Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.

This bill represents the latest Republican attempt to give away our public lands to the wealthiest oil companies in the world. This bill is the culmination of the Republican oil-above-all agenda. Instead of approving this legislative love letter to Big Oil, the majority should be sending a thank-you note to President Obama for his actions to increase domestic energy production and decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

The truth is that oil production from Federal lands on shore today is higher than it was under President Bush. And across the United States, oil production from all public and private lands is unbelievably now at an 18-year high. Obama is drilling, baby; he's drilling.

The Obama administration's all-of-the-above strategy has also been successful in creating jobs. Since 2008, 14,000 new jobs have been created in oil and gas extraction. Thank you, President Obama. And 50,000 new jobs have also been created in wind and solar, but Republicans don't want a real all-of-the-above energy strategy.

At the Rules Committee, I offered an amendment, along with Mr. Welch, that would have established a national renewable energy standard. That amendment would have created wind and solar all across our country as a standard. That amendment was germane to this bill and had no budgetary impact, but the Republican majority refused to even allow us to debate an amendment so that Members could have a chance to vote on an actual all-of-the-above package that wasn't just oil and gas.

And President Obama is about as good a President as you can have on that issue; but wind and solar and biomass and geothermal and all of these technologies of the future, they refused to even allow the Democrats to have a vote on that on the House floor this afternoon. They are not all of the above; they are oil above all. They don't want wind and solar because the oil industry doesn't want it, and the coal industry doesn't want it because it's real competition from the future.

The renewable electricity standard that I would have offered would have created 300,000 new jobs and saved consumers billions of dollars on their electricity bills.

In 2007, 32 Republicans joined 188 Democrats in overwhelming support of a similar renewable electricity standard. In 2009, the House again passed that policy on a bipartisan basis. It died in the Senate both times. Today, it dies here on the House floor because the Republicans don't want 32 Republicans to even have the right to vote for wind and solar and biomass and geothermal. They're afraid Republicans might vote for it, so there's a gag here, a gag order to the House floor saying no debate on the renewables because oil and coal don't want it debated. There will not be a vote on this.

The majority has voted more than 100 times in this Congress to help the oil industry, but they have not voted once in favor of clean energy in the year and a half that they have controlled the United States Congress.

Moreover, because they will not extend the production tax credit for wind, 40,000 jobs are going to be lost in the wind industry in the first 6 months of 2013. This is the Big Oil dream act. This is the dream act of the Republicans. This is something that should be opposed.

I would like to thank Chairman Upton and Chairman Pitts and Ranking Member Waxman and Ranking Member Pallone and their staffs for their work in bringing the FDA Safety and Innovation Act to the floor today.

Passing this bill will allow the FDA to continue its critical mission of bringing safe and effective drugs and medical devices to the patients who need them. Reviewing drug and device applications has become increasingly challenging. Medical breakthroughs of today often target rare diseases or genetic subsets of those diseases. FDA reviewers must now assess a growing pipeline of very specialized treatments.

I'm pleased that this bill includes language I helped author to improve collaboration between FDA and external experts in rare diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease.

The bill before us today also includes an important provision I helped author to ensure that the millions of Americans who are blind or visually impaired have safe and independent access to the information on prescription drug labels. No one should have to sacrifice their privacy or independence to access the vital information on these bottles, and I'm glad we're taking steps to address that here today.

Finally, this bill helps increase the availability of pediatric medical devices and ensures that medications are tested and labeled appropriately for children. I was proud to work on these provisions with my colleagues, Congresswoman Eshoo and Congressman Rogers.

I would have liked to have seen additional measures included in this bill to ensure the safety of medical devices based on defective models that have already been approved by the FDA, that unfortunately continue to be sold and jeopardize patients' health all across this country. I am going to continue to work on this critical issue. I believe it's a problem that we must solve. Once the FDA approves a device and then it turns out that there's a defect, there should be no excuse for allowing new companies to build their devices based upon the old approved defective model that the FDA had approved. Tens of thousands of Americans are put in jeopardy, and I would like to work to solve that problem.

Nonetheless, this is an excellent piece of legislation, and I hope that the House gives it its overwhelming approval.

I thank the gentleman.

Today marks the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Instead of spending the daylight hours passing a clean transportation bill that will help shore up real jobs for Americans, the Congress will be spending the day repealing public health protections and giving away nearly all of our public lands to oil and gas companies in the culmination of the Republican majority's Oil Above All agenda. It is really a ``Midsummer's Nightmare'' for the American people.

But before we get to voting on the Republican oil package, we get to debate whether another Republican bill, whose sole premise is to prevent EPA from following the scientific evidence, should be included in the Transportation bill.

This bill says that no matter what EPA learns about the sludge that comes out of coal-fired power plants, no matter how high the concentrations of poisonous arsenic, mercury or chromium, no matter what EPA learns about how these materials find their way into our drinking water, EPA is forbidden to classify or regulate it as hazardous waste. EPA is forbidden to require that this toxic material be disposed of carefully.

This bill turns a blind eye to evidence of known hazards and takes us back to the Dark Ages, to a time before science was valued and before advanced knowledge transformed society. It takes us back to an era when mercury and arsenic, major components of coal ash, were used to cure toothaches and clear up your complexion. It takes us back to an era where children were sent deep into the bowels of the Earth to rip coal from the mines and die early deaths.

Apparently, House Republicans not only wish to embrace the principal energy source of the 19th century; they also wish to return us to the 19th-century principles about public health and the environment regarding arsenic and mercury and their danger to the citizens of our country.

Now, there are good uses for coal ash, beneficial uses. It can be used to construct highways and shingles. That's good. It can be mixed into concrete and grout. That's good.

But what we don't want is for the industry to be able to use it to construct a golf course, like what they did in Battlefield, Virginia, because it can directly contaminate the groundwater. It can pollute and cause injury and cancers in the neighbors of that golf course.

We also don't want it to be disposed of in pits that aren't sealed to handle this special waste, like what happened in Tennessee when a TVA disposal pit collapsed, engulfing an entire small town in toxic sludge. We should have regulations to protect against that ever happening in our country again.

This is exactly what this bill, the Republican bill, will do. It will blast us back into the past and allow coal ash to be disposed of without proper construction or monitoring.

At the end of this month, transit and highway funding will expire, hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake, and our transportation infrastructure will be in peril. Even Senate Republicans have recognized the dangers inherent in allowing this to occur and have joined with Senate Democrats to craft a bipartisan bill so we can put people back to work using coal ash in the highways of our country.

But in spite of this, the House Republicans are insisting that unrelated and unnecessary toxic provisions dangerous to the health and well-being of Americans be attached to this bill in order to protect Big Oil and Big Coal.

Instead of allowing the coal industry and Republicans to transport our country's environmental and public health standards back to the era of Charles Dickens, we should be holding them to higher expectations for the 21st century, for the public health and well-being of our people.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this preposterous Republican initiative.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining on both sides.

Mr. Speaker, I then continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

My colleagues, the short title of this bill, the Domestic Energy and Jobs Act, spells out the word D-E-J-A. But what we're seeing here is not just deja vu, the feeling that we've seen all these Big Oil giveaways before. No, this bill is a deja preview, a look ahead into what the Romney administration would do if elected and had a GOP House and Senate to fully implement the oil companies' legislative agenda and block all efforts to help clean energy.

There's been a lot of discussion of the DREAM Act recently, but the bill we have before us today is really the Big Oil dream act. This package represents everything Big Oil could ever possibly dream up to drill on our public lands and roll back public health protections.

As the world gathers in Rio de Janeiro right now to try to head off catastrophic global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, here we are in the House of Representatives looking for ways to give more benefits to fossil fuel industries.

And as America's wind and solar companies look to hire more American workers, here we are in the GOP-controlled House, where the Republican leadership refused to make my amendment in order to establish national goals for wind and solar, clean energy and energy efficiency. They won't even allow that debate to take place on the floor of the House of Representatives during what they say is the big energy debate for America. Can you imagine, it's 2012, we are having a big energy debate, big, big debate on the energy future of our country, and the words ``wind'' and ``solar'' are not going to be permitted by the Republicans to be out here on the House floor and being debated. And by the way, did I throw in biomass? Did I throw in geothermal? Did I throw in energy efficiency? They won't allow the words to be spoken. There's a gag order here, a big gag order by the Republicans. No debating that.

And then they have the temerity to call it an all-of-the-above bill. Oh, a comprehensive energy plan without wind, without solar, without geothermal, without biomass, without plug-in hybrids or energy efficiency debated out here because they have a gag order. They prohibit any debating of those issues on the House floor. And yet here they are, saying it's an all-of-the-above energy bill.

Great. Great. So fair. Fair and square. A real debate. Let all the Members decide what our energy future looks like.

But before the end of this year, the Republicans are allowing all of the tax breaks for the wind industry to expire. And what are they doing? They are actually going to continue the $4 billion a year that ExxonMobil and Chevron get. That's fair, huh? A gag order on even mentioning wind and solar out here as part of an amendment, a debate, $4 billion for the oil industry. And by the way, let's take a look at what's going on in oil production in the United States.

Oh, by the way, did you hear the news? It's now at an 18-year high. Obama, drill, baby, drill. Obama, what a great job. An 18-year high under Barack Obama, way better than George Bush. Way better. You have to go back to almost a time when a kid who's graduating from high school has no memory of. It's 18 years ago the last time there was this much oil drilling in the United States--Federal, State, private lands.

But if you listen to the Republicans, they're saying there's not enough breaks for ExxonMobil. No, no, no, we have to give them more. This poor, beleaguered company, and all of the other oil companies of the same size, they have been beleaguered as they are now at an 18-year peak in oil production in the United States. And you know who's beating them up--wind and solar, geothermal, biomass, plug-in hybrids. Very scary things to the Republican. So scary that because they control the Speakership, because they control the Rules Committee, we're not allowed to debate wind and solar. They're prohibiting it today. An absolute, all-out prohibition this week on the discussion of wind and solar. Huh?

When I asked to have an amendment be put in place that we could debate whether or not we had a national renewable electricity standard for the whole country, setting goals for what our country should have for wind and solar by the year 2020, you know what they said: No, we're gagging you. You can't have that debate out on the House floor. You can't even raise the words ``wind'' and ``solar.''

Yet they're going to keep coming out here saying we're for all of the above. All of the above that Exxon and Shell and BP want. Right on their list. And do you know where wind and solar are on the BP and ExxonMobil list? Oh, they just forgot to put it on their list. And that's what we get to debate out here, and it's going to be called an all-of-the-above energy future.

Well, let me tell you something--the American people deserve a lot better. They really do have a real sense that America has to be the leader in these new energy technologies. And President Obama has done his best or else we would not be at an 18-year high.

By the way, there are more oil rigs drilling in the United States for oil today--are you ready for this--than all of the other countries in the world combined. Barack Obama, drill, baby, drill. You are really doing the job. More oil rigs right here in the United States right now drilling than all the rest of the world combined.

But you're going to listen to these Republicans talk as though somehow or other, although ExxonMobil and BP and Shell are reporting the largest profits of any corporation in the history of the world, that they are being discriminated against.

What do ExxonMobil and BP expect? They expect there to be a gag applied out here on the floor so we cannot debate wind and solar, we cannot debate biomass and geothermal, we cannot debate energy efficiency. And yet we're supposed to sit over here in silence and listen to them say that they have an all-of-the-above energy strategy when we all know their entire strategy is oil above all--as a matter in fact, to exclude all else, exclude it, can't even debate it. They actually passed a rule here last night prohibiting us from debating wind and solar, from debating the future, from unleashing this technological revolution.

And why is that the case? I'll tell you why it's the case. Because in the last 5

years there have been 45,000 new megawatts of wind installed here in the United States. In this year, there will be 4,000 new megawatts of solar installed in the United States. Do you know who hates that? ExxonMobil hates that. Shell, BP, they hate it. Peabody Coal, Arch Coal, they hate it. They see this new clean energy future unfolding.

Out here on the floor of the House, as we debate the big energy bill here of 2012, I'm prohibited, as the senior Democrat, from bringing out an amendment that talks about wind and solar, that talks about geothermal and biomass, that talks about energy efficiency. I'm not allowed to bring it out here. So this is not an auspicious day for the United States Congress.

If there were any kernel of truth about Obama and his incredible work here, lifting us to an 18-year high in total oil production in the United States--by the way, since Bush left, since he left, we have dropped from being 57 percent dependent upon imported oil down to 45 percent dependent upon imported oil. Did Bush do that? No. Did Bush's father do that? No. Barack Obama did that, ladies and gentlemen. And what Barack Obama is saying, in addition to the dramatic decline in the amount of oil that we import from the Middle East, I would also like to add wind and solar and geothermal and biomass and energy efficiency. And they're saying, oh, no, it's already going too fast. This dependence thing is already happening much too fast for us.

And, by the way, this revolution in wind and solar and geothermal, people might start driving cars that are all electric and dependent upon wind and solar to give them the electricity so they don't even have to go into a gas station.

Do you know what they're really afraid of? They're afraid that what is going to happen to them is what happened to the typewriter, that in 20 years we went from everyone using a typewriter to everyone using a computer. People have to look into a history book to now find what a typewriter looks like. It only took 20 years. They can see this wind and solar revolution happening so fast that they're afraid that in 2030 a kid won't even know how to fill up a car with gasoline because they'll be plugging in the car at home with solar and wind-generated electricity. That's what they're most afraid of.

That's what this debate is really all about and that's why there's a gag on the Democrats, why we're not allowed to talk about wind and solar and geothermal and biomass and energy efficiency. Oh, I'm sorry, we're allowed to talk about it, we're just not allowed to have an amendment out here on the floor. We're just not allowed to put everyone on record as to where they stand on those issues. We're just not allowed to do that. You cannot have an amendment out here on the floor.

So this is the full extent of our ability to help those industries, those competitive industries, those Microsofts and Googles and eBays and Hulus and YouTubes of the energy industry get out there and reinvent the way in which we generate electricity here in our country. That's what this debate is really all about.

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

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

I yield myself 1 minute.

I thank the gentleman from Colorado.

Yes, what the Republicans are saying is, in their bill, that they want a study for 4 years of wind and solar. A study?

Well, maybe they should study the fact that it's very sunny in Florida. It's very windy out in the Midwest and, as a matter of fact, so sunny and so windy that there have been 45,000 megawatts of wind installed over the last 6 years in the United States, that there's going to be 4,000 new megawatts of solar installed in the United States just this year.

So maybe the Republicans should study the studies that are already out there, and maybe they could actually look over and ask the coal industry what they're thinking as they've dropped from 51 percent of all electrical generation down to 36 percent of all electrical generation in the last 5 years.

Maybe they're looking at the wind industry. Maybe they're looking at the solar industry. Maybe you could call them. But you don't have to wait 4 years, because all you want to do is study it. What we want to do is give the incentive for the wind and solar industry to continue their revolution.

I yield 5 minutes, if I may, Mr. Chairman, to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), the ranking member of the subcommittee.

Would the Chair tell me how much time is remaining.

I yield an additional minute to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Again, I ask how much time is remaining on both sides.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I ask again, Mr. Chairman, that we review where the majority and minority are in terms of time remaining in debate?

I will yield myself 1 minute at this time.

I would just like to review, once again, the Republican ``all-of-the- above'' plan: One, light, sweet crude oil. Two, sour, high sulfur oil. Three, heavy oil. Four, tar sands oil. Five, oil shale. And oh, just to mix it up, a little natural gas. What they forgot was, of course, wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. And they won't even allow us to have an amendment out here on the floor in order to have a debate over it.

But that ``oil above all'' agenda you have, it is very comprehensive, and I give you credit for figuring out every single way that we can help all the oil companies in the United States at the expense of all the renewable energy industries.

I reserve the balance of my time.

At this time I yield myself 2 minutes.

You know, I hate giving all the bad news to the Republicans. But I'll give you some more bad news. You hate to hear it, but I will give it to you anyway.

In 2011, in terms of new electrical generation in the United States, 33 percent came from natural gas, 29 percent from wind, 20 percent from coal, and 8 percent from solar. Got that again? Wind and solar were about 37 percent of all new electrical generating capacity in the United States in the year 2011. But you guys want to study it. You want to have more information about this technology.

And by the way, in that study, you should also throw a few other things--a single device from which you can talk to your family, send emails, and watch videos. That's a concept some people have. You might want to study that as well. Oh, no, we already have that.

Sending a man to the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. Oh, I guess that's something else we already did. How about studying the possibility of mapping the entire human genome so we can have an idea of what material humanity is made out of, to kind of break a breakthrough. Oh, I think we've already done that. And there may be many other things that we can throw into that solar and wind study that we also don't need to have studied that you can also throw in there as part of your technological and scientific phobia that refuses to have you admit that things are already happening.

And by the way, something else you are refusing to admit that happened--during Bush's term as President, the production of oil went down, down, down, down from 2001 2008. Do you know what happened once Obama took over? Up, up, up, up. So much oil drilling, in fact, that all the rigs in the world combined are not matching what Obama has done in terms of total oil rigs out there. And we are now at an 18-year high in oil.

Maybe you should study this. Maybe this is hard for you to understand. I've heard all the Members out here saying that there is a jihad against oil being waged by the Obama administration. It just doesn't match any of the evidence.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I will yield myself the balance of my time.

Let me just say that I know it's not anything that has been observed by the Republicans. But the price of gasoline has dropped for the last 11 weeks in a row, ever since the President threatened to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, because it was never about supply and demand. It was always about fear and greed. It was what Wall Street was doing and manipulating the price of oil and the commodities futures of the marketplace. It was about the fear that people had about a war in Iran breaking out.

But what's the response from the Republicans? Well, they have a brilliant amendment inside of their bill. What they say here is that if, God forbid, the Ayatollah ever attacked the United States, a Middle Eastern war ever broke out, and the President deployed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, 10 million barrels worth of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, you know what their bill says? That we, the Federal Government--if the Republican bill passes today--would then have to sell to ExxonMobil and the other Big Oil companies 200 million acres of Federal lands for ExxonMobil and the other Big Oil companies to drill on.

Understand that? That the Ayatollah attacks us, there's a war in the Middle East, and who do we have to pay the ransom to? To the Big Oil companies of the United States, if we deploy the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Now how nonsensical is that? That is an absolutely crazy idea, that the oil companies become the beneficiaries of a Middle Eastern conflict. They get the public lands of the United States, 200 million acres that we have to sell them simultaneously. It's almost a trigger that occurs inside of their legislation. That's how meshuggah this all is.

This is an absolutely crazy set of concepts, where we can't have an

amendment on wind and solar, geothermal, biomass, plug-in hybrids, all new technologies and efficiency that back out the need for all this oil to ever come in in the first place. And as a penalty, the country will use this Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a weapon of our national security against OPEC, that if the President uses it, we have to sell 200 million acres of American land to the oil companies so that they can even drill for bargain basement prices here in the country.

This bill is absolutely the wrong recipe for our country as we head into the 21st century. I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, when manager's amendments making technical changes to legislation are presented, such amendments are accepted and we move on to amendments making substantive changes to the bill. In this instance, however, among the technical changes made by this manager's amendment is a controversial provision flatly overturning an EPA ruling in Alaska. This change should not be made at all, but it certainly should not be made as part of a manager's amendment.

As part of the review process for beginning energy production in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the EPA designated the Colville River, the largest Arctic river in Alaska, as an Aquatic Resource of National Importance. To be clear, this designation did not stop the proposed project. ConocoPhillips has already received approval to build a gravel road, including a bridge over the Colville to access their oil field. The National Importance designation simply required a heightened level of review before the project moved forward. For Congress to overturn this EPA finding through a provision buried in what is supposed to be a technical manager's amendment is not appropriate.

Mr. Chairman, I doubt a single Member of this House has an informed opinion regarding whether the Colville River is an Aquatic Resource of National Importance. But I will tell you who does have an informed position on that question, and that is the scientists in Alaska working for the Environmental Protection Agency.

This provision is an ill-informed sneak attack on an agency decision, and for the purposes of this debate, it has no place in a manager's amendment. It should be a stand-alone amendment that we're debating. Because of the inappropriateness of it being inside of the manager's amendment, I would have to oppose this provision.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time just to say that I don't have a problem in debating this issue, but I just think it should be done in an appropriate way. It is an important issue. It overturns an EPA decision of some significance and I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman. This is just another example

that Congress knows best. It is a Republican solution to everything. Let's not let the agency professionals do their jobs on a case-by-case basis. Let's have a one-size-fits-all, 3-day shot clock that we put on a request that could have significant impacts environmentally in areas.

And by the way, if the agency is not ready, they might just reject it on day two because there's not enough information, rather than having an orderly process that makes it possible for the agency to be able to determine in a conversation with perhaps a government entity, but perhaps not, all of the details of what the implications are, what the ramifications of this request would be.

But it's not different than the shot clock that you want to put on the Department of the Interior in 60 days having to approval drilling in sensitive offshore or onshore lands in our country. All of these things are basically part of a Republican agenda to ensure that the hands of the government are actually tied in protecting the health and environment of our country.

What the gentleman from Nebraska is doing, which is part and parcel of a systematic approach to undermine the ability of those agencies that are tasked with the job of protecting the health, of protecting the environment, of protecting the safety of individual citizens, is to have handcuffs put on them so they cannot discharge their responsibility.

I urge in the strongest possible terms a ``no'' vote on the Terry amendment.

I thank the gentleman.

I have a suggestion to succinctly tell the whole story about the tens of millions of acres that oil companies are allowing to sit idle. Fox should create a new TV show for the oil companies holding all these idle wells, and it could be called ``American Idle,'' with Exxon and Chevron and BP and all those companies as the contestants. Every week, the oil companies can come and sing their sad tune about needing more taxpayer-owned land to drill even as their lease blocks are left lonely for years at a time and they don't drill at all.

ExxonMobil and BP could sing songs like ``Not Taking Care of Business'' or ``Sitting on a Block in the Bay,'' where the refrain sung by the oil company executives would, of course, be ``wastin' time.''

And Simon Cowell could come back to the show he created so we can all watch as he mocks these companies for their subpar drilling performance. And of course, in typical fashion for the oil industry, they'll still demand to be advanced to the next round of leasing, even though they're doing nothing.

And by the way, in this bill, the Republicans actually have a provision that if the President, because Iran attacked us, deployed 10 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that we, the American people, would then have to lease 200 million acres, an area the size of Texas to the oil companies to drill because the President deployed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, even though the oil companies already have an area the size of Kentucky in public lands that they are not drilling on.

So this whole American Idle thing really plays perfectly into the Republican plan because right now the oil companies pay $1.50 per year per acre not to drill while at the same time bleating that they are being discriminated against, even as the President now has us at the highest rate of oil production in the United States in 18 years, which is a very hard thing for the Republicans to finally come here to the floor and admit.

Vote for the Holt amendment. That is the solution to this problem. Then we'll get America and the oil companies back to work and away from their idle ways, which is hurting the national security of this country.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, this provision reminds me of something that French author Anatole France once said. He said that the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.

So, yes, under the bill's petroleum protest poll tax, the rich as well as the poor are charged $5,000 as a fee to protest an oil company drilling plant that could undermine the environment or the safety or the view of a particular individual; but the law is clearly targeted against the poor.

So if you are one of the super-rich like, say, Mitt Romney, having to pay a $5,000 fee to protest is nothing. It's less than half of what you offer up when you make a friendly little bet with a friend. If you're the Koch brothers and you want to stop the Cape Wind project from blocking your view out on the ocean, that's a small price to pay to be able to undermine a project that you're not happy with. For everyone else, this is basic economic discrimination. This $5,000 fee isn't just a tollbooth on the highway of justice. It is a brick wall.

Just by contrast, the United States Supreme Court--the highest court in the land--charges $300 to appeal a case. For an American citizen who is earning minimum wage, it would take 4 months of working full time and forgoing food and shelter in order to pay this protest fee which the Republicans want to put on the books. So, ordinary people, they're going to have to pay up now if they want to protest, and the environmental justice that has been denied poor people in our country over the last several generations just continues under this. This is what it's all about--environmental justice.

What you're doing is you're imposing a poll tax--an environmental poll tax, a polluter's poll tax, a petroleum poll tax--on ordinary families. It is just wrong, unnecessary, but oh so obvious in what the agenda is. It's not to block the Koch brothers from trying to block Cape Wind but, rather, just ordinary citizens from having their days in court so they can make their protests in a way that doesn't bankrupt the families.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, we know that the Republican majority thinks current law governing hard rock mining in this country is about as close to perfect as they can get, and we know that international mining giants like Barrick Gold and Rio Tinto agree with our Republican colleagues. The status quo is really ideal from their perspective. That is because the status quo allows these multinational companies to mine billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, and other minerals on Federal lands without paying a dime in royalties. What's not to like if you're a multinational offshore company coming into our country?

The law allowing this disgraceful windfall was signed by Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, and there it sits immune from change, immune from improvement or update for 140 years. What we did not realize was just how far this majority will go to make sure even the smallest corner of the current setup is never, ever changed.

The administration has announced plans to consider whether merging some of the functions of the Office of Surface Mining and the Bureau of Land Management might lead to efficiencies and save the American taxpayers some money. The jury is still out on that idea, but we must ensure that we can continue to exercise proper oversight of mining activities on public lands and ensure that American taxpayers and States can continue to receive a proper return on these minerals.

A February report to Secretary Salazar recommended that the two agencies stay largely independent of each other. The merger plans have yet to be developed or announced and would likely be limited to money- saving ideas like combining human resource divisions, employee training programs, and fleet management operations. This streamlining could reportedly save as much as $5 million annually of taxpayers' money, something that the GSA, perhaps, could take as a lesson as to how they should operate.

At the very least, the administration deserves the time to fully develop and present a plan that can be debated on its merits. But this amendment says ``no.'' This amendment would specifically prohibit the administration from even considering whether aspects of this idea have merit and would save the taxpayers money, which is the goal of the plan that the Department of the Interior is considering.

Not only do our Republican colleagues reject any and all efforts to bring the Federal mining law into the 21st century--I would even take the 20th century, for that matter--but they bristle at the very idea of thinking about ways to better organize the agencies overseeing mining on Federal lands.

We should let the administration do its job. We should also get serious about ending royalty-free mining on public lands. This amendment really misses the point entirely. We need to be more efficient. We have to save the taxpayers money, and we also have to make sure that these multinationals pay more to mine the minerals of the American people.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is quite simple. It prohibits the export of oil and natural gas produced from leases on the public lands of the United States that are going to be authorized under this bill.

America's number one export last year was American fuel--number one. No other product did we export more of last year than the fuel that is produced here in the United States. More than $100 billion in American- made fuels was sent overseas to China, to Morocco, to Singapore, and other countries.

This infuriates Americans pulling up to the pump and paying more than $3.50 a gallon to fill up. Not only do oil companies want to continue exporting American fuel, but they're now talking about lifting restrictions on exporting America's crude oil as domestic production continues to increase.

Just this week, the President of the American Petroleum Institute announced that exporting America's crude oil should be a serious consideration. Let me say that again: Big Oil is now stating publicly, in no uncertain terms, that they want to be able to export crude oil produced in the United States.

Earlier, the majority whip said that this bill will make us energy independent. Well, without the Markey amendment, there is no way that an oil company just won't export the fuel and the natural gas, and now the head of the American Petroleum Institute says Big Oil also wants to start exporting America's crude oil, as well.

As American men and women are on the ground in the Middle East fighting and dying to protect oil supply lines coming from the Middle East into the United States, Big Oil wants to export oil produced here in America to China, to other countries around the world. That is truly frightening, and it's wrong, ladies and gentlemen. It is wrong in terms of our relationship with the young men and women who fight for us, who defend us around the world.

Big Oil is beholden to shareholder interests only. They do not care about American national security, and they certainly don't like Americans to enjoy low energy prices, which is what's happening right now with natural gas. They want a bigger cut. They want to create a global national gas market and a global price, just like they have for oil. That's the plan.

And the companies are lining up at the Department of Energy right now to get permits to export American natural gas. There are 15 applications seeking to export 28 percent of our current natural gas, American natural gas, natural gas here in the United States all around the world.

And why do they want to do that? Well, they want to do that--even though the Energy Department says it could lead to a 54 percent increase in the price of natural gas for Americans--they want to do it for a very simple reason. The price of natural gas in Japan right now is seven times higher than the price of natural gas here in America. American companies want to sell the natural gas to the Japanese rather than to Americans because they can make seven times as much money. In Europe, it's four times as high. They want to sell the natural gas of America overseas rather than keep the prices low for people to keep their homes heated, to keep our industries growing. The petrochemical industry, the fertilizer industry, the plastics industry, all those industries are dependent upon these fuels.

No, that's good for the oil industry. It's very bad for the American manufacturing sector because low-priced natural gas is what's fueling the increase in manufacturing all across this country.

So I just totally reject the premise of the majority in allowing for the sale of our oil and gas out of our land across the country.

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

I will, then, yield myself the remainder of the time.

In summary, Price Waterhouse estimates that U.S. manufacturing companies could employ 1 million more workers if they continued to have low-priced natural gas. Exporting natural gas, exporting crude oil is only going to hurt our domestic economy, except for one industry: the oil industry.

American oil production right now is at its highest level since Bill Clinton. Natural gas production is at its all-time high ever. And what the American petroleum industry is now saying is that we want to start exporting this crude oil, start exporting this natural gas around the planet.

Keep American oil and natural gas here in America. Do not export it to other countries. It should be for Americans, and it should be for American companies. Vote ``aye'' on the Markey amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I rise to claim the time in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, every day will be Mardi Gras down in Louisiana if the gentleman's amendment is adopted. We--that is all the rest of us in the country--are already going to be sending $150 billion to these four States over the next 60 years. I don't blame the gentleman for coming back to try to get another bite at the apple, or, in this case, another bite at the king cake.

But I would say to the gentleman from Louisiana that his State already won the baby in the king cake when the GOMESA giveaway was enacted back in 2006, and you're already entitled to $150 billion worth of revenue coming out of the Federal Government and heading your way. And so I just think it's time for your region to give

a little back to the other 46 States in the Union that didn't benefit from that 2006 giveaway to you. We're not begrudging that. What's done is done and you get the $150 billion. But I just think it's time for us to start thinking about starting to reduce the Federal deficit and starting to spend some of this money that comes in from the revenues from the drilling, and that it helps out the whole country. And so I would just make that case to everyone else.

By the way, if you come from one of those four States, vote for the gentleman from Louisiana's amendment. It's a good amendment for you if come from one of those four States. But if you come from one of the other 46 States, you've got rocks in your head if you're voting for that amendment because it's just another $6 billion going from your pockets into the pockets of those four States down there. And it just makes no sense at all after the $150 billion we gave them just 6 years ago.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, I'd be willing to have a conversation with the gentleman from Louisiana about what the proper way is of dealing with the funding for the preservation of the wetlands and the other environmentally sensitive areas down in the Gulf of Mexico, but this isn't the way to do it. This is just another permanent entitlement that we're building into the law here unattached to the hearings and the evidence that we need in order to make sure that whatever expenditures are made by the Federal Government are actually going for the intended purpose. And that's not what this discussion is here tonight with a 5-minute amendment that we're debating.

Six billion dollars should come under closer scrutiny than the debate we're having at quarter past 9 at night on the House floor where the only people who are watching the debate really need to get a life, because that's about the level of public scrutiny this is getting right now. I just think the $6 billion that the gentleman is seeking to request from the public has to be dispensed in a way that actually has a better process.

Again, I oppose the gentleman's amendment. I understand its intention. But for the other 46 States, I just don't think it's a good idea at this time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

This amendment would order the Secretary of the Interior to conduct oil and gas leasing offshore in Virginia. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which was a lesson to all of us about the risks inherent in deepwater drilling, the Obama administration wisely canceled the proposed lease sale.

The overwhelming majority of the Virginia lease sale area infringes on critical training areas for the United States Navy. The Department of Defense itself has concluded that over 78 percent of the lease sale area would occur in areas where military operations would be impeded by drilling structures and related activities.

This area is already home to a number of critical military actions, including live ordnance tests, aircraft carrier qualifications, sensitive undersea and surface operations, and shipboard qualification tests. The military's continued activities in this area would torpedo drilling in most of this land.

Of the remaining 22 percent of the lease area, the majority of the unrestricted waters available for leasing would occur in the main shipping channel for Norfolk and the Chesapeake Bay, as well as the main channel used by submarines. So in the end, drilling could only even conceivably occur in about 10 percent of the area that the majority is talking about off the Virginia coast. When this Congress still has not passed a single legislative reform to improve the safety of offshore drilling, this just doesn't seem like it's worth of risk.

While some States may support offshore drilling, New Jersey and Maryland both oppose it, along with many other States along the Eastern Seaboard. These States' economies depend on the tourism that comes to see pristine, oil-free beaches and fishing that happens in their waters. And we are talking about their waters. As we saw during the BP disaster, drilling off the coast of Virginia could affect Maryland, New Jersey, and many other States up and down the East Coast because of oil spills which do not respect State boundaries.

This Congress has yet to enact a single safety reform following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The independent, blue ribbon BP Spill Commission recently gave Congress a grade of ``D'' on its legislative response to the worst environmental disaster offshore in American history, and only refrained from handing out an ``F'' because, and these are the words of the BP Spill Commission, it did not want ``to insult the whole institution.''

The gentleman's amendment would place the entire East Coast at risk of a spill in order to open up an area where drilling may only be able to occur in about 10 percent of the area. That doesn't make any sense for our coastal States and their economies. The risks that we run are much higher than the very small benefits that can be derived.

I urge rejection of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, June 21, 2012, ABCD will celebrate and honor its late founder, Bob Coard, by renaming its Boston headquarters in honor of this titan in the effort to enable upward mobility and a higher quality of life for all people, regardless of income or situation in life. I rise today to commemorate and congratulate this incredible community action program the nation's leading anti-poverty organization, and to salute my great friend, the late, Bob Coard. From Beacon Hill to Capitol Hill, Bob was a consistent, persistent and insistent force, working tirelessly to direct critical resources toward the fight to eradicate poverty.

Bob was an early, highly-effective general in the War on Poverty. He began his unmatched service even before President Johnson urged communities to organize around the vision of a creating a Great Society free of poverty and abundant in opportunity for all Americans regardless of race, creed or income. And Bob was still on the job when an extraordinary community organizer, President Obama, was sworn in as our 44th president. For all those years, ``ABCD'' didn't just stand for ``Action for Boston Community Development.'' It also stood for ``Anything Bob Coard Desired.''

When Bob called, it was because he needed action for Boston's most vulnerable residents--more money for home heating assistance, help with Medicaid funding, support for Head Start.

And we knew Bob was right because Bob recognized that our great challenge here in the United States is to bestow the world's blessings on all of God's children--to ensure, as President Kennedy said in his Inaugural address, that ``God's work on earth must truly be our own.''

The son of a civil servant from Grenada, Bob Coard immigrated to this country to pursue the American Dream. Once here, he dedicated his own life to helping others pursue that same dream.

When Bob started work at ABCD in 1964, the organization was only two years old and it had a tiny staff. Today, it has 1,000 employees and carries out a wide array of programs focused on meeting the needs of the poor and disadvantaged in the City of Boston.

Recognizing that education provides the best way for young people to, in his words, ``make it in this world,'' Bob started two high schools for at-risk youth at ABCD, in collaboration with the Boston Public Schools.

ABCD has been called the unsung hero of Boston. For 50 years ABCD has saved lives and made dreams come true, and while ABCD is at the heart of Boston's communities, it was the heart of Bob Coard that pushed ABCD to the national model it is today, and John Drew's amazing leadership that keeps that heart beating strong.

From providing heating assistance for those in need during New England's long, cold winters to delivering job training to those who need work, ABCD is the bridge from poverty to self-sufficiency. The opportunities ABCD provides for low-income Boston residents to get back on their feet, live with dignity and achieve their full potential are building blocks for the continued success of these communities.

Today, ABCD's assistance to people and communities has grown to all sectors of poverty relief.

ABCD organizes Head Start programs for over 2,400 low-income children and families every year.

ABCD supplies fuel assistance to more than 22,000 families a year.

ABCD provides services for thousands of at-risk youth through SummerWorks, career development and two alternative high schools, and health services and family planning for more than 30,000 people every year through its Health Services Department.

From the ABCD Foster Grandparents bringing love and security to disadvantaged children, to programs that offer assistance in asset development, tax assistance and financial education, ABCD offers stability, a sense of community and economic security to low-income families.

In President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second inaugural address, he famously declared that ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

That was Bob Coard's definition of progress, that is John Drew's definition of progress, that is ABCD's mission everyday.

It is with great pride that I congratulate ABCD for its 50 years of vital service to the community, and that I commemorate my friend Bob Coard as ABCD dedicates its Tremont Street headquarters in his honor this Thursday on Boston Common.

It is fitting that Bob Coard's building gazes out on the Common, a lush landscape where Americans from every walk of life enjoy the same open space, on equal footing. And just as the Common is part of the Emerald Necklace of parks and parkways that extend out to Franklin Park in Roxbury, Bob Coard and ABCD stitched together an array of programs that, taken together, provide a safety net for lifting Bay State residents out of poverty and into a new life of self-sufficiency.

Bob Coard and ABCD are American icons, and I congratulate Bob's wife Donna, John

Drew and the entire ABCD team for the incredible work that makes such a difference in the lives of so many Massachusetts residents.

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

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of the House, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2578.

Now, some of you may recall the old Rod Serling television show, ``The Twilight Zone.'' At the beginning of each episode, Serling would explain that viewers were ``about to enter another dimension--a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone.''

Well, that is very much where we are this week on the House floor. We are truly entering another dimension--a wondrous land of paranoid imagination. Republicans call it the ``Operational Control Zone,'' but it is really the ``Drone Zone.''

Submitted for your consideration are the following facts:

This week, world leaders are gathering in Rio to deal with the threat of global warming. Meanwhile, the majority has us gathered here to address the threat sea lions pose to salmon. Right now, firefighters are working day and night to try to contain wildfires in forests in Colorado and New Mexico, and the majority has us working here to give away old-growth Alaskan forest.

We have just 2 weeks before the transportation authorization bill expires and student loan rates double. And what are we doing? We are spending an entire day on a piece of legislation that has zero chance of being enacted into law. It is a package of bad ideas that are largely irrelevant to the real issues facing our Nation.

Title I of this bill would flood part of a Wild and Scenic River. Title III is an earmark to an Alaskan Native corporation that will facilitate clear-cutting in the Tongass National Forest. Titles IV and V appear to create new parks, but include harmful provisions that would cripple the management of these parks. Title VII would authorize the death penalty for sea lions whose only crime is eating fish. Title X would overturn the protections for endangered turtles from being run over by off-road vehicles. Title XI would extend the practice of below- cost grazing on public lands--a bargain-basement discount for cattlemen all across this country not paying their fair share. Actually, being a type of Federal welfare for cattlemen. And unbelievably, title XIV would create a 100-mile ``drone zone'' along our northern and southern borders within which the Border Patrol could suspend 36 environmental laws and seize control of all public land management.

Let me spend a moment here talking about what I find to be the most offensive part of this legislation: title XIV. This is the national map. What the Republicans do here today is they take a 100-mile area all along the northern border of the United States and the southern border of the United States and they create a new area. And this new area is really a drone zone. The reason that it's a drone zone is that it allows for 36 health and safety and environmental laws to be overridden, and it would expand the area where the Department of Homeland Security could use drones for surveillance. It allows the Department of Homeland Security to shut down national parks at a moment's notice. So all of a sudden the Department of Homeland Security can start using drones in this area.

Now, when you add up all of the space that is now included, it is equal to the total area of California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut combined, which will now be in this new special area that has the Department of Homeland Security determining where drones can be used. And as we know, that won't be just for ensuring environmental laws not being violated. They'll be over this whole area.

Now, if you take a look at this map, I understand why the gentleman from Utah introduced this bill. Utah is far away from the Republican drone zone. They're not within the hundred miles of the border of the Mexican or Canadian people. But what if you live in Maine? Nearly your entire State is in this drone zone. Want to go to Acadia National Park? Better check with the Department of Homeland Security and the Republicans first. Or Minnesota: maybe you want to take a trip up to the Boundary Waters. Better check with the Department of Homeland Security and the Republicans first. Or Olympia National Park in Washington State: better check with the Department of Homeland Security or the Republicans first.

Want clean air in the drone zone? Better make sure the Department of Homeland Security and the Republicans haven't exempted the Clean Air Act. Want to drink some water after a long hike? Better make sure the Department of Homeland Security and the Republicans haven't waived the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Make no mistake, this isn't a bill that actually addresses America's immigration issues. Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor its Customs and Border Protection division support this bill. They don't want this authority, but the Republicans are insisting on giving them this authority--100 miles along the Mexican and Canadian borders.

The GOP's drone zone bill does not increase resources for border agents, but instead turns over our natural resources to the Department of Homeland Security. Passing this bill does not increase the number of Border Patrol agent boots on the ground. It just ignores the protections against trampling on sovereign and sacred ground like tribal grave sites. It does not look for a path toward citizenship. It tells families on vacation or a picnic that the Department of Homeland Security can kick you off a path at any moment.

Under this bill, ranchers and their cattle can be herded away by border agents, jeopardizing their entire ranching operation. Families and visitors to public parks can have their trips canceled. And the water, the air, and the land will be left unprotected.

Instead of working to pass a DREAM Act to help solve the immigration challenge, House Republicans instead want to create a nightmare scenario at our borders. That's why more than 50 Hispanic and Latino groups have joined with environmental organizations,

tribal groups, and organizations representing sportsmen and hunters to oppose the Republican drone zone bill. Fifty Hispanic and Latino groups opposing this bill.

We might be spending 4 hours here today on the House floor in a legislative twilight zone created by the majority considering a bill that isn't grounded in reality. But as we do, let us not forget that there are millions of Americans outside of this alternative reality who are trying to make ends meet, trying to keep their families together and safe, and hoping to maintain the environmental protections which make our country great.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Napolitano), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Water and Power.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlelady from the State of Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

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

Mr. Chairman, we're about to talk about grazing fees. For people in many parts of the country, they may not know what that is. That is that, on Federal lands across the country, cattlemen can bring their cattle onto Federal lands--that is, the public lands of the United States--and graze. And what are they charged? Well, they're charged $1.35. That's exactly what they were charged in 1986.

Now, right next to this Federal land, in many States, there is State land. That State land in Colorado is very valuable; but they ensure, the Governor of Colorado, that the cattlemen there in that State pay $10 to graze, not 1.35. In Montana, cattlemen have to pay $7.90. In Utah, they have to pay $7.30. But on the public lands in each of those States--that is, the Federal lands--it's 1.35, just hasn't increased. And who pays the price? Well, the Federal taxpayer pays the price because the cattlemen get to basically have this incredible subsidy.

So, just to use the analogy, when I started working, I got paid $1.35 when I was a kid. I'm sure there are many people who would still like to just pay $1.35 for a kid to work in the supermarket, but they can't do it because time moves on--unless you're a cattleman, where they have locked that minimum price into a hermetically sealed, cryogenically frozen price, $1.35. That's great, except for the Federal taxpayer who cannot collect all of the money they need.

Or should we just say, for the sake of discussion, that you happen to have a rent-controlled apartment in New York City. The rent was set back in 1986 or 1976, and now the markets have raised that price up to perhaps $4,000. The Republicans would say, well, rent control, that's good; we like keeping the price that way because it benefits a certain class of people. And I understand the Republican philosophy of freezing in prices that way--keeping the minimum wage as low as possible, keeping the rent control price for an apartment as low as possible. I understand the government intervention role of the Federal Government not allowing the free market to determine the price of something. But here what happens is that it balloons the Federal deficit because people aren't able to collect what we absolutely know to be the price to graze for a cow per day. We know what the price is because, in the adjoining land in Colorado or Utah or in Montana or in Washington State, we know what the State is charging on State public lands.

So this is just an attempt to give the Department of the Interior the ability to raise by $1--not all the way up to $10, not all the way up to $7, but just $1 from $1.35 up to $2.35--just as a little experiment just to see what happens out there in the market when people actually have to pay something that even remotely approximates what the price to graze would be.

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

Would the Chair please inform us as to how much time is remaining?

I will, at this point, continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the remainder of my time.

So this argument that's being made by the Republicans is nonsensical. What you're saying is, that in your home State, on State land, you charge 10 bucks or 7 bucks to the cattlemen to graze. But on Federal land it's only a buck 35 in your State. And your answer to raising the price for cattlemen is that we should be having a debate over whether or not the State of Colorado or Montana controls all of the Federal land in your State. Then you'll begin to debate whether or not cattlemen should get away with only a buck 35?

You know, you're giving new definition to the term ``free range beef.''

You're allowing for the cattlemen in these States to get away with murder, and you're not even debating the issue of how they get away with this.

That's all we want from you. Tell us why you think they deserve a buck 35. You don't even want to reach that issue. You want to go off on the secondary issue of how much land in each State is controlled by the Federal Government, which is not what we are debating. We're debating how cattlemen get away with this bargain basement price that then comes to every other State to make up the difference in the Federal deficit because you're unwilling to collect it.

Meanwhile, you say to Grandma, higher rates for Medicare. You say to kids in school, higher payback for the loans that you take out. But for the cattlemen in your home State, somehow or other you don't understand that this is a debate that goes to the heart of why it is the people are very unhappy with the way the Federal Government operates.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Chair

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

This amendment is just further evidence that the problem this drone zone bill claims to be solving does not exist and that the underlying bill is a dangerous overreach.

When this legislation was first introduced, we were told that it was necessary to establish this 100-mile drone zone around the entire United States--east coast, west coast, Hawaii, and Alaska. That version of the drone zone looked like a giant red belt surrounding the entire country. Then supporters of the bill decided that they'd gone too far. The bill was altered to say the drone zone would only cover a 100-mile stretch along our northern and southern borders and along the eastern border of Alaska. Even with that change, we were still assured that a blanket waiver of the full list of 36 bedrock environmental laws was absolutely necessary for our border security.

Now we have a further change.

This amendment will reduce the list of laws weighed by the drone zone from 36 environmental laws down to 16 environmental laws. This is the ever-shrinking bill. It gets smaller and smaller as people realize that environmental laws are not the problem when it comes to border security and that the zone created by this bill would harm the environment and individual freedoms for millions of Americans.

The Bishop amendment proves that the underlying bill has always been an extreme and extremely harmful solution to a problem that does not exist. Perhaps if we give supporters enough time, they can shrink this idea down to waiving parking enforcement in a small area around Tucson. This amendment reduces the damage this bill would do, but it does not begin to prevent that damage. Waiving 36 laws was an unnecessary overreach, and waiving 16 laws would be as well.

Limiting the scope of this terrible bill is a small step in the right direction, so there is no reason to oppose this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Would the Chair please inform the Members as to the time remaining on both sides.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I am the final speaker on our side if the gentleman from Utah is ready to conclude debate.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the gentleman from New Mexico.

H.R. 2938 should not have been brought to the House floor under suspension of the rules. This legislation doesn't name a post office or authorize a park study. H.R. 2938, instead, is a highly controversial piece of legislation that will amend a settlement agreement between the United States and an Indian tribe, impose restrictions on a tribe's authority to use its own land, and circumvent years of Federal and State court rulings.

During consideration by the Natural Resources Committee, members from both sides of the aisle expressed concern with this measure. House Members have heard from tribes across the country, Arizona State legislators, local mayors, small business owners, and community leaders on both sides of this issue. The number of stakeholders with strong feelings on both sides of this issue is plain evidence that the bill does not belong on suspension.

So we're here tonight, and the implications for local, regional, and national gaming industry precedents are quite significant. We should only bring suspension-worthy bills out here on the floor. I say that because Mr. Grijalva from Arizona, whose tribal constituents are the sole target of this legislation, is being denied this opportunity and, therefore, any chance to address his constituents' needs. And I think that since it does affect his district, his tribe, he's on the Natural Resources Committee, he deserves the right to be able to make amendments that can improve this legislation, and he is not going to be allowed to do that.

So that is my view on this bill, that it's under the wrong process. Suspensions are really meant for bills that do not bring the level of complexity and the level of controversy that a bill like this brings to the House floor, and as a result, I urge a ``no'' vote.

I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I rise in support of the Polis amendment. He and I are introducing this amendment so that we can, once again, demonstrate the lack of compatibility of the priorities of this budget to the overall well-being of our country.

The Cold War ended 20 years ago. We won. Since that time, there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of nuclear weapons that both the United States and the former Soviet Union deploy. That number continues to drop. Yet, here in this budget, there is additional profligate spending on new nuclear weapons programs, on weapons modernization. Well, let me just say this, ladies and gentlemen:

Each nuclear submarine that the United States has has 96 independently targetable nuclear warheads. That means that every single nuclear commander of a submarine in the United States can destroy the entire country of Russia, can destroy the entire country of China--each American nuclear submarine commander--and neither Russia nor China knows where those submarines are. We should be proud of ourselves. We are 10-feet tall compared to the Russians, compared to the Chinese.

By the way, any problems that we have with Iran or with Syria in terms of Russian support for them or Chinese support for them have nothing to do with our nuclear weapons capability. That's not influencing them one way or the other. If we needed to ever drop a nuclear bomb on any one of our enemies--let's just say we had a war with Iran--and after the nuclear sub commanders in the United States Navy were to send one nuclear weapon towards Tehran, what would the next target be?

What are we doing out here? Why are we talking about additional nuclear weapons in the 21st century? Why are we talking about cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid, cutting programs for poor children, cutting nutrition programs for poor children, and at the same time saying that we need more nuclear weapons?

This is a wayback machine. It's a Cold War time machine that basically says that the inexorable investment of political capital already made continues to drive the investments of the future; that we aren't going to step back and reevaluate that we won the Cold War; that we're not going to have a nuclear war with Russia; that we're not going to have a nuclear war with China; that we are 10 feet tall. Even if all there is is parity, each country understands that it's a total annihilation to use these weapons.

Let's save this money. Vote ``aye'' on the Polis amendment. Send a signal to the world. Send a signal to our own people that at least we can find some expenditure in the defense budget which we can cut and which is not related to our national security. That's all that we ask from you: that please, on one vote, on the nuclear weapons issue, where we don't need new weapons, that there is a vote for sanity, that there is a vote that we send as a signal to the rest of the world and to our own people that we understand that that nuclear arms race is over. Vote ``aye'' on the Polis amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment.

After Congress privatized the United States Enrichment Corporation in 1996, we quickly learned that it couldn't survive in the private sector without continued and repeated bailouts to the tune of billions of dollars. We've given it free centrifuge technology. We've given it free uranium that it enriches and then sells at below-market prices, undercutting its competitors. We've paid to clean up its radioactive messes. We have assumed its liabilities.

And what has happened to these investments? The entire company is worth less than the $100 million contained in this bill that's the next gift that the Congress is giving to this company. Adam Smith is spinning in his grave so rapidly right now that he would qualify as a new energy source. That's how violative of free-market principles this continued subsidy of this company is, knowing that there are other companies that can provide the same resource without the government subsidies.

Even after the Department of Energy's recent announcement of another gift of free uranium to USEC, Standard & Poor's downgraded it to junk- bond status. Who invests in something that has already achieved junk- bond status with the exception of the United States Congress? That's what we're voting on here today, funding of a company that is now in junk-bond status. And JPMorgan, the company's creditor, now directly controls every penny USEC spends because it felt the company could not manage its own precarious finances.

When I asked the Treasury Department whether government support for the company put taxpayers at risk, it said yes and that extreme care should be taken before offering any exposure to the taxpayer. But are we following the Treasury Department's advice? No. The Department of Energy has approved hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of subsidies for this company and is about to approve another $82 million bailout in the coming days. And Congress has acceded to pressure to insert even more money in no fewer than three pieces of legislation that are currently pending, including the $100 million contained in this bill.

We've been told this bailout is only about getting the tritium we need for our nuclear weapons, but this is just not true. The treaty that governs uranium enrichment technology does not prevent other companies from doing this work. Even if it did, there are even additional alternatives. When DOE examined its tritium options, it found that down-blending surplus highly enriched uranium that it already has would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars less than obtaining the services from this company.

This amendment is supported by a coalition that spans the political horizon that makes it possible for Mr. Burgess--a very conservative Member from Texas--to join with a very liberal Congressman from Massachusetts in agreeing that the pragmatic center here has lost its bearings. It has lost touch with the free-market principles. And at least if we're going to subsidize something, let's see that it's not already reached junk-bond status and we're continuing to pour good money after bad.

This is something that in my opinion is unacceptable. The Department of Energy has already given $44 million for this program this year, and it is about to provide another $82 million as it prepares to buy the centrifuges that have yet to be demonstrated to work properly. That's right, $126 million that will buy centrifuges from a company whose total value is now less than $90 million.

As part of the deal, the taxpayers also have to assume liability for the company's nuclear waste.

We should not be throwing good money after bad. This is $100 million that should not be wasted. Please support the Burgess-Markey amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

The reason Mr. Fortenberry and I are making this

amendment is that it would address a wrongheaded plan by the Department of Energy to build a facility to produce dangerous, highly radioactive nuclear fuel that no one actually wants to buy.

The Department wants to take uranium and plutonium from dismantled nuclear bombs and make fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.

This plan will cost taxpayers $2 billion. It is a nuclear bomb budget-buster. It is the most expensive way to boil water that has ever been proposed on the planet. It is also unnecessary--no electric utility in the United States wants to buy this fuel. It is also a serious threat to human health. The MOX--the mixed oxide plutonium fuel--is actually more dangerous than existing commercial nuclear fuel. And in the event of a nuclear disaster, the releases from a MOX fuels reactor will cause between 39 and 131 percent more fatalities than a traditional fuel nuclear reactor.

MOX is a reverse Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will not come. The utility industry is not going to arrive. Instead, it is a nightmare that will leave future generations to safeguard a dangerous fuel with no buyers.

I congratulate the gentleman, and I urge an ``aye'' vote.

I thank the gentleman from Indiana very much.

I just rise to briefly talk about light bulbs, because I know it's a subject of great interest to all of the Members, and I know that there is going to be an effort by some Republican Members later on tonight to repeal the new light bulb efficiency laws. And I just rise to do a little bit of an explanation of what has happened.

Five years ago a law passed here on the floor of the House, and it became law. And that law said that these old light bulbs, these light bulbs that Thomas Alva Edison invented and people really love, they had to be made 28 percent more efficient in order to be sold in the United States. They really hadn't been made much more efficient.

And a lot of people, they really love old light bulbs. They don't want their automobiles to look the same way they did 50 years ago. They don't want their television sets to look the same way they did 50 years, they don't want their cell phones to look the same way they did 15 years ago; but they really want their light bulbs to look the same, many people.

And so here's what the American lighting industry did: Sylvania and General Electric, they make the same light bulb now. It gives off the same color, looks the same. Grandma had this light bulb in her house that gave off that warm glow that you remember from when you visited Grandma. Well, the new one gives off the same warm glow, except for this, that over the life of this new light bulb, you save $5 over what Grandma had to pay to the electric company to keep it on. You save five bucks because it's so much more efficient.

Now, it seems to me that we shouldn't be trying to repeal a law like that that reduces the amount of electricity that every American needs to use in their home. And by the way, times every light bulb in your home over the course of a year, you're going to save $100 to $160 every year. Same light bulb. It's on the market today. You can go out and buy it. You don't have to hoard it.

I know some people are hoarding the old light bulbs that are 28 percent less efficient, and that's their right. They can do that. But you can go to the department store and buy the same light bulb, same looking light bulb, and save $5 over the life of that light bulb giving off the same amount of light.

Now, I'm not saying that you have to go out and buy one of these squiggly deals. Now, if you do go out and buy one of these squiggly deals, you actually have 78 percent more efficiency and you save even more money if you buy one of these. But no one's saying you have to. You can use the same old light bulb. It's in the store today. Nothing got banned in terms of the old light bulb technology. It's still the same incandescent light bulb that Grandma used, except it's 28 percent more efficient.

And I'm definitely not saying you've got to buy one of these new jobs which are in the stores as well. This only saves you $130 over the course of the 20-year life of this light bulb. In fact, increasingly, what's going to happen is that when people move, in addition to packing up their television sets and their sofas, they're going to be packing up their light bulbs because these things save you money, $130 per light bulb over the course of this light bulb.

But, again, you don't have to buy this if you don't like the way it looks. You don't have to buy one of these squiggly deals because you don't like the way it looks. You can go to the store and just buy the same light bulb that your grandma bought, that your great grandma bought, because this thing goes back, really, to the beginning of the 20th century. And you can have the exact same feel, look in your living room, in your kitchen, in your bedrooms.

Again, I just wanted to make this very clear to all of the Members, because in the course of the debate today, we're going to have this discussion, but I have no idea why you would want to ban something that's 28 percent more efficient. Refrigerators are more efficient than they were 50 years ago; automobiles are; there has been a dramatic reduction in the cost of making a phone call on a cell phone; and now light bulbs are in the same category, but they look exactly the same.

I am just, again, making the point so that later on in the day, as we perhaps have a roll call on this, that Members can understand what they're voting for.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss H.R. 5186, the Halt Index Trading of Energy Commodities, or HITEC, Act. I recently introduced this bill with Representatives Frank and DeLauro because I believe urgent action is needed to protect our nation's oil and refined product commodities markets from artificial and excessive levels of volatility caused by the trading practices of certain Wall Street traders. Since 1991, Wall Street investment banks such as Goldman Sachs have created and marketed a new financial product known as commodity index funds, which are really energy speculation funds, gasoline gambles. These energy speculation funds track the financial performance of one or more commodities. If a speculation fund has an investment in oil and the value of oil goes up, then the value of the fund goes up; if the value of oil goes down, the value of the speculation fund goes down.

These investments have been incredibly popular with investors but have had an adverse effect on the operation of the markets for the commodities that comprise the funds. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in various energy speculation funds, artificially inflating the prices of our commodities. While these energy speculation funds may be driving up prices for many different commodities, they are having an especially pernicious effect on energy commodities. According to testimony submitted to the House Natural Resources Committee, excessive speculation added nearly $1.00 to the per gallon price of

gasoline this spring, and energy speculation funds appear to be largely responsible. Due to the activities of these energy speculation funds, Wall Street investment banks have profited by introducing new and unprecedented levels of volatility and speculation into oil and refined product markets.

Energy speculation funds have changed the very nature of our commodities markets. Traditionally, the commodities market was dominated by companies who actually used the commodities to hedge the business risk associated with oil or refined products prices. Large oil, gasoline, diesel or jet fuel consumers such as airlines, trucking firms, and shipping services were the largest participants in these markets. Indeed, in 1996, companies who actually bought oil on the commodities market so they could use it owned 93% of the oil futures or derivatives in that market. Now, however, these companies only own 37% of the oil futures or derivatives in that market. The bulk of the remaining 63% is owned by speculators who have invested in these energy speculation funds, none of whom will actually use any of the oil or natural gas in which they have invested.

Despite only being twenty-one years old, energy speculation funds have already had a profound impact on our country. They have increased the size of our commodities market. They have increased the volatility of our commodities prices. They have hurt consumers' wallets and small businesses by making them pay more at the pump. They have slowed the growth of our economy by requiring that we devote even more money to energy instead of creating new jobs. These energy speculation funds are a danger to our economy, our financial system, and the average American's wallet.

The HITEC Act will restore order to our energy commodity markets and end this experiment. The bill will ban all new investment in energy commodities like light sweet crude oil, natural gas, heating oil, and gasoline by these commodity index funds from the date of enactment. The day the President signs this bill, energy speculation funds will not be allowed to grow any more if they count speculators among their investors. Existing energy speculation funds that continue to count speculators among their investors will then have two years to wind down their investments. As the average length of a ``spot'' commodity contract is one year, this should allow energy speculation funds that continue to house speculators more than enough time to wind down their investments in a fair and orderly fashion.

This bill does not prohibit energy speculation funds from investing in agricultural commodities like wheat or corn, nor does it prohibit those funds from investing in metals such as gold. The bill also does not implicate trading of electricity in any way, shape, or form. Instead, this bill just prohibits energy speculation funds from interfering with our energy commodities, a market that determines the prices for the fuels that power our economy.

This bill will end an unnecessary and harmful source of excessive price volatility that has only served to benefit Wall Street traders and has harmed our economy by pumping up oil, gasoline, and other refined product prices. Enactment of this legislation will address one major source of the pain American consumers have recently been feeling at the pump, and I urge all of my colleagues to co-sponsor this critical legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairmen Upton and Pitts and Ranking Members Waxman and Pallone for their work in bringing to the floor a bipartisan bill that provides FDA additional resources to bring new drugs and medical devices to market. These new resources will enable FDA to improve review times for new product applications and provide companies greater clarity about compliance requirements and their responsibilities.

There are many important policy improvements in this bill. They include:

A reauthorization of the user fee programs for prescription drugs and medical devices, as well as the creation of a new generic user fee program that will help slash current review times for these products.

A reauthorization of two programs that foster the development and safe use of prescription drugs for children.

New incentives for the development of antibiotics, which are needed to increase the number of products in the development pipeline.

Today's bill also includes the reauthorization of legislation I authored in 2007 that has helped spur the development of medical devices for children. The Pediatric Medical Device Safety and Improvement Act, PMDSIA, creates grants that bridge the gap between the people who understand the medical need--doctors and innovators--with the people who can help turn their ideas into devices on the shelves, like manufacturers and federal regulators. Since the grant program's inception, the five Pediatric Device Consortia established as a result of this language have assisted in advancing the development of 135 pediatric medical devices. Currently the consortia are managing 80 active pediatric medical device products.

The FDA Reform Act also extends a provision of PMDSIA that provided profit incentives for companies to develop devices for rare pediatric diseases. The original incentive passed in 2007 solely for pediatric diseases proved immensely successful. Today's bill strikes a compromise to extend this incentive for devices used to treat rare diseases in adults as well, while still retaining the incentive for pediatric devices. I urge Congress does not negatively impact the development of devices for children.

In addition, we will need to ensure that companies using this incentive and making a profit on their device because they got pediatric labeling actually continue to sell their device for use in children and not only for adults. The Pediatric Advisory Committee at the FDA will need to play a vital role in this oversight and in monitoring the number of devices sold for adult use as opposed to the number sold for pediatric use.

PMDSIA also included a requirement that device companies provide FDA with information on the pediatric populations that could benefit from a new device they are looking to sell. This was supposed to help FDA track

what devices are available for children and where gaps remain. FDA put out a proposed rule and a direct to final rule simultaneously to implement the provision, but it withdrew the direct to final rule after industry voiced opposition. The regulation has languished ever since.

The failure to implement this provision of the law has made it difficult for FDA to provide Congress information about the availability of pediatric medical devices and to identify unmet medical device needs, according to a GAO report. I am disappointed that this important tracking provision has gone unimplemented for nearly five years, and I hope that FDA will comply with the timeframe included in the legislation to issue a final rule implementing the law no later than December 31, 2013.

Despite these advances, today's bill is a missed opportunity because it fails to address a glaring patient safety issue that affects patients around the country.

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that ninety percent of medical devices are not required to undergo clinical testing in humans prior to being sold. Instead, most devices, including brain stents and hip implants, need only to show similarity to an earlier product to make their way to market.

Under current law, the FDA is required to clear certain medical devices as long as they demonstrate their similarity to an earlier product. This is true even if the new device is modeled after a defective device that caused serious injury or even death.

If the device is indeed similar to the earlier model, flaw and all, FDA's hands are tied. The agency does not have the legal authority to deny approval.

This makes no sense.

We wouldn't fast-track approval of a new drug that was based on one that had been recalled.

We shouldn't do it here, either, with medical devices.

This legislation was an important opportunity to address this medical device safety loophole, but it doesn't. The loophole remains in place and patients are still at grave risk.

Thousands of patients have already been seriously harmed by this loophole. Four years ago, Jaye Nevarez, a 50 year-old mother of three, was a healthy truck driver who earned a decent living, played in a band, and paid her bills on time. Then her doctor implanted bladder mesh, a device that traces its origins back to an older product that had to be recalled for causing serious injury and even death.

Jaye now lives in constant pain. She was forced to quit her job. She can't walk without a cane. She lost her insurance and faces a growing mountain of medical debt. The bank recently began foreclosure proceedings on her home where she lives with her 79 year-old mother.

Jaye isn't the first to be harmed by this loophole. If we fail to fix it, she won't be the last.

As documented in the accompanying report prepared by my staff-- ``Defective Devices, Destroyed Lives'', several medical devices that have been recalled because they severely injured patients continue to be used as models for new devices--many of these are on the market and being implanted in patients today.

I introduced the Sound Devices Act, providing FDA the ability to protect the public from these unsafe devices, but this was not included in the bill.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. When it comes to medical devices we have an insane policy that makes no sense.

Despite repeated testimony from the FDA that the current law restricts their ability to assure the safety of medical devices, Republicans have refused to acknowledge and address this very dangerous loophole.

This bill must not be the last word on medical device safety. I hope my colleagues will join me to close this medical device loophole so that we can keep the American public safe from harm.

Lastly, I remained concerned about the mandatory clinical trials database that was created in the 2007 FDA Amendments. This registry and results database was meant to directly address issues stemming from a lack of transparency of clinical trials. Several high profile examples, including the drugs Paxil and Vioxx, gained national attention when their manufacturers were found to have suppressed clinical trial data that demonstrated safety and efficacy concerns.

Today, the website requires information about certain clinical trials to be publically posted on the database, but loopholes in the underlying law still allow researchers and companies to avoid publishing unfavorable data, putting human subjects of clinical trials at grave risk. To protect the public from potentially dangerous drugs and medical devices these loopholes must be closed to provide equivalent transparency of all clinical trials. I hope I can work with my colleagues to address this serious issue in the very near future.

I thank Chairman Upton and Chairman Pitts and I thank Ranking Member Pallone and Ranking Member Waxman for their work in bringing to the floor a bipartisan bill that provides FDA additional resources to bring new drugs and medical devices to market. But today's bill is also a huge missed opportunity. It would be a disservice to patient safety to ignore the bill's major shortfall.

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that 90 percent of medical devices are not required to undergo clinical testing in human beings prior to being sold. Under current law, the FDA is required to clear certain medical devices as long as they demonstrate their similarity to an earlier product, even if the new device is modeled after a similar defective device that caused serious injury or even death. Today's bill offered an important opportunity to address this device-safety loophole, but it doesn't. The loophole remains in place, and patients are still, and will remain, at grave risk.

Four years ago, Jaye Nevarez, a 50-year-old mother of three, was a healthy truck driver who earned a decent living, played in a band, and paid her bills on time. Then her doctor implanted a bladder mesh, a device that traces its origin back to a previous product that was recalled for causing serious injury and in some cases death. Jaye now lives in constant pain. She was forced to quit her job. She can't walk without a cane. She lost her insurance and faces a growing mountain of medical debt. The bank recently began foreclosure proceedings on her home where she lives with her 79-year-old mother.

Jaye isn't the first to be harmed by this loophole. If we fail to fix it, she won't be the last. There will be tens of thousands of others who fall into this loophole who will suffer serious injury.

I introduced the SOUND Devices Act providing FDA the ability to protect the public from these unsafe devices, but this was not included in the bill. The bill we are voting on today is critically important, however. It includes the EXPERRT Act, a bill that I authored to improve communication between FDA and experts in rare diseases. It includes bipartisan provisions that I'm proud to have worked with other Members to promote, especially in pediatric-device development.

This bill must not be the last word on medical-device safety. I hope that my colleagues will join with me to close this loophole so that we can keep the American public safe from harmful medical practices.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise in support of my amendment.

Here's what my amendment says: Why are we building a new nuclear bomber? It's 2012. The B 52s that we have--93 of them--are going to last until 2040. The B 2s we have are going to last until 2058. That's when they begin to retire.

Now, of all the things America doesn't need right now, it's a brand new nuclear bomber.

We're talking about cutting Medicare or Medicaid out here on the floor, there's not enough money to invest in research to find the cure for Alzheimer's, but we need a new nuclear bomber for $18 billion? It makes no sense. It's insane. We don't even have any more targets to hit them with.

Every single nuclear submarine we have has 96 independently targetable nuclear warheads on board. That's 96 cities in the Soviet Union, the bombs in the Soviet Union would destroy, 96 cities in China destroyed by one submarine. We already have 93 B 52s. We have 20 B 2s. We have ICBMs ready to launch. And they want to build a new bomber, a nuclear bomber with nuclear bombs. By the time the new nuclear bomb arrives, there will be no place to hit. All the old bombers, all the nuclear submarines will have hit all the targets.

The boom we should be listening to is the baby boom. We need money for Medicare. We need money for Medicaid. We need money for Social Security. We need money to invest in finding the cure for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. That's the boom that's going to hit American families. That's the fear people have.

The fear that people have is not that they're going to be in a nuclear war. The fear that people have is that there's going to be a terrifying call that comes into their family that tells them that they now have another case of Alzheimer's in their family, that it has not been cured.

Each one of these bombers could double the size of the budget to find the cure for Alzheimer's. That's what we should be doing. That's the real terrorist that people are afraid of coming into their lives.

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

Could the Chair inform me as to how much time is remaining on our side?

I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Again, the experts all say that if we delay this just 10 years, which is all I'm asking for, a 10-year delay, since the B 2s and the B 52s aren't beginning to retire until between 2040 and 2058. All that Mr. Welch and Mr. Conyers and I are saying is, if we delay it for 10 years, there's still plenty of time to build them if there's a need.

But to begin to build new things right now with this era of tremendous budget deficits, when we should just be trying to find a way to reduce our deficits, you know, balance this budget, it's just wasteful. It's wasteful. And I just want to balance the budget. And if we're wasting money on projects like this, then we have no chance of doing anything about this deficit reduction.

So, again, experience shows us that it only takes 16 years, not 30, to bring a new bomber from the drawing board to the runway.

There are millions of families out there who are trying to get by with a car that's a few years old and just keep it going. The Air Force has already spent over $6 billion refurbishing all these planes. They plan on spending billions more on refurbishing them. There's no reason to believe they can't go out to the year 2060.

This is not the year for us to be spending this money.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Again, could you, Mr. Chair, tell me how much time I have?

I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Just look at this from the perspective of an ordinary family. They've already got three cars in the driveway. Everyone says to them, you can go another 100,000 on those three cars. And

yet the decision is made by some of the family members, we're going to buy a brand new, top-of-the-line car right now, even though the whole family is in debt. Everyone in the neighborhood would think that's crazy.

That's what we're doing here today. The majority is saying, let's build a brand new bomber, a gold-plated bomber that's been on the wish list of the Air Force for a generation, even though we have plenty of bombers, nuclear bombers in an era where there aren't any more nuclear sites that we can be bombing around the world, and we're just going to waste the money.

We should be balancing the budget. We have to tighten our belt. And I just urge the majority to reconsider this. We have to save the money. And there just are no targets, and there are plenty of bombers we have that can last out to 2060.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the remainder of my time.

We're $15 trillion in debt--$15 trillion. We've got all the bombers we need. They can last to 2060. We don't need a new nuclear bomber. Okay? We just don't need a new nuclear bomber. We don't have the targets for them, we can't afford them, and we don't need them. How's that for a combination?

Let's just cut back on something on this defense budget. Does it have to be the entire wish list of every single defense contractor in the United States, regardless of whether or not it relates to the military needs of our country?

And by the way, 30 or 40 years from now, $18 billion. We can postpone it 10 years, still have the brandnew planes ready to go in 2050 and 2060. We should be saving money for this generation right now, not just passing it on for the next generation.

I urge an ``aye'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman from California.

The transportation bill should be about increasing the number of riders on our mass transit systems to reduce our oil dependence. It should be about increasing the number of riders in HOV lanes to ease commuters' lives and to encourage people to get more energy-efficient vehicles. The transportation bill should not be used as a vehicle to force approval of the Keystone XL ``export'' pipeline, because that's what it is--it's an extra large export pipeline.

The American Petroleum Institute ads claim that the Keystone pipeline will deliver oil ``to power our country.'' Sounds great. But in fact, there is no legislative guarantee that even a single drop of this oil and fuel from the Keystone ``export'' pipeline would stay in the United States for American consumers.

When I asked, in the hearing, the president of the TransCanada pipeline company whether he would guarantee that the oil that came from Canada through the entirety of the United States would stay here in the United States, he said no, I will not give you a guarantee. So let us not hear again from the Republicans about how this is oil for America because the president of the pipeline would not give us a guarantee that he would keep the oil here in the United States. And why is that? Because the pipeline is going to Port Arthur, Texas.

Now, what's so special about Port Arthur, Texas? Well, it just happens to be that it's a tax-free zone. So they're going to bring this pipeline, without any environmental safeguards because they just want to approve it themselves, the Congress--and a congressional expert is an oxymoron, okay. There is no such thing compared to real environmental experts, real experts in this area. A congressional expert is like jumbo shrimp or Salt Lake City nightlife--I mean, there is no such thing. And yet they're saying, no, let's approve the pipeline. No environmental safeguards--we'll just move it through, we're experts. We're going to supersede the Environmental Protection Agency and send it to Port Arthur, Texas. And then, in Port Arthur, Texas, it's going to get sent, and guess where it's going to get sent? You don't have to be Dick Tracy to figure this out. It's going to be sent to China. It's going to be sent to Latin America. It's going to be sent to Europe--tax free.

By the way, if you represent Port Arthur, Texas--if you represent any part of Texas, vote ``yes'' on this resolution. I'll throw in Louisiana and Oklahoma as well. But if you come from another State, I don't know what you're thinking. I really don't know what you're thinking. You don't have a guarantee on the environment. You don't have a guarantee that the oil is going to stay here in the United States. You're going to accept the canards, the fabrications, the misrepresentations that this is oil for America, when no one will put it in the bill that the oil must stay in America.

You won't hear the president of TransCanada or ExxonMobil or Chevron saying the oil is going to stay in America--let me know when that happens. This is oil that they're going to sell in other parts of the world. And why do they want to do that? Because right now a barrel of oil in the United States is $93 a barrel, and a barrel of oil in Europe is $115 a barrel. You don't have to be a finance major to figure out that they want to sell that oil on the world market.

So all we are is just a big conduit for that dirtiest oil in the world coming out of Canada, coming right through the United States-- without environmental safeguards--going to Port Arthur, Texas, tax-free zone, to send it so that ExxonMobil and the rest of these companies can make a fortune on the global market. Now, is that crazy or what?

Why are we debating this right now? And why are we listening to these people at the same time that we export? You know something else we export, ladies and gentlemen? We export our young men and women over to the Middle East in order to protect oil coming into the United States. We should not be exporting young men and women at the expense of domestic oil which we could keep in our own country. That should not be exported, not if more young men and women have to be sent overseas in order to protect the oil lines coming in from the Middle East. That's our greatest vulnerability.

So vote ``no'' on this resolution. This is the capstone of the Republican majority's commitment to the oil industry. It is something that is very consistent with everything that they have done since they took over the majority. But the truth of the matter is is that this is just a one-way trip to exotic locations in China and Morocco and Singapore for oil that is going to compromise the environment of the United States and not protect our security one whit.

I'm waiting for the first Republican to stand up and accept an amendment which would keep that oil in the United States. It just is not going to happen.

After Congress privatized the United States Enrichment Corporation in 1996, we quickly learned that it couldn't survive in the private sector without continued and repeated bailouts by the taxpayer to the tune of billions of dollars. This company should actually be renamed the United States Earmark Corporation. The government has given it free centrifuge technology. The government has given it free uranium that it enriches and then it sells below market prices, undercutting its free market competitors. The government has paid to clean up its radioactive waste. The government has assumed its liabilities. And what has happened to the billions of dollars that it has received from the taxpayers?

Well, the entire company is now worth far less than the $150 million that is contained in this bill. It may be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and become a penny stock. And after Tuesday's announcement of another gift of free uranium for USEC, Standard & Poor's downgraded it to junk bond status. J.P. Morgan is now in charge of all of its remaining dwindling cash. And when I asked the Treasury Department whether the government's support for the government puts taxpayers at risk, it said ``yes'' to me.

We've been told that this earmark is only about getting the tridium we need for our nuclear weapons, but that is

not true. The treaty that governs uranium enrichment technology does not prevent other companies from doing the work, and URENCO is in New Mexico anyway--the competitor. And even if it did, there are other alternatives. When DOE examined its tridium options, it found that down-blending surplus highly enriched uranium would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars less than to use this corporation.

This is a waste of money. There are better alternatives already in the United States. There are better technologies that can be used at hundreds of millions of dollars less, and we are continuing to pour this earmark money down a rat hole and wasting it. We should be spending this money on the defense of our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the legislation introduced by the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich). The HEARTH Act will further tribal self-governance and self-determination by authorizing willing Indian tribes to take control of surface leasing on their own lands. Once tribal regulations are approved by the Secretary of the Interior, tribes will be able to lease their lands without federal oversight. H.R. 205 is groundbreaking legislation that enhances tribal control over tribal resources and I ask my colleagues to vote for its passage.

Importantly, H.R. 205 authorizes leasing activity for residential, business, and other purposes. A tribe could therefore use its authority under the HEARTH Act to engage in renewable energy projects on their lands. Indian country has the potential to develop millions of megawatts of wind and solar energy. This bill will help Tribes pursue the economic, environmental and national security benefits that clean energy provides to all Americans.

During the Natural Resources Committee markup, a Democratic amendment added language to authorize tribes to seek the Secretary's technical assistance in developing a regulatory environmental review process for all types of leasing activity. If a tribe chooses to use its new authority to engage in leasing activity for renewable energy projects, for example, it can call upon the expertise of the Department of the Interior to inform development of an appropriate environmental review process. I'm confident that this will enhance tribes' ability to be the best managers of their own lands.

H.R. 205 also requires that approved tribal regulations must be ``consistent with'' existing federal regulations. The United States recognizes tribal primacy for a number of programs under three critical environmental laws--the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Tribes have successfully demonstrated their ability to implement these laws. I fully expect that tribes will do the same with the HEARTH Act requirement that their leasing regulations, at a minimum, meet existing federal standards and may even choose to regulate more stringently where appropriate.

I applaud Mr. Heinrich's leadership on this bill and again encourage my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of H.R. 205.