this point, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

All you have to know about the political nature of this bill--and the next bill that we're going to be voting on that allows for drilling off of the beaches of Massachusetts and southern California and Maine and Maryland, New Jersey, without new safety safeguards being put in place--is that they kind of pick a whole bunch of States that are on the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, but they leave out one State.

Now, why did they leave out that State? I wonder why they left out Florida. Why isn't Florida on the list? Why did they exclude that one State out of their systematic goal of increasing energy independence and compromising, if necessary, the beaches of all of these other States in the advancement of that goal to help Exxon Mobile and BP and Shell drill off of our coastline? Why don't they want to drill off of Miami Beach? Why don't they want to drill off of Jacksonville's beaches? Why don't they include Florida? Hmm. Ah, Gore v. Bush. Florida could decide the Presidential race. Ah. Oh, the Republican convention is in Florida this year? Oh. They don't want 1 million people coming to protest the drilling off of the beaches of Florida? Oh. That makes a lot of sense. That's a good justification for excluding Florida, but not Massachusetts, not Maine, not Maryland, not Virginia. But Florida, they're out.

So all you have to know about the blatant political nature of these bills is that they're intended to embarrass President Obama, just as he has proven he is a historically successful President in increasing oil production in America. He has reduced oil dependence on overseas sources from 57 percent down to 45 percent--something George Bush never did. In fact, it spiked to 57 percent under his watch over 8 years. That's a long time to get something done on that front--and he now has 50 percent more rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. So this is really all about politics: 131 votes out here to help the oil and gas industry, no votes out here to help the wind and solar industry.

And the story line continues, even up to the point where they exclude Florida. I mean, it's so nakedly obvious what is happening here in terms of the political nature of what the Republicans are doing on this subject. But please, for the sake of the country, can we get to an all- of-the-above strategy? Can we get to something that actually has you saying positively what you're going to do about the renewable energy that we have in our country that can make it possible for us to say to OPEC, totally, that we don't need your oil any more than we need your sand? Can we actually say that? Can we agree upon that, that it's a common goal and we can find a way of giving the incentives to the wind and solar industry in the same way you do, over and over again, want to give to the oil and gas industry?

Please, let's work together, as a common goal, as a country, to accomplish that goal. Let's not just favor oil and gas. Let's have an agenda that includes all of the above. Because today is just another repetition of the same syndrome that has an ancestor worship at the altar of oil and gas that plagued us in the 20th century but can be alleviated, if we put together a plan to exploit all of our domestic resources, in the 21st century. The agenda of the majority is sadly lacking in that area.

I urge an ``aye'' vote on this suspension vote.

Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman. I thank him for his great work on this bill.

Despite the best efforts of Republicans in Congress, our Nation has actually made significant progress over the last several years protecting the health and the well-being of Americans.

Democrats have passed legislation ensuring that Wall Street plays by the rules. They can't continue to turn it into a casino where the rich clean up on the way up and the poor get cleaned out on the way down.

Democrats modernized food safety laws so that Americans can feel secure in the knowledge that the food we put on the dinner table won't make our families sick.

Democrats passed legislation to protect the privacy of Americans' sensitive health information.

But all of these laws are still in the process of being implemented. That's what's bothering the Republicans here today and all of their supporters across the country. They cannot go fully into effect to work for the American people until those regulations are finalized. Republicans are determined to keep these vital health, safety, and consumer protections from reaching the finish line to offer protection for ordinary families.

GOP used to stand for ``Grand Old Party.'' Now GOP stands for ``Gut Our Protections.''

I released a report today, called, ``Protection Rejection: GOP Abandons Consumer, Health, and Safety Measures''--across the board. It describes the safeguards that would be jeopardized under this misguided legislation.

If you're a wounded veteran needing home care, it will be harder for your family to take time off work to care for you. Family members were going--finally--to be able to take up to 26 weeks of job-protected leave to care for a wounded veteran back from Iraq and Afghanistan, but the implementation of this new law will be stopped cold by this coldhearted Republican bill.

The bill prevents new fuel economy standards, increasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, forcing families to pay more at the pump, rather than a law that backs out 4.3 million barrels of oil a day from OPEC, telling them that we don't need their oil any more than we need their sand. They're saying stop those regulations from going into effect.

And as we approach the 2-year anniversary of the worst environmental disaster in the history of our country, the BP oil spill, this misguided Republican bill would stop new safety standards for the blowout preventers on drilling rigs that could prevent future spills. This makes no sense. The safety of the American people should be put above the special interests that want to stop all of these regulations.

The Republicans say this is about cutting red tape, but it's really nothing more than a red herring, a desperate attempt to distract from the GOP's abject failure to spur job creation in this country. There are so many red herrings out here we might as well put an aquarium here to deal with all of them that the Republican Party is throwing out here on this bill.

We must not allow this Republican regulatory freeze bill to set consumer protections back to the ice age. There's simply too much progress at stake.

Hundreds of regulations are going to be taken off the books right now. And over the life of this bill, thousands of regulations that would have protected the health, the

safety, the consumer interests across our country will be wiped off the books.

This is a wholesale destruction of the protections that ordinary people need against wealthy corporations taking advantage of them in their homes, in their neighborhoods. And so, ladies and gentlemen, there has not been a more important bill that comes out this year of this Congress onto the House floor.

All of you have access to this report I'm putting out here today, ``Protection Rejection: GOP Abandons Consumer Health and Safety Measures.'' It's on my Web site. If you want to understand the full damage that's going to be done across all of these areas, from Dodd- Frank to health care, to food safety, to privacy protections for families across our country, vote ``no'' on this bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself, at this point, 2 minutes, and it's just to lay out how simple this amendment is.

It would ensure that the government could act to protect the public from extreme weather, including drought, flooding, and catastrophic wildfire.

The Republican bill on the floor today is so broadly and badly written, who knows what could fall through the holes it blasts in America's safety net.

Given the record-breaking extreme weather events our country has experienced in the last few years, it cannot risk tying the helping hands of government when it comes to dealing with droughts and floods and wildfires and extreme events.

Mr. Welch was just talking about these fuel economy standards that lift our fuel economy standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2026. Well, that's a message to OPEC that we don't need their oil anymore than we need their sand. But it's also a message that we can reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we're sending up into the atmosphere in a dramatic way.

And do you know who's complying with that? Do you know who said they support it? The auto industry of the United States of America.

So it's not that we're doing anything that's radical. The radical activity is coming from the majority, from the Republican Party, that just has an aversion to anything that is put on the books as regulation, even if it helps America's safety, helps America's climate, helps America's foreign policy to back out imported oil. And that's really what's very troubling here today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Would the Chair be able to give a recapitulation of the time remaining?

Corn is shriveling. Pastures are dying. More than 1,000 counties in 29 States are eligible for drought disaster assistance. Increased food prices from droughts act like an extreme weather food tax on every single American. Even if the drought is not in your neighborhood, you will feel the pain at the checkout counter. Even if the heat wave has broken in your State, your cupboard may be emptier as you have to make hard choices at

the grocery store. Even if the storm skips your town, the disruptions will be felt all the way to your dinner plate. Many of our Western forests are also extremely dry. Wildfire has already burned millions of acres this summer. Tens of thousand of people have had to evacuate. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed. Lives have been lost.

We also know that increasing carbon pollution increases the risk of extreme weather. We all buy flood and fire insurance for our homes. This amendment is the flood and fire insurance for America from the disaster, the disaster that is this Republican legislation.

On the other side of this spectrum, parts of Minnesota and Florida experienced devastating flooding in June. The rain from Tropical Storm Debby caused Florida to have its wettest June ever. All of this occurred during the hottest 12-month period for the lower 48 States since record-keeping began in 1895, and it follows 2011, when America experienced a record 14 extreme weather disasters that each caused $1 billion or more of damage.

Clearly, extreme weather is a threat to the safety and the security of the American people and the economy, but this Republican bill could smother the government's ability to prepare for a response to extreme weather events. This amendment would make sure that the government's regulatory fire blanket is ready for emergencies. The risk of extreme weather is not going away. In fact, it is increasing. Mark Twain once complained that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Well, now we are with this amendment.

By pumping carbon into the air, we are changing the climate, raising the temperature, increasing the risk of extreme weather. The Republicans just don't accept science. Vote ``aye'' on the Markey amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to welcome everyone back to yet another episode of the GOP Wheel of Giveaway game show here. Every week on the floor of the House of Representatives, the majority picks an industry to benefit from giveaways of our public lands.

One month ago, the Republican majority voted to turn over nearly all of our onshore public lands to the oil and gas industry in just a few short years.

Two weeks ago, the majority voted to eviscerate proper environmental review for massive gold and silver and uranium mines on public lands to benefit the mining industry. And here we are on the House floor once again debating a Republican bill from the Natural Resources Committee intended to hand out even more industry giveaways.

Well, it actually gets hard to keep track of which industry is getting the GOP giveaway each week, so let's consult our chart--the GOP Wheel of Giveaways--so that we can make sure that everyone at home can follow along to see whether it will be the oil, the gas, the mining, or the timber industries that will be the big winner in the giveaway of our public lands this week.

Of course, we all know that it won't be the solar or the wind industries benefiting from the Republicans because in the Republican ``oil above all'' game, if you land on renewable energy, you lose a turn. So which industry is getting the giveaway this week? We are back on the ``even more oil'' on the House floor today, even more oil giveaways.

H.R. 6082 would place drill rigs right off our beaches in southern California, off our beaches in Maine, in New Hampshire, in Massachusetts, in Rhode Island, in Connecticut, in New York, in New Jersey--just put the drills right out there, right off the Maryland coast. And by the way, there will be millions of people, of course, out on those beaches saying get those oil rigs off the beaches, off the places where people go and have a good time during the summer, where the fishing industry is.

My amendment will say, and by the way, if you do find any oil and gas out there, at least let's keep the oil and gas here in the United States. Let's not run the risk of spoiling the natural resources of our country--the beaches, the fishing areas--finding natural gas and then ship it to other countries; at least let's keep it here. And the Republicans are going to oppose keeping the natural gas that they would find off these beaches in California and Maine and Massachusetts and New Jersey and send it to other countries.

This is truly the ``even more oil'' Republican Party. Whatever ExxonMobile wants, whatever Shell wants, whatever BP wants, we'll do it, even if we know millions of people will just be protesting right from the very beginning--and by the way, without passing one of the reforms from the BP spill commission to make sure that the drilling occurs in a safe fashion.

They still, in 2 years, have yet to bring out one single safety reform that would implement safeguards to protect against the repetition of what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. So the natural gas that's found can go overseas. It will be done in a risky fashion because they refuse to learn the lessons of BP in the Gulf of Mexico, and they've included no new safety measures. That's what ExxonMobil wants, that's what BP wants, so it's out here on the House floor to be voted upon, by the way, over the vigorous objection of this Democrat and Democrats all across the country.

This Congress, the Republican majority, has reported 11 drilling bills out of the Natural Resources Committee. Those 11 bills have been combined and brought to the House floor and this is now the sixth massive passage of giveaways to Big Oil that we have considered. Two of those bills were largely similar to the legislation we are considering today to dramatically expand offshore drilling without putting any new safety measures in place.

All of the previous drilling bills have suffered from the same fate. They were all far too extreme to pass the Senate and not a single one of them has been signed into law. Well, let me let everyone in on a little secret: this bill is also not becoming law. Like the bills before it, it can't pass the Senate, and the administration has already said that the President would veto this bill.

But that reality hasn't stopped the Republican House from passing giveaways to the oil and gas industry over and over again. The reason they keep passing them is the same reason when you go to a movie and you see previews of coming attractions. What they're saying here is we're passing, that is, Republicans are passing, all of this legislation for the oil companies to drill off our beaches for the big oil companies. And if just somehow or other Mitt Romney becomes President and the Republicans take over the Senate, this will become the law of the Nation. So they see this as a preview of coming attractions, and they want the public to know that that will happen.

They want to run this year on this premise, and I think that's great. It's a very honest way of dealing with something that will horrify people who live all along the coastlines in these States that would run the risk of having damage done to their beaches.

When you include all of the bills that have been reported by all of the committees altogether, this Republican House has already cast 139 votes--139 votes--on the House floor this Congress to benefit the oil and gas industry.

We are going to pass 90 hours of debate on the floor on oil and gas legislation this Congress just today. What a streak. When most people think of the great records of American history, they might think of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, or Cal Ripkin's 2,362 consecutive games, or maybe Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a basketball game, or Ted Williams hitting .406 in 1941.

But when all is said and done, the record of this Republican Congress voting to benefit Big Oil might be just as untouchable a record. With already 139 votes and nearly 90 hours of debate on these giveaways to the oil industry on the House floor, this is a once-in-a-generation performance by this Republican Congress. It may stand as a record that can never be broken by any other Congress in terms of the number of giveaways to the oil and gas industry.

Whether it's voting 33 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or voting again and again for more and more drilling, under the GOP, this isn't the House of Representatives, it's the House of Repetition. President Truman dubbed the 80th Congress the ``do nothing'' Congress. Well, this is apparently the ``do the same thing over and over and over again'' Congress.

The Republican majority has already cast 139 votes to aid the oil and gas industry. How many votes have they cast to benefit the wind and the solar industry? Ah, there's a good question. Well, the answer is zero-- 139 for oil and gas, zero for the wind and solar industry. Is that all you really need to know about what's going on here in Congress?

Can you imagine the millennials out there listening to this debate saying zero for wind and solar? Zero for the future? Zero for making our country more of the clean energy leader of the world, of reducing greenhouse gases, of creating jobs in these industries? Zero for wind and solar?

The wind tax breaks, by the way, are expiring this year. Do not expect that to come out on the House floor as a vote that the Republicans say we must extend. But tax breaks for oil companies, extra drilling privileges off our beaches for the oil and gas companies? Oh, yeah, plenty of votes for that.

While we have been spending 90 hours debating legislation to help Big Oil, recently the majority wouldn't even allow a debate on the floor on an amendment to create a renewable electricity standard for our Nation because the Republican energy policy isn't ``all of the above.'' It is ``oil above all.'' And

that's what we're going to be debating for the rest of the day out here on the House floor--sad to say for the future of renewable energy for our country.

At this point, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am the final speaker on our side. If the gentleman from Washington State is ready to conclude debate, so are we in the minority.

Then, Mr. Chairman, I will reserve the balance of my time.

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

This is a very simple debate to understand. The Republicans want to authorize drilling for oil and gas off of the coastlines of southern California, Maine and New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey. Those States do not want that. They long ago decided the risks were too great for their beaches and for their fishing industries. They do not want it.

But it also is in the context of this Republican aversion, this Republican opposition to wind and solar and other renewables receiving the same attention as oil and natural gas does. And the important thing about wind and solar is that they would be domestically produced 100 percent. The same is true, by the way, you would think, for natural gas. Let's just say they find some off the coast of Massachusetts or off the coast of New Jersey; that would be great. But what the Republicans refuse to agree to is that that natural gas, after we've drilled off of our beaches, cannot be exported to other countries. And the reason that's important is we could use that natural gas and substitute it for the oil that we import from the Persian Gulf, but they won't agree to do that.

So the one thing that definitely has to be produced here is wind and solar because it has to be domestic. Natural gas, though, you can put it in a ship and you can send it around the world. You can freeze it like liquefied natural gas. And they won't agree not to do that as part of this package of running the risk of fouling the beaches of the east coast and the west coast.

There is just something fundamentally wrong with this; nothing for wind and solar, everything for the oil industry, including their discretion to then take the oil and gas that's discovered off our beaches and selling it overseas.

So this is just wrong on so many levels in terms of what we should be doing to protect our own country, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman.

The minority has no objection to the amendment by the gentleman, and we urge support of it.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is very, very simple. It ensures that the natural gas produced under the leases issued under this legislation is sold in America. We're talking about the public lands of the United States, the taxpayer-owned lands of the United States. These are the American people's lands off of Massachusetts, off of New York, off of New Jersey, off of California that are being leased under this bill. The very least we should be able to tell the American people is that they are actually going to see a benefit from any oil or gas produced from these lands.

We should be able to tell Americans that we are keeping the natural gas produced on their public lands here in America to keep prices low for Americans here in the United States, and we're going to find ways of putting that natural gas into trucks, into buses, into cars so that we can stop importing oil from dangerous parts of the world.

We should be able to tell Americans that we're keeping the natural gas here so that we can create more American jobs in manufacturing plastics, fertilizer, chemicals, and steel; and that we tell those countries in the Middle East we don't need your oil any more than we need your sand because we have natural gas here in America. That's all that my amendment would do, send a strong signal to the OPEC nations.

Current law does not allow for the exportation of our crude oil, and it shouldn't allow for the exportation of our natural gas either. My amendment would ensure that no waivers can be granted, no permits can be issued to export natural gas produced from the public land of the United States to other countries when we're still importing oil from OPEC. How much sense does that make that we find natural gas and start to sell it to other countries, even as OPEC continues to tip us upside down and shake money out of our pockets at the pump?

So I'm going to reserve the balance of my time at this point and continue my argument in a few minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The Department of Energy right now has applications from 15 companies to export 28 percent of our current natural gas consumption in the United States.

Let me be very clear: exporting our natural gas will increase American energy prices. No economist or energy analyst disagrees. Why would we find natural gas here and then start selling it around the world? It would increase the price here. In fact, exporting far less than what is currently being proposed could send domestic natural gas prices skyrocketing by 54 percent.

Let me just let everyone out there know right now, we are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We are, right now, the lowest natural gas price in the world. In the United States, it's only $2.40, $2.50 in Mcf. In Japan, in Korea, in China, it's seven times higher. In Europe, it's four times higher. So if you're a manufacturer, if you're a company thinking about moving your trucking or your bus fleet to natural gas as opposed to oil and you're in these other countries, it's difficult for you to do it.

It's time for the United States to figure out how to do this. We have this incredible bonanza. Now they're proposing to drill off the coastline of Massachusetts, off New York, off southern California to find more natural gas. And what are they saying? Let's export it. Well, you're going to export the cheapest natural gas in the world.

Do you know what T. Boone Pickens says about this? ``If we do it, if we export natural gas, we're truly going to go down as America's dumbest generation. It's bad public policy to export natural gas.''

This is T. Boone Pickens. This is Ed Markey. This is a coalition that spans the entire spectrum of political thought, but we do agree on this one thing. Why would we take our most precious natural resource and sell it to other countries, when it gives us a massive competitive advantage?

So I'm going to reserve the balance of my time to conclude debate, but this is a nonsensical policy.

How much time is remaining on either side, Mr. Chairman?

Fifteen seconds.

We drill for natural gas off of our beaches, our pristine beaches and we find it, we take the risk, those States take their risk, that natural gas should stay here in America. ExxonMobil shouldn't be able to pack it up and sell it to China, sell it to South America. That natural gas should stay here in America if it's found off of our beaches. That's what the Markey amendment calls for.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Chairman, the independent blue ribbon BP Spill Commission--and this is their comprehensive compendium of what went wrong and what needs to be done in order to correct what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in the history of our country--concluded that there were systemic problems that occurred in the entire industry.

The Commission recommended sweeping reforms to improve the safety of offshore drilling. Yet, this Congress has still not enacted a single legislative reform and, as a result, the BP Spill Commission recently gave Congress a D, this Republican Congress, on its legislative response, and only refrained from handing out an F because it said it didn't want to insult the institution.

My amendment would simply ensure that we put into the statute specific minimal safety requirements for blowout preventers, cementing, and the casing of offshore wells. My amendment would ensure that if we are going to expand drilling off of States like Massachusetts and New York and New Jersey and Maryland and California, that we put additional safety requirements on the books to ensure that a Romney administration or any other future administration cannot simply roll back the Interior Department reforms.

We don't want a Louisiana mess off of the coast of Massachusetts, off of the coast of southern California. We want the safety reforms that the BP Spill Commission recommended be put in place so there is no recurrence.

The Republicans are saying they want to drill off of the coast of these States that don't want the drilling. The least that they should do is build in the safety reforms.

And just today, the Chemical Safety Board released its report on the disaster. The Chemical Safety Board reached many of the same conclusions as the BP Spill Commission. The government's joint investigative team and the National Academy of Engineering said that this disaster was not inevitable, that it was preventable.

This majority has said they wanted to wait until all the facts were in before taking action on safety legislation. Well, the time has now come. We now have two blue ribbon reports, each reaching the same conclusions. It is long past time for the Congress to take the lessons of the BP spill and turn them into laws, so that we never have a disaster like this again.

I'm afraid of what the majority is contemplating here, which is authorizing the drilling off the coasts of the

East and the West in our country without building in the safety reforms. If ever there is a recipe for disaster, ruining the fishing, ruining the tourism business for these States that don't want the drilling in the first place because their economies are not based upon the same premise as the Louisiana and Texas economy, then this is that recipe. This is what we're voting on here today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I ask the Chair to recapitulate the exact time that the majority and minority still have remaining for this debate?

Does the gentleman have any other speakers?

I am prepared to give my convincing concluding presentation to the House floor.

I thank the gentleman very much.

I yield myself my remaining time.

Again, just for the record, Republicans can say this as much as they want, but I have to repeat:

(1) When President Obama was sworn in, 57 percent of our oil was imported. Today, only 45 percent of our oil is imported-- congratulations, President Obama--no matter how many times the Republicans want to cover that over.

(2) Seventy-five percent of all of the oil and gas reserves offshore have been made available by the Obama administration for drilling.

(3) We in the United States are at an 18-year high in drilling.

Now, the Republicans have a problem with this because the 18-year high in drilling, the reduction from 57 percent of imports down to 45 percent of imports and the fact that 75 percent of all areas off the shores of our country are open for drilling run totally contrary to everything that they believe--to everything that they want America to believe, it is better to be said--because if the American people actually believed the truth, which is that Obama has reduced our imported oil from 57 percent down to 45 percent, reduced our dependence upon imported oil and increased our drilling to the highest point in 18 years, then their whole narrative just goes right down the drain. They have to keep getting up as though Bush were the right guy, but he did nothing.

All we're saying is, if you are so desperate to actually license all of this new drilling off of the beaches of our States, at least build in the safety precautions, which is what the Markey amendment calls for, which will prevent another mess like the BP Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, nothing in H.R. 2362 can't be accomplished by H.R. 205, the HEARTH Act, which passed the House unanimously in May and was just last week passed by the Senate without change. The President is expected to sign H.R. 205 into law any day now.

Unlike H.R. 2362, the HEARTH Act authorizes all tribes to engage in leasing activities with any nation--foreign or domestic--for economic development purposes on tribal lands. It does not discriminate based on world geography, or benefit a select few tribes who qualify under strict requirements for a time-limited demonstration project.

In light of H.R. 205, there is simply no need for H.R. 2362. It is redundant and unnecessary and should be rejected by the House on this basis alone.

But there are serious reasons to oppose H.R. 2362.

By acknowledging Turkey's ``unique interest'' in developing tribal economies and in building ``robust'' relationships between it and tribal communities, this legislation rewards a country with a terrible history of human rights and religious freedom violations, threats to U.S. commercial interests in Cyprus, and--most importantly--its refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide which resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million people.

The manager's amendment to include WTO countries does not change the fact that Turkey is singled out for preferential treatment and will benefit through increased investment opportunities in Indian country.

Congress should not be in the business of rewarding countries with appalling records on human rights to develop economic ties to Indian country on a preferential basis.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

I move to strike the last word.

This debate has taken on the characteristics of ancestor worship, and I understand it. I know it's hard for individuals to let go of the Cold War, to let go of an era where foreign policy was characterized by this bitter rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The reality: We won. It's over. We didn't just win. It was basically a world where there's unipower now. It's us.

The Chinese only have 40 to 50 nuclear missiles. The Russians have already dramatically reduced their weapons. The likelihood of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia is negative zero. And yet there are Members that don't want to see any reductions in our nuclear weapons force, notwithstanding the fact that those extra expenditures then would have to come out of other budgets, including the budget for the National Institutes of Health to find a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. And so we have this curious disconnect between the reality of the world that we live in today and the understandable but erroneous commitment that many Members on the other side have to a relic of a Cold War-era rivalry that no longer can withstand fiscal scrutiny.

So let's just take this debate about whether or not the United States is vulnerable.

Each one of our submarine-based nuclear weapons systems have 96 independently targetable warheads onboard. That is: each one of our sub commanders can destroy the 96 biggest cities in China; each one of our sub commanders can destroy the 96 biggest cities in Russia; each sub commander, with their first nuclear weapon, could destroy Tehran; each sub commander could destroy Pyongyang and still have 95 independently targetable nuclear weapons onboard that one submarine, much less every other submarine that we have out there.

And so to have an amendment that says, after New START was agreed to between Russia and the United States, after the Air Force and the Navy signed off on New START, to have Members of the House proposing that notwithstanding that agreement that was reached that does enhance American national security by reducing the likelihood that there would be a conflict between the United States and Russia, as low as that likelihood is, that we have this micromanagement that comes in of our military.

But it's more than that. Let's admit it. It's all about jobs. You're thinking about the defense bill as a jobs bill, and I understand that. But whenever we're talking about the defense bill, those jobs that are created should relate in some way to American national security. And what the Air Force and the Navy are saying is that they do not believe they need more nuclear weapons. In fact, they can agree to and have already accepted the reduction in nuclear weapons that is in the New START Treaty.

And so I understand from a jobs perspective why you want to lock in jobs that may have been created a generation ago in the height of the Cold War, but we have to redeploy for the 21st century not only militarily, but also into what strengthens us domestically in terms of medical research and educational programs.

So I can't really understand why we're even debating this issue. There is a treaty between our two countries. Our military has signed off. Our military says it actually enhances our security.

And I agree with the gentleman from Washington State: This is an area where we should actually give some respect to the United States Senate that ratified the treaty, to each one of your Joint Chiefs that signed off on it, and not allow a jobs bill to trump our national security; and that if you can find programs that actually enhance our security and you want to spend the money on it, let's debate that. But this is an area that is already resolved.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the Berg amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Dicks and I started 36 years ago at the height of the Cold War, with each country building more and more nuclear weapons, more and more defense systems in an ever escalating war of nerves that kept both countries and the whole world on edge.

In this Republican fantasy land, gold-plated nuclear weapons systems budget, there are going to be programs that have long outlived their usefulness that are lavished with canyons filled with cash. In this fantasy land, the Cold War never ended. The Soviet menace lives on, making it necessary to maintain vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons and build new bombers to penetrate the Iron Curtain. In this fantasy land, there are mountains of money for intercontinental ballistic missiles towering over the landscape and providing shade and comfort to the legions of defense contractors making nuclear weapons we no longer need and we can no longer afford. In this fantasy land, the Republicans want to retroactively re-fight the Cold War that we won. This makes no sense.

Mr. Chairman, it is time to get real. Sequestration is coming. The Republicans, in their budget, are ignoring the doomsday clock that has nearly reached midnight for millions of hardworking Americans. We must prepare for this reality. The bill the Republicans have brought to the floor today provides the Pentagon with a billion more dollars than this year's spending level, and $3 billion more than the Obama administration requested. Despite sequestration, despite budget pressures, despite the fragility of the economy, the Republicans still want to increase defense spending. Why? To pay for more radioactive relics of the past that no longer are needed in order to protect our country.

But I have good news for my friends on the other side of the aisle: the Cold War ended more than 20 years ago. The Soviet Union crumbled. It's okay to stop funding nuclear weapons to perpetuate a Cold War rivalry that has disappeared into the mists of history. We don't have to buy into this insanity. That is why I plan to offer several sane amendments to reduce Pentagon spending on unnecessary, outdated nuclear weapons programs.

Here is the bottom line: beginning January 1 of next year, 5 months from now, $55 billion has to be cut out of the defense budget and $55 billion has to be cut out of civilian social programs. That is $55 billion and $55 billion apiece. The Republicans are increasing defense spending heading into that. Moreover, they're saying, Don't cut defense at all, cut the social programs.

What does that mean? That means cutting the NIH, cutting CDC, cutting the National Cancer Institute. They're already going to be cut under sequestration. What the Republicans are proposing is to really create a true doomsday machine, and that doomsday machine is the lack of a cure for Alzheimer's, for Parkinson's, for all of the other diseases which actually do pose a terrorist threat to families across the country when they get the call that once more that disease has come through their family because we--that is, the Republicans--have decided that they're going to continue to cut the research for the cure for disease and instead build more nuclear weapons to be aimed at targets that no longer exist.

This is an important debate to have. It's a sequestration anticipation debate where we begin to be forced to get real. We have to have a debate about what the priorities in the 21st century are going to be, and not some Dr. Strangelove smiling from his grave, being so happy that we're still debating additional nuclear weapons.

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

Mr. Chairman, in this bill, not only do the Republicans claim there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to cut in the defense budget, they are actually increasing spending beyond what the Pentagon is asking for. The Republicans have put an additional $75 million for missile defense in this bill--75 million additional dollars that the generals have not asked for.

So my amendment today is simple: It would reduce funding for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense program by $75 million to bring the 2013 funding level back to the administration's request.

Ground-Based Midcourse Defense is Star Wars, and it's a system that hopes to one day shoot down an incoming nuclear warhead by launching our own missiles from Alaska and California.

But here we have a situation where basically the Republicans are saying that they want to give the Pentagon $75 million more than what the military says it needs right now. And if we can't decide just to take what the Pentagon is asking and rubber stamp it and give it to them, and even that is not enough in a period of fiscal austerity, then how in the world are we going to be successful next year when $55 billion has to be cut?

So, let's start here. St. Augustine's prayer, I think, is applicable here, where he said, O Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet. The Republicans are saying, O Lord, let us reduce the deficit, but not just yet. When it comes to defense spending, we want to give the Pentagon even more than they are asking for. Let's get all of our sinning done before next January. Let's really clear the deck on all the gold-plated planning that--I don't know if it's defense firms because it's not the Pentagon. The Pentagon is saying that the money that's in the bill as the President proposed it is sufficient in order to provide for the development of this missile defense technology.

The bill already funds this program to the tune of $900 million, and the Pentagon is saying ``enough.'' So I know you're talking about canceling sequestration when it comes to defense spending, but this isn't a good sign. This isn't a good sign that we're ever going to be able to reconcile the tension that exists between the need not to cut NIH funding, the need not to cut National Cancer Institute funding, the need not to cut programs that deal with Grandma on Medicaid and nursing homes and all the way down the line. This just goes beyond anything that's even remotely reasonable.

I urge an ``aye'' vote on the Markey amendment, and I hope that it is adopted by the full House.

I yield back the balance of his time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Our current nuclear arsenal has significant overkill that is built into it. Our country continues to spend more and more taxpayer money on nuclear weapons even though the President and the Senate have already agreed to reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons, and even though there is a growing bipartisan consensus that the United States has an excessive number of nuclear weapons and that the United States spends far more than it needs to for a nuclear deterrent and defense.

That is why I rise today to offer my amendment: to reduce the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles from 450 to 300.

I believe that this is the soundest approach to both our national security and our economic security needs. Each of our land-based nuclear missiles costs us--and this is an incredible number--$2.4 million every year to operate and to maintain. My amendment would save the taxpayers about $360 million next year and every year after that.

It's not just arms control groups that support this departure from Cold War thinking. It also includes General James Cartwright, who until last year was the commander of the United States' nuclear forces. General Cartwright published a report in May that concluded that zero intercontinental ballistic missiles are necessary for our nuclear deterrent or defense. The former commander of U.S. nuclear forces doesn't think we need ICBMs at all.

So reducing the number from 450 to 300 still leaves more than enough missiles for an effective nuclear deterrent. That's still more than enough missiles to annihilate any of our enemies over and over. It not only will turn our enemies into rubble, but it will make that rubble bounce and bounce and bounce again. That's how many nuclear weapons we would still have in reserve.

That is a real savings, and that savings can be used for the NIH budget. The entire budget to find the cure for Alzheimer's--5 million Americans have it--is $450 million a year. If we would just cut out these ICBMs--and that leaves plenty left over--it would give us enough money to almost double the budget to find a cure for something that really is going to kill Americans, that really does terrify them in their homes.

So I pray that the House will accept this amendment and send us in the correct direction in which we should be heading in terms of really protecting the American public.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

I just want to note here that the gentleman from Washington State did pioneering work in the 1980s in identifying the vulnerability of the land-based ICBM fleet. That discussion continues even today out here on the House floor.

I thank the gentleman, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

It is really quite fitting that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is taking up a bill today to weaken environmental regulations for the hard rock mining industry. Because just last night the Republican candidate for President held a lavish $25,000-a-plate fundraising dinner out in Montana. For those who don't know, the Daly mansion where that event was held was owned by a famous guy, Marcus Daly, was one of the three ``copper kings'' of Montana during the Gilded Age. He was infamous for his epic battles with other robber barons for control over the copper industry in Montana and around the country.

In fact, the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision to invalidate the Montana election law of 1912 overturned a law that was originally enacted to respond to the very excesses of mining barons like Marcus Daly.

So here we are out here on the House floor embracing the Gilded Age. But here in the Republican House, we are

not in a Gilded Age; we are in a Giveaway Age where every week the Republicans seek to hand even more giveaways to the oil, the gas, the timber, the coal, and the mining industries. The bill we are considering today is so broadly drafted where apparently sand, gravel, and crushed stone are considered rare and strategic that the majority actually appears to be trying to usher in a new stone age. Under this bill, the next time you go to the beach, you should put some sand in your pocket because the majority apparently believes that it is a rare element. That gravel in your driveway is protected because, under this bill, it is apparently strategic to America's national security.

Rare Earth elements are indispensable to a wide range of military, electronic, and industrial applications, as well as a variety of clean energy technologies. But this bill isn't giving us just the futuristic technologies of the Jetsons. It's giving us the prehistoric technologies of the Flintstones. Volumes of reports have been written about rare Earth minerals and other critical and strategic minerals; and none of them define things like gravel, sand, and clay as critical or strategic minerals.

What we could be doing and what we should be doing on this House floor is developing a policy to break China's grip on the rare Earth minerals that are important to our high-technology sector and to national defense. But we aren't doing that with this bill. No, what we are doing here is using strategic and critical minerals as a pretext for gutting environmental protections relating to virtually all mining operations.

Now, because the majority has cast so many votes to benefit these industries that it gets hard to keep track, we have created this chart to help everyone keep track of which industry is benefiting each week in the GOP giveaway game show. Yesterday, my colleague from Utah seemed extremely interested in making sure this chart functioned properly in order to aid the body. So I brought it back today so we can give it a spin and make sure we all remember who is getting a special giveaway today. But for the Republican Congress, this isn't the game show ``Wheel of Fortune.'' This is the Wheel of Fortune 500 Companies where we can spin to see which large, multinational companies will get handouts.

In ``Jeopardy,'' you state your answer in the form of a question. In the GOP House of Giveaways, answers are stated in the form of questionable policies. And the GOP's final answer in their running game of ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' is always the same: it is the largest corporations in America at the expense of American taxpayers and the environment. In fact, the majority is bringing this bill chock- full of giveaways to the mining industry on the floor without addressing the 140-year-old loophole that allows mining companies to extract gold, silver, uranium, and other hard rock minerals from public lands without paying taxpayers any royalty payments.

This rip-off is even worse when you see that every western State actually charges royalties of between 2 and 12 percent for companies to mine hard rock minerals on State lands; but on Federal lands, which might be right next door, the mining companies don't have to pay taxpayers a dime in royalties.

The robber barons are long gone, but mining companies can still operate under a law put in place during their heyday. Yet the majority's answer is not only to do nothing to end this free mining on public lands. They are trying to hand even more giveaways to this industry in this bill. This is a bad bill, and it should be defeated. I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey as much time as he may consume.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Madam Chair, how much time remains on either side?

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

I ask once again how much time is remaining.

At this point, Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This legislation is fundamentally a solution in search of a problem. According to the analysis of data provided by the BLM for hard rock mines on public lands for which we have complete data, the average time it takes to approve a plan of operation for a mine has actually decreased under the Obama administration.

According to the BLM data, plans of operation for hard rock mines are being approved roughly 17 percent more quickly under the Obama administration than under the Bush administration. Thank you again, President Obama, for the great job you're doing in changing the way in which the Bush administration held up those permits.

Despite the majority's claims, 82 percent of plans of operation for hard rock mines are approved within 3 years under the Obama administration. According to the BLM, it takes, on average, 4 years to approve a mining plan of operations for a large mine. That's more than 1,000 acres on public lands.

My colleagues on the other side have asked repeatedly what the problem is with their legislation that would truncate and eviscerate proper review of all mines on public lands if the majority of plans are approved within 3 years. It is because a little more than 15 percent of hard rock mines take more than 4 years to approve. For these mines, where mining companies may not have submitted a complete application and may not have posted a sufficient bond to ensure the mine is cleaned up where additional environmental review is required because the mine is large or potentially damaging to our environment and public health, this bill would prevent proper review.

We're already approving hard rock mines more quickly under the Obama administration than under the Bush administration. We should not be eviscerating proper review of virtually all mining operations on public lands, as this Republican bill would do, and we should certainly not be doing it under the pretense of developing critical and strategic minerals.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself 1 minute.

Again, this bill is not aimed at ensuring that we can guarantee that we increase the production of the kinds of rare Earth that we need in order to compete against China. By the way, if we're really going to be using China as the guise for the reduction in the environmental laws in the United States because they have rare Earth, and we're ramping up our production of rare Earth, what we should really be talking about is why in the world are the Republicans supporting the sale of our oil and our natural gas to China.

If they're using precious minerals as an economic weapon against the United States, then why don't we use natural gas and oil, which we have, against them because that's the most precious of all minerals.

I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

Oil and gas really drive the economy of the world, and every time I bring an amendment out here on the floor that says, well, let's drill for oil and natural gas on the public lands of the United States, but we can't export it after we discover it here, drill for it here, to China, the Republicans, every time, vote not to put a ban on that. At the same time, they are over there with crocodile tears very concerned about China having all of these precious metals that they won't sell to us.

Well, you want to know the best way to get China to sell that stuff to us? For us not to sell the stuff we have to them, that they need to manufacture those materials. That's the game.

So you can't have it both ways. You just can't have it both ways. Either this is a great threat to our country and we're going to use the precious metals we have, the precious minerals that we have, oil and gas as our weapon against China, or we're doomed. We don't have a real strategy.

Again, this is not a coherent strategy to deal with the country of China and their economic strategy to undermine our competitiveness.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I am prepared to close.

I thank the Chair.

China's rare Earth policies do burn America's high-tech manufacturing competitiveness, and the Republicans just want to throw gas on the fire, American natural gas.

Our greatest competitive advantage in manufacturing right now is low- priced domestic natural gas, but the Republicans want to export that competitive edge to China and to develop a global natural gas market so that the United States natural gas prices triple here domestically, or quadruple to match the prices the rest of the world pays.

China will not send their rare Earth minerals to the United States, but Republicans have continually voted to allow exports of our low-cost natural gas, our manufacturing advantage, to China.

This is a one-way ticket to manufacturing oblivion. Natural gas in our country is six to seven times less expensive than natural gas in China. It is four times less expensive than natural gas in Europe. That is our competitive advantage.

What the Republicans have consistently done since they have taken over the majority is to put in place policies to export our natural gas that is six times less expensive to China that will then be used in the manufacture of every product that they will then sell back to us, undermining every manufacturing industry in the United States as we supply the very valuable precious natural gas they need in order to harm dramatically the American economy.

Where do they show up? They show up here with crocodile tears about the restrictions that the National Environmental Policy Act places upon mining for sand, mining for gold, mining for silver. You really think that's the way we're going to get back into a better competitive stance against the Chinese as you're saying no, let's sell our natural gas that's six times less expensive than the natural gas they have in America fueling their industries?

That's just an upside-down policy. It's just dealing with the periphery of the challenge that China presents to us, and not even in an effective way, rather than going right to the core of how they are exploiting this mindless commitment to not the American Petroleum Institute, but we might as well call it the world petroleum institute because they don't represent American interests.

That's what we have to do here on the floor of the House of Representatives. That's what our amendments do

today to make sure that we do for our country.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

So what is the majority doing in this bill? They're saying that sand is a ``critical'' material; gravel, clay. There's no crisis in the sand industry. We don't need to wad it down, the environmental protections for drilling for sand or gravel or clay. There is no crisis. That's what this whole bill is. It's a Trojan horse. It's moving in to undermine environmental protections where they're working and where there's no need to reduce them.

If they want to talk about scandium or europium or cerium or terbium or some other critical strategic material that we should be discussing out here that we need for cell phones or we need

for solar panels or we need for our defense systems, that's one thing. But that's not what this is about. This is about watering down environmental protections for sand and clay and endangering the health and well-being of the Nation for no reason whatsoever because there's no strategic relationship between those very prosaic minerals and our national security.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment in order under the rule.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment in order today, and the reason I have it in order is that it's a very simple amendment. It would update an antiquated mining law to end the free ride that mining companies extracting minerals like gold and silver and uranium on public lands currently enjoy. It would then send that money to benefit Western States by dedicating the funding to cleaning up the more than 160,000 abandoned mines we have in the West.

The underlying bill would extend a host of new giveaways to the mining industry while doing nothing to ensure taxpayers are getting a proper return on these valuable minerals like gold and silver and uranium on public lands.

It is well past time to fix this law that was passed during the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. My amendment would require mining companies to pay taxpayers 12.5 percent of the value of these hard rock minerals taken off of the public lands. That is the same royalty rate that coal and oil

and natural gas companies pay to the Federal Government to mine and drill on public lands.

While mining companies pay no royalty on Federal lands to mine for gold and silver, they do pay a royalty on State lands that would abut those Federal lands. Twelve Western States already require mining companies to pay royalties up to 12 percent on mining on their State lands. Colorado charges up to 12 percent on minerals taken from their State lands. Utah, Wyoming, and California all charge up to 10 percent. Nevada charges up to 5 percent. But when it comes to mining on Federal lands, which could be right next door to the State lands, these multinational mining companies, they still get to play Uncle Sam for Uncle Sucker. They pay Federal taxpayers--all of the rest of us in the country--no royalties while reaping this massive windfall. So what my amendment would do is it would ensure that the States where this mining is occurring reap the benefits.

According to the GAO, there are more than 160,000 abandoned gold and silver and copper and uranium and other mines in the West. Some estimates put that number as high as 500,000 abandoned mines. These mines stopped production decades or, in some cases, more than a century ago and have no responsible parties to carry out the proper environmental remediation. The result is that the streams and the rivers, the aquifers, the soils continue to be contaminated by mercury and thorium and arsenic and other toxic pollutants. In fact, the GAO says that more than 33,000 mines are already a danger to the public health and environment. Arizona has some 50,000 abandoned hard rock mines; California has more than 47,000; Utah and Nevada have 17,000 and 16,000, respectively.

According to the Congressional Research Service, cleaning up abandoned mine sites can cost tens of millions of dollars per mine. Well, my amendment would generate nearly $400 million over the next 10 years that would be dedicated to cleaning up these sites. This would ensure that mining companies are paying their fair share to aid our Western States in cleaning up these dangerous and toxic sites.

At this point, I would like to reserve the balance of my time, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, could you advise us as to how much time is remaining?

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Then I yield myself the balance of my time.

So this is a very simple amendment. What it says is this: that these big mining companies--and the ones I'm talking about have a market capitalization of $90 billion--well, they just have to pay to drill on public lands, Federal public lands.

Right now they're paying to drill on State public lands, and when they come over to the Federal public lands it's like free parking, free rent. You don't have to pay anything.

Well, where are you going? You're going to where it's free. And who's letting them have it for free? Uncle Sam. Uncle Sucker.

So what the Markey amendment says is we're going to raise $400 million, charging them to drill for these precious minerals on Federal lands, and we're going to give the $400 million over to the States so that they can clean up their old mines where there are environmental problems.

So if you care about the environmental problems in these Western States, here's your ability to send $400 million in, collected where the big companies are now paying nothing to mine on Federal lands, in order to help deal with environmental problems there. Not in Massachusetts, not in the East, but right here, right where this mining goes on, right where the environmental disasters occur.

Vote ``aye'' on the Markey amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

This bill is ostensibly a bill that is supposed to be discussing rare Earth. It's supposed to be discussing strategic minerals that we can use in our competition to produce high-tech products that we're competing with the Chinese and others in order to produce in our country.

The kinds of strategic materials that we're talking about are scandium, cerium, europium, and terbium. These are not minerals that people ordinarily hear about. And from the high-tech manufacturing sector, we hear that they're central to their ability to be able to compete.

What the underlying bill would do is to reduce or eliminate the proper review of mining operations on public lands for virtually all types of minerals; not just for those rare Earths that I just mentioned, but also for gold, silver, uranium, and things like sand and gravel that are clearly--I think we should all be able to agree upon the fact that sand and gravel are not strategic minerals for our country. They're plentiful. They're available. We don't need to be watering down environmental laws in our attempt to be able to have enough sand and gravel and clay in the United States of America.

This amendment would not only allow for insufficient review for future mining operations, it would allow mining operations that are currently being reviewed to also escape proper scrutiny. Even worse, this amendment is drafted in such a way that it could potentially even apply to mining operations that already have been approved.

Following environmental review, mines sometimes have to put in place mitigation measures to protect the public health and the environment. Under this amendment, there is the potential that those companies could seek to have those mitigation measures thrown out. In an effort to save potentially millions of dollars, I understand what the company is trying to do. That might be good for that company, but it's not good for the environment or for the American people who already have mitigation agreements in place to protect against the mining company endangering the health, the well-being, and the water table of the area where the mining is going on. It wouldn't just cover europium; it would cover, potentially, gravel, sand, and other elements that clearly don't need that kind of protection.

This amendment would likely invite a hailstorm of litigation, which I would think that my colleagues on the other side would like to avoid. I would also like to think that my colleagues on the other side would rather have the Department of the Interior, the Forest Service, and other Federal agencies continue to move forward to approve new mines, not be bogged down relitigating mines that have already been approved.

This amendment makes a bad bill even worse and would have a number of unintended consequences that could invite litigation and actually delay the approval of future mines.

I urge defeat of the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Again, I understand the business plan here of these mining interests that don't even pay royalties to drill on the Federal lands of our country. Let's just continue this business plan. That's what they're saying to themselves. Maybe we can get it out of this Republican Congress. So, in addition to not paying, let's also have rules that say we're going to water down the environmental laws, as well, not only for europium and cerium and other rare Earths, but also for sand and for gravel and for clay. I understand. That's a great business plan.

It's not for the American people. They get watered-down environmental laws, and they also don't even get paid the royalties on the Federal lands of our country. It's just one big, bad deal for the United States taxpayers, and I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman from Colorado.

We are just hours removed from House Republicans' voting to take away health care for 30 million Americans and put the insurance companies back in charge of our health care system. And it's back to business as usual for the GOP-controlled House.

Yes, it's time to get back to more giveaways to the Nation's wealthiest companies. Because when House Republicans aren't voting to take away health care from ordinary Americans, from poor Americans, they're voting for ``wealth care'' for the most profitable industries in the history of the United States of America. In fact, the majority continues to bring largely the same legislation to the floor over and over again, only the name of the industry reaping the windfall changes.

Two weeks ago, the Republican majority voted to give away nearly all of our onshore public lands to the oil and gas industry. The majority has passed bills to put rigs off our beaches in California, off our beaches in Florida, and off our beaches in New Jersey without passing any new safety requirements after the BP oil spill just 2 years ago. They have passed legislation to allow old-growth forests to be clear- cut and to hand over land to a multinational mining company without protecting Native American sacred sites or local water quality.

In fact, this Republican majority has cast so many votes to give away our public lands to the oil, the gas, the mining, and the timber industries, it's almost hard to remember which industry is getting a special giveaway each week.

So I have a suggestion that I think could help everyone out there keep track. Each week, we can consult this handy-dandy chart, the ``GOP Wheel of Giveaways,'' to figure out which industries are going to get their turn benefiting from handouts from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle on the same day they're going to take away health benefits from the poor, the sick, the elderly, and ordinary families in America.

Let's see who the big winners are on the House floor today as they take away the health care benefits for ordinary people. Let's give it a spin here. Let's see what happens as we look at what is happening out there in this great land of ours this week.

This week, it's the mining industry, ladies and gentlemen. Come on down. You are this week's big winner in the GOP giveaway game. The mining industry is the big winner on this giveaway show here today on the House floor. That's because the bill that the majority is bringing to the floor tomorrow, despite being entitled the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Act, has absolutely nothing to do with developing these minerals. In fact, this bill is all about gutting the environmental safeguards and the proper review of large mining projects on public lands for virtually all minerals, including coal.

Under this legislation, sand apparently could be considered as rare. Gravel could be a critical mineral. Crushed stone or clay could be a strategic resource. Even abundant minerals like gold, silver, or copper could potentially qualify as a rare Earth product under this bill and have lower environmental standards as a result in drilling for them that would endanger ordinary families again and their health. But of course they would never provide any health care benefits for them because that's the other bill we're going to be having out here on the House floor and gutting here today.

Indeed, the only rarities created under the Republican bill would be environmental protections or public input.

And while this bill provides new giveaways to large multinational mining companies, it does nothing to change the Mining Law of 1872--1872, ladies and gentlemen--which allows mining companies to pull taxpayer-owned hard rock minerals out of our public lands without giving Americans a fair payment. In fact, under the 140-year- old law, mining companies can extract gold, silver, uranium, copper, and other hard rock minerals without paying taxpayers one cent in royalties for the minerals on the public lands of the United States of America. This law isn't just outdated, it's outrageous.

These are the same people here who are saying we can't afford to pass the law which protects against preexisting conditions in health care of ordinary Americans. These are the people here saying we can't pass a bill to protect against discrimination against women in our society.

This law isn't jut outdated, it is outrageous.

On the game show ``The Price is Right,'' a $1 bid is strategic. But under the Republican giveaway game show, it is an actual price that these huge industries can continue paying for the rights to our public lands. The Republicans want to continue giving away

grazing rights for a little more than $1 per acre and allow oil companies to warehouse public lands for $1.50 an acre.

And after more than 250 votes against the environment and more than 110 votes to benefit the oil and gas industries, the American people are going to look at the record of this Republican majority and say, ``No deal.''

I urge a ``no'' vote on the Republican proposal.

I thank the gentleman.

And if it were possible to retard the aging process, that would be something that I think all of us could agree upon. But in the absence of that breakthrough medically, I thank the gentleman for his bipartisan wishes of a happy birthday.

The Affordable Care Act is now part of our Nation's fabric of health care laws. Right alongside Social Security and Medicare now stands the Affordable Care Act. Yet the Republicans keep trying to take away or to take apart the benefits included in this law for the 31st time since they took over the House of Representatives. What we have here, Madam Speaker, is a severe case of Republican reflux.

Again and again, the Republicans keep coming up with harmful attempts to destroy all of the protections Americans have gained under this law--a Groundhog Day Republican reflux attempt to repeal this historic piece of

legislation that helps every family in our country. Again and again, the Republicans keep choosing corporations over consumers. The side effects of this Republican reflux are serious.

If the Republicans succeed, insurance companies could, once again, deny coverage because of preexisting conditions. Kids with asthma, women with breast cancer, all of these protections would just go away, and the Republicans will replace it with nothing. Americans could, once again, be forced into bankruptcy just because they got sick. Just because they got sick, they could go bankrupt if the Republicans' repeal attempt is successful this afternoon on the House floor. And what are they going to put in place of that protection against going bankrupt just because you are sick? Nothing. They have no proposal to have something replace those protections for American families.

Women could, once again, be discriminated against with higher insurance premiums. Just being a woman, unfortunately, under existing law is a condition which has women paying more. What are the Republicans going to replace this protection for women with, a protection that is now in the law? Nothing. They have no proposal they're bringing out here today onto the House floor.

With this Republican reflux, it's the American people who get burned. All they are doing is bringing out a proposal to repeal protections that ensure for every American family all of these extra protections which the Republicans have always denied them. They keep saying: Oh, no. We care about preexisting conditions. Oh, no. We care about people going bankrupt. Oh, no. We care about women being discriminated against. Then you say to them: Well, where is your proposal? Bring it out here. Let's have a vote on it.

But do you know what? This is about insurance companies over the consumers of our country. Vote ``no'' on this Republican reflux bill.

Mr. Speaker, I have declined to add my signature to the Conference Report to accompany H.R. 4348, legislation to reauthorize the highway trust fund.

While the highway bill has traditionally been the product of reasonable, bipartisan compromise, the House Republican's version of this year's bill was so extreme the Conference Report was hobbled from the start.

House Republicans took the jobs and economic development promised by this highway bill hostage--with unrelated provisions like the Keystone pipeline as the ransom--and the Senate had no choice but to negotiate with the hostage takers.

Provisions allocating critical conservation funding across the country, through the Land and Water Conservation Fund and a National Endowment for the Oceans, was struck from the Conference Report; only funding for the five Gulf States--Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Texas--has survived. That funding will certainly be beneficial but the broader conservation programs should have been included, as well.

The Conference Report also includes provisions prohibiting the National Park Service from complying with the law limiting the impacts of aircraft noise on Grand Canyon National Park. Why we would want to use a transportation bill to make one of the crown jewels of the National Park System louder and dirtier is a mystery.

Most troubling, the Conference Report includes unjustified and harmful provisions which will undermine environmental reviews of highway and transit projects. Republicans have claimed environmental reviews delay highway projects but the facts are that most transportation projects already proceed under expedited environmental reviews and there is no evidence whatsoever that these reviews cause delay.

Nevertheless, the Conference Report includes several broad new categorical exclusions from the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. These new exclusions lack flexibility or adequate standards and will limit public participation and careful consideration of transportation projects that can have devastating impacts on neighborhoods and our natural, cultural and historic resources. In the end, the purpose of these provisions is to speed up highway construction, not by cutting alleged ``red-tape'' but by making it harder for local communities to gather information and have input in projects that may go right through their backyards.

Unbelievably, the Conference Report also includes a radical new idea that agencies should be fined, through rescission of up to 7 percent of their budgets, for missing arbitrary deadlines for environmental reviews. Given that the main reason agencies struggle to complete these reviews quickly is a lack of funding and staff, cutting their budgets as punishment will only make the problem worse.

Inclusion of funding for the Secure Rural Schools and the Payment in Lieu of Taxes programs are positive steps, while removal of divisive, unrelated provisions on coal ash and the Keystone Pipeline are welcome improvements, compared to the House Republican bill.

Finally, the process used to develop this Conference Report was unfortunate. Conferees have been asked to sign an agreement we have had little or no time to review and the substance of the agreement was negotiated largely without input from most conferees.

This Conference Report will harm those living and working near transportation projects in the future and fails to address some of the most pressing conservation needs facing this nation. We can and should do better.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment creates a brand-new, burdensome permitting scheme that would complicate the process for obtaining a permit to construct a meteorological tower offshore and undermine offshore wind development. Let me say that again. This will actually make it harder to build an offshore wind project, not easier.

This amendment is similar to H.R. 2173, which was reported out of the Natural Resources Committee last year. When moving this bill through committee, the Republican majority was unable to find a single wind industry witness to come to testify on this bill, and that is because the industry that the majority is trying to help with this bill doesn't think that the measure is helpful.

So the wind industry does not support this bill. I'll just make that clear, if you are interested in helping an industry to grow. The bill has not been endorsed by any offshore wind companies or trade groups and those kinds of

companies that have popped up all over the country now. None of those companies are endorsing this bill.

I'm going to read a statement that is part of the legislative hearing record on this amendment. It is from Jim Lanard, the president of the Offshore Wind Development Coalition. Here's what he says on behalf of the coalition: Streamlining approvals of towers or buoys to test wind speeds offshore is an important goal. We believe that NEPA will allow this goal to be achieved.

So NEPA clearly is not the enemy here. But in case there is still doubt, he says: Disregarding the bill's NEPA exclusion, we believe-- this is, again, Mr. Lanard speaking for the Offshore Wind Development Coalition--we believe that current practices are adequate for the approval of these towers or buoys.

This bill represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what the offshore wind industry really needs. A company is simply not going to invest millions of dollars engineering and constructing a huge meteorological tower on the Outer Continental Shelf unless they have a guarantee that they'll be able to use that area to build a wind farm.

To be very clear, the industry wants a lease before they invest millions of dollars into a project. To get a lease, we should and we do require consideration of the impacts of development on the environment and the competing uses of these public waters. We should and we do require coordination with the other agencies using the Outer Continental Shelf, like the Navy, the FAA and FCC. This amendment would dismantle that process.

This amendment says sorry, wind industry. You may have sunk millions of dollars into your meteorological tower, but it's time to tear it down. We let you build it without fully considering the impacts. And no wind farm either.

Plain and simple, this bill certainly reduces the likelihood that we will see wind constructed off the shores of our country. The companies affected by this bill were not consulted before creating it.

I have a document here from the Navy commenting on this bill. Essentially, it says the 30-day limit on consultations in the amendment is problematic. The Federal Aviation Administration has expressed similar concerns. The Federal Communications Commission has expressed similar concerns. This bill will make it harder to construct offshore wind projects, and maybe--and I think this is what it's all about-- that's the point after all.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the bottom line is that President Bush's Interior Department sat on offshore wind regulations for 4 years. Do you want to hear that again? President Bush's Interior Department sat on offshore wind regulations for 4 years. Did not promulgate them. President Obama got them done in his first 6 months. The Obama administration passionately believes in new wind. In fact, there's 35,000 new megawatts onshore, and they desperately want it offshore as well, and the process is working.

We agree that during the Bush years, the Cape wind process did not work, but there were no rules that were promulgated. Obama did it. The project is now approved for Cape wind, and it should move forward. There's nothing wrong with the process, and I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Westmoreland amendment.

Let's just get to the heart of the question of energy efficiency. Back in 1987, I was the author of the Appliance Efficiency Act of 1987, which is the constitution for energy efficiency in the appliance field. Since that time, the efficiency of appliances has increased so dramatically that we have reduced the need for between 100 and 150 new coal-fired plants from ever having to be constructed in the United States. Why is that? Well, electricity that is not consumed results in less need for new coal-fired or any kind of fired electricity, saving the consumers, saving the environment, and just working smarter, not harder. If you can keep the popsicle cool with a more efficient refrigeration process, if you can have the toast pop up with a more efficient toasting process, if you can have every one of the appliances that we use, including the air-conditioning in this room--the air-conditioning in this room is just as good as it was in 1987 but it is 50 percent more efficient in its generating capacity than it was in 1987. That reduces the need to generate new electricity that is needed. That saves money, and it saves on environmental damage as well.

So right now we're about to consider something that deals with deli- style refrigerators. Now, we're having this conversation having had no hearings on this issue in the Energy and Commerce Committee. We've had no testimony from the industry, no testimony from the Department of Energy on what this amendment could mean in terms of its impact. And we've had no evidence of an incapacity to be able to comply with these rules except for the fact that no one ever wants to necessarily become more efficient if they have to go through the extra effort and have never been required to do so.

The reason that we have these energy efficiency rules is that we're doing it for the betterment of the whole country and moving industries along, making sure that we do not have to produce this additional new electricity.

So, I think that it's better if we save money and save energy at the same time. That's what efficiency is all about. That's what working smarter, not harder is all about. The evidence is clear, since 1987, that we've done it. We've moved every other device along and made it more efficient, so I just don't know the reason why we would need a provision like this.

At this point, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself, again, as much time as I may consume.

You know, this is just a continuation of the Republican obsession and opposition--obstinate, obdurate opposition--to increased efficiency in our society. Just a couple weeks ago they brought a bill out here on the floor that would roll back the efficiency of light bulbs in the United States, even though the entire industry has already complied with it. They were still trying to roll back the efficiency of light bulbs. Now we have the deli freezer, and we'll move on to product by product that they don't believe it is necessary to improve its efficiency whatsoever. And they just respond one by one almost to an incomprehensible set of demands made by, as yet, nonexistent experts telling us that it's impossible to comply.

So, why don't we have a hearing? Why don't we get the evidence? Why don't we hear what every company in the United States says about deli freezers and then we can act upon it after we hear the evidence? But acting this way--you know, ``congressional expert'' is an oxymoron. We're not experts compared to real experts. We're only experts compared to other Congressmen. ``Congressional expert'' is an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp or Salt Lake City nightlife. I mean, there is no such thing as a congressional expert. We should not be acting this way on the House floor trying to make ad hoc changes in efficiencies rules. It just doesn't make any sense.

Again, I oppose the way in which this is occurring, and I urge a ``no'' vote on the Westmoreland amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentlelady.

Back 10 years ago, about a third of all of the interest in the oil futures marketplace was controlled by speculators, but two-thirds was controlled by the airline industry, the trucking industry, industries that are dependent upon oil. Today it's just the flip. Today two-thirds of that oil futures marketplace is controlled by speculators, and only one-third is controlled by the airline industry, trucking industry, and others dependent upon the price of oil.

So what happened? What happens is, all of a sudden, you have this crazy volatility where experts say that upwards of 20 percent of the price of a barrel of oil in the futures marketplace is related to speculation. It's not related to anything in the real marketplace. And so what happens? Well, that has a dramatically negative impact on truckers, on the airline industry because there are games being played out there.

By the way, with the speculators, they make money on the way up and they make money on the way down. That's not true for ordinary companies because they're not in there playing a game. They are not speculators. They are not doing this as part of some kind of a casino that speculators thrive in.

And here's the rule: On the way up, the big guy cleans up; on the way down, the little guy gets cleaned out. And that's what we're seeing over and over and over again.

So the President has asked to increase the number of cops on the beat, the CFTC cops on the beat that can patrol to make sure that the games that are being played don't hurt the little guy. And what are the Republicans saying? They're saying they want to cut the President's request for more cops on the beat sixfold. And what happens then? Well, we're going to be deep-sixing the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations of ordinary companies who are still going to see these games being played. The DeLauro amendment makes it possible to put the CFTC cops back on the beat.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.