Floor Statements

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is very simple. It prohibits the export of the natural gas produced from the leases that are going to be given to oil and gas companies under this bill.

The bottom line is, what the Republicans want to do is open up drilling for natural gas off of the beaches of Florida, off of the beaches of California, off of the beaches of Virginia, off of the beaches of New Jersey and Massachusetts. Then all they say is, Oh, we have to do this; it's for our national security. But right now, over at the Department of Energy, there are eight applications seeking to export 18 percent of our natural gas overseas--to China, to Europe, to Latin America.

Why is that? Well, it's very simple.

The price of natural gas in the United States is six times lower than in Asia. These companies want to make a big profit, not here in America, but by selling our natural gas--drilled for off of our beaches--to other countries. In Europe, it is four times more expensive for natural gas. That's where they want to sell it.

Now, why would we support that?

It's only if there is an oil and gas company agenda because, unlike natural gas, oil has a price which is set on the international marketplace. So, if it's $100 a barrel in China, it's $100 a barrel in the United States. Not so, ladies and gentlemen, with natural gas. Natural gas is our greatest asset. It's what's fueling our economic recovery. Manufacturing new jobs have been the highest in the last 5 years. It's very low-priced natural gas which is fueling this revolution in creating new jobs because the price of energy is so low in America for natural gas.

What is the plan of the oil and gas companies?

It's to send this natural gas around the rest of the world.

What would the impact be?

It would increase prices for the American steel industry; increase prices for the chemical industry; increase prices for the plastics industry; increase prices for the utility industries, which generate electricity for American homes and businesses; and it would ultimately increase prices for consumers in our country.

This amendment, the Markey amendment, is aimed straight at the Strait of Hormuz, and it's saying to them, We've got the natural gas here in America. We're going to drill for it, but we're keeping it here because it's six times lower in price than it is in Asia and in Europe, and that's what we're going to keep here for our American citizens. We're not going to play this game of international markets so that the oil and gas industry can raise the price of natural gas up to the price of oil. They get rich, and ExxonMobil is reporting $137 billion in profits even as we give them, through the Republicans, $40 billion worth of tax breaks.

When do American consumers get a break? When do American manufacturers get a break? When do the plastics, the chemical, the steel industries get a break in low energy prices? Is it all a one-way street for ExxonMobil and these big multinationals?

The Markey amendment says that we drill for natural gas off the beaches of this country. That natural gas stays here in this country. It is not exported.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I ask how much time is remaining on either side?

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

I would inquire as to who has the right to close and if the majority is down to its last speaker.

Mr. Chair, through you, I would prefer to wait until the final speaker for the majority is about to take the podium.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

The Republican slogan 2 years ago was, ``Drill here, drill now, pay less.'' Today the slogan is, ``Drill here, sell to China, pay more in the United States.''

If all these terminals get built, the Energy Department says the price is going to go up by 54 percent for American consumers. Let me tell you what Boone Pickens says. Boone Pickens said something that is very, very clear about exporting natural gas. He said:

``If we do it, we're truly going to go down as America's dumbest generation. It's bad public policy to export natural gas.'' American energy for American jobs.

Oil and natural gas are not lobsters. They are not toothbrushes. They are our key to the strategic protection of our national security. This is a signal to OPEC that we mean business. We're going to drill for the natural gas. We're going to keep it here. And we're going to tell them we don't need their oil any more than we need their sand.

Vote for the Markey amendment. Keep the natural gas, which we drill for off of the beaches in this country, in our country, and tell them they can keep their sand. We'll keep our natural gas right here in America. Vote ``aye'' for the Markey amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Last year, ExxonMobil made $41 billion in profits. Together, the top five oil companies made a combined $137 billion in profits. You would think that every time these large oil companies extract oil from public lands offshore in the Gulf of Mexico that they would be required to pay the American people a fee, a royalty to do so, since the lands are owned by the people of the United States. Well, you would be wrong. As a result of an oil company court challenge to a 1995 law, oil companies are not paying any royalties to the American people on leases issued between 1996 and 2000 on public lands of our country.

The Republicans want to drill into the pensions of Federal workers to fund our highways. They want to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, America's Serengeti, and off our beaches in California and Florida and New Jersey to fund this transportation bill. But if we are looking for revenue to fund our road projects, we should just start by ending this free ride Big Oil is getting on public land.

In recent years, the amount of free oil these companies have been pumping has gone through the roof as more of these free drilling leases have gone into production. In fact, right now more than 25 percent of all oil produced offshore on Federal lands is produced royalty free, tax free. They don't have to pay any taxes whatsoever. Let me say that again. These companies get a complete windfall profit by paying no taxes for drilling off of the coastline of the United States, owned by the American people. What kind of plan can that be to make sure that we have sufficient funding in order to pay for Medicare, pay for kids going to college, pay for the research to find a cure for cancer? Of all the companies that should be kicking in their fair share of the dues to run this country, it should be the companies who made $137 billion last year and are getting away scot-free and not paying taxes for drilling off of the coastlines of our country on public lands.

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

May I inquire once again as to how much time is remaining on either side?

I yield myself a minute and three-quarters.

The amendment that I'm offering would give these oil companies a strong incentive to renegotiate their leases and to pay their fair share of royalty taxes. My amendment would offer these oil companies a choice. They can choose to either continue to produce royalty tax-free in the Gulf of Mexico on public lands but not be able to receive any new leases on public lands, or they can agree to pay their fair share and be able to bid on new areas. They can't have it both ways. With oil prices at $100 a barrel, this free drilling is absolutely unacceptable.

The Congressional Research Service has repeatedly found that this amendment would not be an abrogation of contract or constitute a taking. In 2010, the Congressional Research Service wrote of my amendment:

To reiterate, the amendment imposes no legal compulsion.

Just as in Ruckelshaus, Congress simply would be posing an

election.

This amendment does not require these companies to renegotiate their leases to pay their fair share; it just gives them an incentive to do so. And this amendment would not force companies to give up their leases; it would just impose a condition in issuing future leases.

As CRS has stated, as a general matter, the United States has broad discretion in setting the qualifications of those with whom it contracts. These companies would be perfectly free to choose to continue producing this free windfall oil even if prices climbed well past $100 a barrel and gas prices go past $4 a gallon--they can do that. They can hang on to these windfall leases if they want. But if they do, they will not get any new leases from the American people on the public lands of our country.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

These oil giants are the most profitable companies in the history of the world. Yet the Republicans are going to give them $40 billion in tax breaks over the next 10 years. And rather than reclaiming them for our soldiers or for Medicare recipients, they say no, you can't touch that.

And so I turn to them and I say: What about all of the royalty tax- free drilling they're doing? Twenty-five percent of all oil drilled for off of the coastlines of our country on public lands, no taxes. No royalties. No contribution to America. They're not paying their fair share of the dues.

And the gentleman from Texas just said the more they drill, the more they pay. Absolutely not true. The more they drill, the bigger their profits. They don't have to pay a nickel in royalty taxes. They get off scot-free. Everyone else gets tipped upside down by the tax man on April 15 to pick up what they're not willing to pay. It's time for them to pay their fair share of the dues.

That's what the Markey amendment says. Either start renegotiating those leases or you're not drilling any longer on the public lands of the United States of America. Vote ``aye.''

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman.

So last year the oil industry made $137 billion in the United States. This year, of course, heading to $5 a gallon gasoline. They're tipping American drivers upside-down so fast that they'll probably make $200 billion.

They've got to raise about another $40 billion to pay for this transportation bill. They could take away the $4 billion in tax breaks each year over 10 years, $40 billion that they give to ExxonMobil. They really don't need that money. The taxpayers shouldn't have to pay twice, once at the pump and then once as taxpayers. So they could have solved all of this just by taking away the oil tax breaks.

But here's what they do: They say, one, we can drill for shale in Colorado and Wyoming. And we know that Shell Oil and the Department of Interior say that there is no commercially available technology. Two, they can drill in the Arctic refuge, but we know that there are no votes in the Senate to make it possible for that to happen. And three, their next proposal is to drill off of the beaches of California and Florida for oil--off the beaches. The Republicans are lining up themselves in these States to say I want to make the amendment to make sure we don't do that.

So, none of this is going to happen in terms of the revenues that they say they're going to generate. These are phantom revenues from phantom drilling that's never going to happen.

Moreover, they want to export the natural gas out of our country. Well, let me tell you what T. Boone Pickens says about this. This is what T. Boone Pickens says about exporting U.S. natural gas:

If we do it, we're truly going to go down as America's

dumbest generation.

It's bad public policy to export natural gas. Why is that? Because natural gas in the United States is six times cheaper than in Asia, it's three times cheaper than in Europe. That's why our agriculture is doing so well, that's why manufacturing is coming back. The cost of a unit of production of any product in terms of the energy which is needed has plummeted. That's our advantage in coming out of the recession.

Finally, on the Keystone pipeline, why don't we keep the oil here in the United States? The Canadians want to take the oil, build a pipeline through the United States over our environmentally sensitive areas, bring it to Port Arthur, Texas, an export zone, and then send the oil to Asia and Latin America. Where's the American part of this? What do we get out of the Keystone pipeline? Nothing.

So I will have an amendment that says, if we build that pipeline--if we let the Canadians--that we keep the oil here in the United States because the oil should stay in the United States, the natural gas should stay in the United States. We shouldn't be pretending that we're going to be raising the revenues from these other places where they are just phantom revenues from phantom drilling, which is never going to happen.

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

Unfortunately, according to the Congressional Budget Office, these drilling measures the Republicans are bringing out on the House floor today, together, would only raise $4.3 billion over 10 years, less than one-tenth of the revenue shortfall needed to fund our highways.

In reality, this bill amounts to little more than a giveaway of our public lands to Big Oil under the guise of funding our Nation's transportation projects, and most estimates are that no new revenue will be produced that is usable for this transportation bill.

Across the United States, oil production is at its highest level in nearly a decade. Natural gas production has reached levels we have never seen before in the United States. Oil production on public lands offshore is higher than it was during each of the last 3 years of the Bush administration.

According to industry analysts, by this summer, there will be nearly 30 percent more floating rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico than there were prior to the BP spill. Yet the Republican bill would threaten the tourism and fishing economies of coastal States by allowing drilling off of our beaches in Florida, in California, up and down our east and west coasts, and, as well, in an area extensively used by the military where even Secretary Rumsfeld said ``drilling structures and associated development would be incompatible with military activities'' in this area.

This Congress has not enacted a single safety improvement since the BP spill. The bill would allow for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, ripping out the heart of the crown jewel of our National Wildlife Refuge System. The Arctic Refuge is America's Serengeti. It is one of the natural wonders of the world, like the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, or the Great Barrier Reef, and it should be protected.

If we allow drilling in the Arctic Refuge, it will set a precedent that will allow the oil and gas industry to place a bull's-eye on each of the 540 wildlife refuges across this country. And this legislation would rush to give away 125,000 acres of public land in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to Big Oil for oil shale development. However, there is no commercially viable oil shale technology, and oil shale development could have significant impacts on water quality and quantity in the West if there were a commercially viable technology available, which Shell Oil and the Department of the Interior says does not yet exist.

In fact, the Government Accountability Office has said that the impacts of oil shale development on water could be significant but are unknown. What's more, this provision has been included by the majority, despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office says that it would not raise any revenue over the next 10 years to fund our highways. So understand that.

This is a provision which CBO says raises no revenue in the next 10 years, but it's just stuck in here. The oil and gas industry would like to see it, so they just tossed it in. Nothing to do with funding transportation.

And the majority's drilling bills wouldn't even ensure that American natural gas stays here in America to help our consumers. Natural gas prices are six times higher in Asia than they are right here. They are more than three times higher in Europe than they are right here.

Low natural gas prices have been driving the economic recovery of the United States. We have far more natural gas in our country--and it's very low-priced--then we have oil. What the Republican bill will allow to happen is for this natural gas to be exported around the world, and exporting our natural gas would eliminate our competitive edge by driving prices up by as much as 54 percent, according to the Department of Energy.

Not ensuring that the natural gas stays here in the United States ensures that the majority, the Republicans, are imposing a de facto natural gas tax on American agriculture, manufacturing, chemicals, steel, plastics by allowing our gas to be exported.

Here's what T. Boone Pickens says about the idea of exporting American natural gas. Here's what he says:

If we do it, we're truly going to go down as America's

dumbest generation. It's bad public policy to export natural

gas.

Our natural gas is six times cheaper than Asian; it is three times cheaper than European. What are we doing exporting it? We should keep it here for our own farmers, for our own industries, for our own consumers. That's how we begin to put ourselves on a path of energy independence.

I agree with T. Boone Pickens. We should keep our natural gas here. We should not be following the Republican energy plan of drill here, sell there, and pay more. If we sell this natural gas around the world, the Department of Energy says the price is going up 57 percent here because we'll have less of it. That's how supply and demand works.

The same dynamic exists in the Keystone portion of the bill, where Republicans have failed to include any assurances that even a drop of the oil or the fuels will stay in this country.

When I asked the president of TransCanada, the pipeline company from Canada, whether he would be willing to commit to keeping the oil that passes through this pipeline in the United States, he said no. And why? Because the oil companies and the refineries want to export the fuels to the highest bidders around the world, leaving the American people with all of the environmental risk and little or none of the energy or economic benefit.

So drill here, sell there, pay more, that's not the Republican mantra. Drill here, drill now, pay less. Now they've morphed into what the oil and gas industry want, and all of the economic indicators point to the conclusion that our consumers will be harmed by that.

On the question of the totality of the economic benefits for our country, they are simultaneously proposing to kill the tax breaks for the wind industry, which is now creating 85,000 jobs in our country, in the face of the wind industry, saying that they will have to lay off 40,000 people over the next year unless the production tax break for the wind industry stays on the books.

So all of this is basically upside down as an energy policy. My strongest admonition to the Members who are listening to this debate is to vote ``no'' on this Republican proposal.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

When the Democrats controlled the Congress in 2009, we passed a bill out here on the House floor that created an advanced energy technology bank that included $75 billion that the nuclear industry could have qualified for, $60 billion for the coal industry for clean coal technology. Although we also built in incentives for wind and for solar and for energy efficiency, we did it all. We gave everyone a running head start. We didn't say ``nothing'' to nuclear. No.

What have the Republicans done over the last year? They passed out here on the floor a bill that zeroed out the money for loan guarantees for wind and solar, but they left in the loan guarantees for the nuclear industry. That's not an all-of-the-above strategy, and you all voted for it unanimously.

No. Here's where we are. This oil-above-all strategy that you have, not all-of-the-above, this is basically at the heart of what this whole debate is all about.

Last year, the oil industry in the United States made $137 billion. This year, they're going to blast right past that $137 billion. Every person watching this debate is looking at the pump right now at $3.50, $4, $4.50 that they're paying, and it's going straight up.

They're going to be reporting profits of upwards of $200 billion. The Republicans continue to keep in the $4 billion-a-year for tax breaks for the oil industry. Over 10 years, that's $40 billion that would pay for the transportation bill.

Subsidizing the oil industry in 2012 to drill for oil is like subsidizing fish to swim or birds to fly; you don't have to do it. The consumer is already doing it at the pump. They're being tipped upside down.

So, there's an easy funding mechanism here. It's just taking away the oil company tax breaks.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

That is the only way that we can substitute the money that stays within that sector.

These guys are going to cut back on the pension plans of Federal retirees in order to pay for a transportation bill when we should be keeping the funding stream within this energy sector because that's why we have cars on the road, in order to use this petroleum.

The oil industry right now is having it both ways. They're getting tax breaks from the taxpayers at the same time that they're taking the other pocket of every American as consumers, and they're taking money out of that pocket as well. That's really at the heart of what this debate is all about.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining on either side.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

I yield myself 1 minute.

Here is the reality. The Republicans need money to build roads, so they want to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma has already made clear doesn't have the votes to pass in the Senate. The same thing is true for California and Florida and off the coast of Massachusetts and New Jersey. They want to drill there as well, and it's very clear that the votes aren't there in the Senate to accomplish that goal either. As the gentleman from California just said, the likelihood of finding any revenues from oil shale is at least two decades away, so there are no revenues there.

There is another bill, by the way, that's going to come out here on the floor. And in order to find the revenues, do you know where they're going to drill? They're going to drill into the pensions of FBI agents; they're going to drill into the pensions of the researchers for cancer out of the National Institutes of Health; and they're going to drill into the pensions of the Border Patrol agents, who are protecting us right now down on the Mexico border. That's where they're going to find almost all of the money for this bill--in the pensions of those people.

Is that really the way we want to build the roads of our country?

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, just 2 weeks ago, President Obama stood right here in this Chamber; and he said that he was going to propose opening up 75 percent of the oil and gas resources off the coast of the United States. That's a great plan. He doesn't want to drill off the California beaches. He doesn't want to drill off Florida beaches or off the New Jersey or Massachusetts beaches. But the rest of it, he's pretty much saying he's open to. But they're not happy with it over here. The President has a real plan and a plan that can be implemented.

What they are doing is they bring out proposals here that try to build real highways with fake oil revenues that are never going to materialize. So rather than working here in the real world, where the real transportation needs of our country are dealt with with real revenues that are coming in, they talk about oil shale which Shell says is at least another 10 years away. Shell Oil, that is, not some shell collector along the beaches.

I yield myself 30 additional seconds.

We are talking Shell Oil who says it's 10 years away. Jim Inhofe in the Senate says the votes aren't there to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So that's zero dollars as well. And the likelihood of them drilling off the coast of California or Florida or Massachusetts for oil is zero. So rather than going through this facade of trying to pretend that real highways can be built with fake oil revenues, we should be taking up the offer of President Obama where he says he'll open up 75 percent of all the drilling possibilities off the coastlines of our country. That is what this debate should be all about.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself 1 minute at this time.

The Republicans, over the past year, have betrayed their agenda. They have pretty much voted out on the House floor to gut the budget for wind, gut the budget for solar, gut the budget for plug-in hybrid vehicles and, at the same time, kept in the money for the nuclear industry, kept in the tax breaks for the oil industry. So that is pretty much what the debate is all about. It's about the past versus the future.

In our country right now, the American people want to know that we're embracing a future-oriented, technology-oriented, advanced-technology- oriented agenda for our country. That's what all the Republicans keep voting against out here, all of the new technologies that allow us to move on from this fossil-fuel era.

And it would be one thing if they just didn't vote for it, but then they have the temerity to stand up and to say they believe in all of the above. No, they do not. They believe in oil above all because otherwise they would not vote to kill wind and solar out here on the House floor over the last year.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I think it would be helpful for both sides to understand what the time situation is for the conclusion of the debate.

Does the gentleman intend to conclude debate with his next speaker?

In that case, I will yield myself the balance of my time so that I can utter the sentences that will need responding to by the chairman of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, let's go back a little bit to this issue of natural gas and what this Republican bill calls for--more drilling for natural gas in our country. Okay, we can look at that.

We support natural gas. We think that natural gas is the best story that's happened in our country in the last 10 years. We love natural gas. Democrats love it. It's half the pollutants of coal. It's domestically produced. We have to make sure that when we're extracting it we don't shoot chemicals down into

the surface so that we pollute the water that our children drink, but we think that we can work through those issues if people of good faith are willing to work together.

Otherwise, it's a fantastic story. Why is that? Because natural gas is not a world market. The world market is for oil. If it's $116 a barrel in China, it's $116 a barrel in the U.S. It's a global market. And that's what allows OPEC to hold us hostage, because they control all of that oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz. They control all that oil so that they can basically hold the rest of the globe's economy hostage. But natural gas, not true.

Here we've seen a 30 percent increase in our natural gas reserves over the last 5 years. What does that mean? Well, in China it's $16. Japan, $16 per million cubic feet of natural gas. What is it in the United States? It's $2.42. So it's six, seven times cheaper in the United States. That means it is cheaper for every manufacturer, cheaper for every retailer, cheaper for every farmer, cheaper for every consumer.

What are the Democrats saying? We love natural gas; let's keep it here. Let's not be setting up terminals all across our country to export the natural gas across the planet with the Department of Energy saying, if we did that, the price of natural gas in the United States would rise 57 percent. How can that be good for consumers? Isn't that our advantage? Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabia of oil. We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Why don't we use that to our advantage? Why don't we use that to inoculate ourselves against what Saudi Arabia of oil does to us by jacking the price of oil up and down? Why don't we become independent of them? Why don't we move to all natural gas vehicles? Why don't we use natural gas in the generation of electricity? Why don't we use natural gas in the production of all of our products? And why don't we use natural gas in the homes of our country, in the factories of our country, in the industries of our country at a price that's six times lower than China and Japan, three times lower than Europe?

That's what we are calling for here, an energy strategy that is all- American. And if we can get to that with this debate today, I think that the American people will be the winners.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, the purported benefits of the Keystone pipeline have achieved mythic status. We have been told that this pipeline will lower gas prices, even though TransCanada says gas prices will go up. We've been told tens of thousands will be hired to build it, even though only about 5,000 or 6,000 temporary construction jobs will be created.

And in a particularly egregious descent into Fairyland, we have been told that the oil coming through this pipeline would enable us to reduce our dependence on oil imported from unfriendly Middle Eastern or Latin American nations.

Last month, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper even said, when you look at the Iranians threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, I think this just illustrates how critical it is that supply for the United States be North American.

But under this bill, the Republican bill, there is no guarantee that even a drop of the tar sands oil and fuels will stay here in this country. They keep saying how great it would be if we had a million barrels of oil coming into the United States from Canada. There's no guarantee in this bill, and that's because many of the refineries where the Keystone crude will be sent plan to re-export the refined fuels.

This is the map of what the oil industry plans on doing with this oil. It comes right through the United States, and then it heads off to Asia, South America, over to Europe. And Valero, one of these refineries, says in its investor presentation that it plans to refine the Canadian crude at the same facility it is building in Port Arthur, Texas, an export zone, because doing so leverages its export logistics.

Our amendment will say this oil coming through this pipeline from Canada stays here in the United States and doesn't head off to China. That's what the amendment is all about.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

May I inquire as to how much time is remaining on either side?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

Again, could we get a review of the time remaining?

Could you inform me as to who has the right to close?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remaining minute.

The gentleman from Nebraska says, What's the problem? All the oil's going to stay in the United States. It's not going to China.

That's what will happen if we don't build the pipeline. So they should vote for the Markey amendment because the Markey amendment could only be guilty of redundancy saying all the oil stays here in America.

So if that's your purpose, that's what the Markey amendment says. We'll hold you to your word when we have the vote.

But here's the real plan. TransCanada puts the dirtiest oil on the planet into the brand new pipeline Republicans are giving it; two, TransCanada sends that oil to the gulf coast where it can make billions more than where it currently sells it in the Midwest; three, refineries in the gulf coast re-export it to other countries at world oil prices and don't pay any taxes to the U.S. for doing so; four, Americans get higher gas prices and no increased energy security; five, TransCanada, Hugo Chavez, and the sheiks of Saudi Arabia laugh all the way to the bank.

Please vote ``yes'' for the Markey-Connolly-Cohen-Welch amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the last word.

I claim the time of the minority.

I thank the Chairman.

I will say that this amendment marginally improves the bill, but it does not change our fundamental opposition to it. But progress on any front is welcomed, even if we cannot make progress on every front.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

We do not oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise to claim the time in the minority.

I thank the Chair very much.

Mr. Chairman, there's no question that the gentleman from Washington State is correct, and a master of parliamentary rules, having stood up there or sat up there hundreds of hours, so he is an absolute correct dissector of language used here of seeking recognition from the Chair.

So I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment, if those are the technical words of art that the gentleman would prefer for me to use.

I thank you.

This amendment would require a study to investigate potential economic impacts from a variety of risks that oil development in the Outer Continental Shelf poses to local tourism and fishing economies in Florida.

Well, we actually had a real-world study for 87 days during the BP spill. As we saw in 2010, with the BP oil spill, oil can wreak havoc on a coastal community, meaning a disaster for tourism and fishing, seafood industries. These disasters can and do happen, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars at stake.

It is important for the public to know the risks associated with allowing oil companies to drill off of our coast. But we should be protecting our beaches in Florida and California and New Jersey and Massachusetts, not just requiring a study of how huge a disaster a spill would be for these States.

We should be protecting the lives and the livelihoods of the people of the gulf by taking the lessons of the BP spill and turning them into new laws. But nearly 2 years after the BP spill began, this Congress has not enacted a single new law to improve the safety of offshore drilling. That is indefensible when the BP Commission found that we have a fatally flawed rate of accidents and fatalities in our country. Compared to the rest of the world, ours is four times higher than that in Europe, that is, the fatalities on our oil rigs. So that's the issue.

We have yet to increase the fines because only we can do that here in Congress. Right now, a lot of these oil companies think it's just the equivalent of a parking ticket. You know, if you could pay a parking ticket for a whole day on the main street of any one of the cities in the United States, you'd pay that $1 parking ticket because it would be cheaper than paying 20 bucks to put it in a garage. And that's what we have right now. We have the equivalent of $1 parking tickets that are assessed against oil companies that despoil the ocean, that result in, because of their faulty safety rules, the highest fatality rate in the world in terms of people who work on oil rigs.

At this point, I have completed my statement, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to this amendment.

If this amendment passes, Mardi Gras will come on the Wednesday before Fat Tuesday this year. That's because the Landry amendment delivers up to $6 billion in a financial King Cake to Louisiana and to the other Gulf States at the expense of the other 46 States in the Union.

In 2006, the Republican Congress passed legislation that will divert $150 billion over the next 60 years from offshore drilling on public lands to the four Gulf Coast States--Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. That bill set up what amounts to a new entitlement program for these four States, which will result in a massive transfer of wealth from the Federal Government. This amendment would send $6 billion to these four States on top of that $150 billion they will already be getting.

These oil and gas resources on public lands belong to all of the American people, not just to those of the adjacent States. They are public resources that belong as much to someone living in Kansas, Massachusetts, or Hawaii as they do to someone living in Louisiana or Texas. These are resources that should help every American, not just a select few. The revenue generated from these public resources goes to the Federal Treasury to help pay for Medicare and Medicaid. It helps to pay for our national defense. We can no longer afford to continue this diversion of taxpayer funds to these four States. We need this revenue to reduce our deficit and to get our fiscal house in order.

I had offered an amendment that would have recovered the $150 billion we are going to be sending to these four States, which the majority did not make in order, and now this amendment would take us in the complete opposite direction.

So I commend the gentleman from Louisiana. I can't blame him for trying to get even more Federal money directed to his home State under this program. Yet, if you come from one of the 46 States that is not-- and let me enumerate them again--Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas, you would have to be crazy to vote for this amendment, because they're going to take money away from your States, away from your Medicare beneficiaries, away from your contributions to the defense budget. It will be higher in all of those other States because this money is going to be sucked out of the Federal Treasury, as though through a straw, right into the States of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. If you vote for this amendment, you are voting to send that money--$6 billion--directly from your State to the gentleman from Louisiana's State.

I urge all members of the Louisiana delegation to vote against the Markey amendment, and I would give a similar recommendation to the other Members from the other three States. But if you don't come from one of those four States, why would you send $6 billion to those States, money which should be in the Federal Treasury, when it should be used for all of the citizens of our country?

At this point, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, America's nuclear weapons budget is locked into a Cold War time machine. It doesn't reflect our 21st century security needs. It makes no sense. It is insane. It's insane to spend $10 billion building new plants to make uranium and plutonium for new nuclear bombs when we're cutting our nuclear arsenal and the plants we have now work just fine. It's insane that we're going to spend $84 billion for up to 14 new nuclear submarines when just one submarine with 96 nuclear bombs on board can blow up every major city in Iran, China, and North Korea.

It's an insane strategy, but it's America's current plan. And that's why we need a SANE approach to our nuclear weapons budget. Today, I am introducing the SANE Act--the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act--with 34 of my colleagues. The SANE Act cuts $100 billion in spending over the next 10 years on outdated, wasteful nuclear weapons programs over the next 10 years.

Let's cut new nuclear weapons, not the poor, the sick, the children, and the elderly of our country. Support and cosponsor the SANE Act.

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

As we debate our national budget, we must address one of the largest costs threatening our economy and bankrupting our families--the Alzheimer's pandemic. 5.4 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's today, and as all the baby boomers retire, 15 million Americans will have Alzheimer's.

We already spend $130 billion a year on Alzheimer's from Medicare and Medicaid. At this rate, in 2050, we will spend $800 billion every year from Medicare and Medicaid on this one disease alone. That is more than the entire defense budget today.

Thankfully, right now, the Advisory Council for the National Alzheimer's Project Act is developing the first-ever comprehensive national plan to fight this disease. We cannot cut funding for medical research for Alzheimer's today if we want to balance the budget tomorrow.

We made a vow to care for our citizens as they age. NIH is the National Institutes of Hope. We must not cut that budget or else all of these families with Alzheimer's will have no hope.

Mr. Speaker, tax cuts delayed are tax cuts denied. Last year, just before the holidays, the House Republicans extended the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, no strings attached. And this year, Republicans won't even allow a vote to extend middle class tax cuts. Republicans want to procrastinate. Democrats want to legislate.

When it comes to millionaires, the Republicans are Santa Claus. For the middle class, they are the Grinch. This isn't ``Mission Impossible,'' Mr. Speaker. We don't need Tom Cruise to save seniors, the middle class and the unemployed. We just need to pass the Senate compromise right now. By not allowing an up-or-down vote on this bipartisan compromise, the Republicans are raising the curtain on their real priorities: millionaires and billionaires.

Americans don't need any more meetings, and they don't need any more debate. They just need us to make sure their taxes do not go up on New Year's Day. Today, we can protect the middle class, the seniors, and the unemployed by passing this bipartisan compromise right now. Do it now.

I thank the gentlelady.

This is the end of the year, and so the Republicans need a few presents for the oil industry, for the coal industry, and that's what this final weekend is all about: How do we get those presents? And so they tried and tried in this bill to roll back many, many environmental laws, but they have been unable to do so. But what they have said is just give us one thing, give us one trinket, perhaps, a symbol of our success in rolling back the laws of energy efficiency in our country.

And so within this bill, the Republicans have now successfully inserted a provision which rolls back the lightbulb efficiency laws, which the companies of our country and the rest of the world must comply with.

Now, what does that mean? Well, for consumers in our country, it will be $6 billion per year that they will have to pay in higher electricity bills every year that they are alive.

What else does it mean? Well, it means that the coal industry is happy because they generate half the electricity in our country, so they'll burn more coal in order to generate that electricity in order for the American people to use less efficient lightbulbs. And that greenhouse gas will go up into the atmosphere, and since the Republicans don't believe the planet is warming, what do they care? Just roll back the lightbulb efficiency standards.

What's the next bill that's up? Oh that one, can we give a payroll tax break to the ordinary Americans? Can we have unemployment insurance for the millions of people who are unemployed? They are saying, well, we'll consider it, but you can't tax billionaires to find the money for that. And, by the way, we want a trinket there as well.

Let's make sure that that final bill, they're saying, has an exemption for environmental law so you can build a huge pipeline, the Keystone XL Pipeline, extra large pipeline right through the middle of America, waiving the environmental laws, and at the same time, ladies and gentlemen, having no guarantee that the oil that comes from Canada through the United States will be sold in the United States. They won't accept that provision, neither TransCanada nor the Republicans, even though they say we would do it for our national security.

So here we are at the end of the year, lightbulb efficiency out the door. They like to do the same thing, by the way, for increased efficiency in the vehicles we drive, the planes which we fly in, the boats which we sail here in the United States, as we see the Middle East in turmoil, as we see Iran and Iraq perhaps growing closer together, they're trying to reduce the efficiency of our country by making it more likely we consume oil.

So here we have, again, misunderstanding on the part of the Republicans on our key national security issue, and that is changing our relationship with the energy sources which we consume, because it comes disproportionately out of the Straits of Hormuz, out of the Middle East into our country. And so this issue goes right to the core, this lightbulb efficiency. It's a small symbol of all the other things that they oppose in terms of increasing the efficiency of our society, and it's stuck right in the middle of this so-called omnibus bill, and they wouldn't be happy unless they got it.

Mind you, this attempt that was defeated earlier this year on the House floor, when Members could vote for it, must be snuck into the omnibus end-of-the year bill. So whether it be the XL pipeline for the oil industry, whether it be the lightbulb bill for the coal industry, whether it be the billionaire tax break staying on the books, rather than helping to make sure ordinary people get tax breaks; billionaires, oil or coal industry, that is what the agenda is all about.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, let's start with what we know:

First, Iran is actively seeking nuclear weapons, and the international community has ratcheted up sanctions to prevent Tehran from getting the bomb.

Second, Iran is attempting to circumvent these sanctions, with Iranian nationals establishing front companies in other countries to get around U.N. restrictions.

Just this year, a grand jury indicted a firm established by Iranians but operating in Istanbul for allegedly procuring materials for Iran's ballistic missile program.

Third, we must be vigilant about companies that deliberately hide their ties to Iran.

But what about companies that don't even try to conceal their Iranian connections?

In October, this Congress passed H.R. 1904, the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act. This bill will allow Rio Tinto, a foreign company that does business with Iran, to obtain public land in Arizona so that it can mine for copper here in the United States.

But when Republicans in this chamber had a chance to join Democrats to ensure these business ties between Rio Tinto and Iran were severed as a condition of doing business on our land, every single member of the Republican majority voted no.

With the threat of nuclear weapons landing in the hands of Ahmadinejad, the stakes are simply too high to change the rules when the majority sees fit.

Vote yes on H.R. 1905 today, and we must insist on strong nuclear nonproliferation conditions in H.R. 1904.

Mr. Speaker, North Korea has nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda wants to acquire nuclear weapons. The threat we face is very, very real.

Sanctions are important to help prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but they are not enough. America must lead by example.

The U.S. recently signed the New START treaty, requiring reductions to our nuclear arsenal. Yet, we still plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new nuclear weapons and related programs over the next decade.

Why do we allow this wasteful spending to continue? Because some Republicans in this Chamber treat the nuclear weapons budget as a sacred cow, never to be questioned or scrutinized. This is ridiculous.

Wasteful nuclear weapons spending actually harms national security. It sends the message to Iran, North Korea, and Syria that while we don't want you to have these weapons, we are not willing to make cuts ourselves. This is the wrong message to send.

You cannot argue temperance from a barstool.

The central deal in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was that the non-weapons states agreed to forgo the right to get the bomb. The weapons states in return, agreed to negotiate measures leading to disarmament.

That should be our goal, and we can take an important step in this direction by reducing unnecessary nuclear weapons spending.

Last year the Republicans refused to extend unemployment benefits unless the Bush tax cuts were extended for millionaires and billionaires. Well, here they go again, Mr. Speaker.

This year, the Republicans are trying to prevent continuation of jobless benefits and the payroll tax cut unless

their wish list of goodies for America's biggest polluters is granted in full. During this Christmas season, instead of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, the Republicans are bearing gifts of arsenic and mercury and oil on behalf of their planet-polluting patrons, Big Oil and Big Coal. The GOP used to stand for ``Grand Old Party.'' Now it stands for ``Gang of Polluters.'' Now it stands for the ``Gas and Oil Party.''

This Republican bill: One, blocks and indefinitely delays standards that would reduce hazardous air pollution like lead and cancer-causing substances that are released from industrial boilers and sent to the lungs of the children of America;

Two, rushes approval for the Keystone pipeline that will bring the dirtiest oil on the planet through the United States so it can be reexported to other countries while hurting our health and our environment here; and

Three, cuts much needed Medicare payments to hospitals to care for the sickest in our country.

The Republicans are presenting a false choice to the American people. We should not have to choose between toxic chemicals and tax relief for American workers. We should not have to choose between pollution and prosperity.

In this Republican-controlled House of Representatives, billionaires, Big Oil, big bankers benefit while the rest of America bears the burden. Enough is enough.

We know we need to pass the middle class tax cuts. We know we need to extend unemployment benefits. If we fail to act, Congress will leave a giant legislative lump of coal in the stockings of struggling Americans. It is unacceptable, bad for children, bad for the elderly, bad for the unemployed, and bad for America.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

We are now debating on a very real piece of legislation that solves an imaginary problem. The Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act purports to address the fictitious threat that the Environmental Protection Agency is out to destroy the family farm and countless jobs by regulating the dust emitted by tractors and other farming equipment.

Never mind that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has committed to leaving the 1987 standard for large soot particles unchanged; and never mind that EPA Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy essentially told the Energy and Commerce Committee that EPA was about as likely to regulate fairy dust as it was to regulate farm dust.

While hiding behind its stated purpose of addressing the made-up threat of utter ruin to the family farm, this bill inflicts very real harm. That is because it also blocks EPA from setting standards for the dirty soot that gets spewed out of massive mines and smelters and refineries and some chemical plants. It becomes, in fact, the congressional version of Never Never Land--where the Republicans' answer to the question ``when can we remove the poisons from the air that we breathe?'' is ``never.''

In the play ``Peter Pan,'' Tinker Bell drinks poison that is intended to kill Peter. She begins to die, but Peter Pan implores those in the audience to just clap their hands if they really do believe in fairies, and then maybe, just maybe, Tinker Bell won't die. All small children in the audience then clap so hard their hands sting, and Tinker Bell rises magically back to life.

With this bill, the Republicans are engaging in the very same sort of fantasy. If we just believe EPA has launched a war on jobs, then it must be so, and we must stop it. If we just believe that EPA officials are lying about their secret, nonexistent plans to destroy the livelihood of every farmer in America, then it must be so, and we must stop it. If we just believe that eviscerating every environmental law on the books will not lead to the real deaths of thousands of Americans each and every year, then it must be so.

The Republican lost boys and girls are telling America that the only way to revive the jobs fairy is to kill EPA. To pretend that the deaths, the cancers and other illnesses that the Republican plan will cause are imaginary, or a mere nuisance, really is the stuff of fairy tales.

Let's get back to reality and solve real problems in this country. Vote ``no'' on this very dangerous bill.

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

I yield myself 2 minutes.

In this legislation, the Republican majority exempts all so-called nuisance dust from the protective air quality standards for coarse particle or soot pollution under the Clean Air Act.

Republicans have defined ``nuisance dust'' to include particulate matter that is generated from ``earth moving or other activities that are typically conducted in rural areas.'' This legislation's broad definition means a bill which is supposed to be all about tractors and farms is actually about barring EPA from regulating the toxic soot that comes out of mines, smelters, chemical plants. And that's because all of these materials come from earth moving, natural materials, or activities that take place in rural areas.

Now, I don't know about the majority, but when most people hear the word ``nuisance'' they think of things like honking horns, telemarketers, and buzzing flies. They don't think of poison. By preventing EPA from regulating the toxic soot spewing out of mining operations, smelters, chemical facilities, and construction sites, Republicans have apparently decided that poisonous chemicals such as arsenic, lead, and mercury are mere nuisances.

This false advertising is not a total surprise. We have heard from Republican witnesses in the past who, in defense of the most polluting industries, have unwillingly offered up the absurd. In fact, in the last Congress, at a hearing I chaired, the Republican witness said he would be happy to sprinkle arsenic-laced coal ash on his cereal.

It turns out that the Republican witness is not alone in his suggestion to use arsenic as a dietary supplement. Arsenic, which is a major component of mining activities, was famously used to poison and kill a number of prominent people throughout history, including Napoleon, King George III, and the Emperor of China.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

In the 19th century, mercury, another common mining waste, was used as a cure-all for toothaches and other ailments. It turns out that the mercury is also highly toxic. It causes severe impacts on the brain and, throughout history, has been identified as the poison behind many other notable illnesses and deaths in the history of our planet.

By defining nuisance dust this way, the Republicans are, essentially, providing the mining industry with the holiday gift of pollution. Instead of gold and frankincense and myrrh, the Republicans are bearing gifts of arsenic and lead and mercury for every family in our country.

My amendment simply states that so-called nuisance dust doesn't include poisonous arsenic or other heavy metals that are hazardous to human health, because cancer is not a nuisance. The development of a child's brain is not a nuisance. Yet the Republicans would treat these conditions as a nuisance rather than as medical catastrophes for the families of America.

So let's be clear what this bill is all about. This is another attempt by the Republicans to protect Big Coal by creating another loophole to avoid the Clean Air Act so that families don't have to worry that their children are inhaling these dangerous materials, the arsenic, the lead, the mercury that they are petrified are going to have a negative long-term impact on their children's development.

That's what this is all about, bottom line. And the coal industry is saying ``no.'' The Republicans are using the guise of some farm dust cloud of confusion to mask what they're really trying to do, which is to allow the coal industry to continue to send this lead,

this mercury, this arsenic up into the air and into the lungs of children across our country, especially those that are so young that we know it has an impact on their development, especially of their brain.

So I urge an ``aye'' vote on this amendment, and I don't think there can be a more important amendment that we're going to vote upon in this Congress.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

The Republicans call this bill a ``balanced budget amendment,'' but it is not balanced because it will blow a hole in the budget of vital programs that millions of Americans depend on. It's unbalanced, unneeded, and will undermine our struggling economy.

Republicans want us to mangle the Constitution because they cannot manage this institution. This amendment is a means to an end. It's a means for Republicans to end Medicare, to end Social Security and Medicaid, to end every antipoverty program. And why? Because they harbor an ancient animosity towards all of those programs. And their plan is to leave them as debt-soaked relics of an era where we actually cared about poor people, the elderly in our country, because the Republican plan will cut critical health care and antipoverty programs, put them on a starvation diet, and leave vulnerable Americans with the crumbs.

Our economy now has a 9 percent unemployment rate. You know what that means? It means that 46 million Americans today live in poverty. Do you want to know what poverty is in America in 2011? That's a family of four living on $22,000 a year. There are almost 9 million families living at or below the poverty line, including 15.5 million children. That means that one in five children in our country are living in poverty. Those are the programs that they want to cut here today, for the poorest children in America in 2011.

There are almost 50 million Americans at risk of not having enough food. More than 16 million children are in danger of going to bed tonight without a meal. One in six seniors now live in poverty, dependent upon Medicare, dependent upon Medicaid, each of them now at grave risk because of the Republican plan here today. Their plan is really a Robin Hood in reverse--take from the neediest and give to the greediest. That is the plan.

Now let's go back into the ``way back'' machine, all the way back to the year 2000, the last time we voted on a balanced budget here in Congress, 2000. Bill Clinton was President. It passed. The budget balanced. And the country was feeling good. The economy was booming. And then George Bush takes over in January of 2001. The Republicans controlled the House. The Republicans controlled the Senate. What do they do? Huge tax breaks for billionaires and millionaires, two wars which were not paid for, Iraq and Afghanistan, all on the Republicans' shoulders. And they then turn a blind eye as Wall Street turned the entire economy into a casino, which then cascaded into the biggest longstanding recession that we've seen since the Great Depression, descending upon the shoulders of whom? The poor, the sick, the elderly, the ordinary families killing themselves to pay for their mortgage each day.

You don't need a constitutional amendment, ladies and gentlemen, Republicans, my good friends. You have a supercommittee meeting right now down the corridor. You know what you should do? Say: Take away those $40 billion worth of tax breaks for the oil companies. They don't need them. Take away the $700 billion in new nuclear weapons programs. We don't have any targets for those nuclear weapons. Kill those programs. Look at the tax breaks for the billionaires and millionaires. They don't need them. Cut them right now.

All of you have taken a pledge, no reductions in the tax breaks for billionaires. No reductions in defense spending. You've tied your own hands even as you, with crocodile tears, come out here and say how much you care about balancing the budget and how much you care about the American economy. The proof will come next week when you do not stand up in order to take the tough actions needed right now for the American people.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

We do not need a constitutional amendment. We need a supercommittee congressional agreement now.

To the Republicans: do it now. Call President Obama now. Tell him tax breaks for the billionaires, on the table. Tell him defense spending, on the table. Tell him tax breaks for oil companies, on the table. The President says he'll put the social programs on the table.

You don't have to go back 200 years to amend the Constitution. You just have to next week, next Wednesday say, We want to do it now. We, who are here, will do it now. We will balance the budget by putting all of our programs on the table.

Do it now. Do it now, Republicans. Don't pretend and hide behind a constitutional amendment when you can do it now. You can be the Founding Fathers of a balanced budget in 2011.

Mr. Speaker, though the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, may not be a household name, Americans rely on this agency every day to provide critical weather information and to support ecologically sustainable and economically vibrant coastal communities. 2011 has been a record year for extreme weather disasters, including floods in the Midwest, extensive drought in Texas, a hurricane in Vermont and a debilitating October snowstorm in New England. The latest insurance analysis finds that the United States has experienced 15 billion-dollar weather disasters thus far in 2011. Despite these substantial costs, the ability to accurately predict and therefore prepare for such events not only prevented additional economic losses, but also saved lives. The funding levels in this bill will support the Joint Polar Satellite System, which provides NOAA with the technology to continue to make timely and accurate weather predictions.

Unfortunately, this bill prevents NOAA from undertaking a budget neutral reorganization to create a Climate Service, which was first proposed by President Bush's administration. Increasingly businesses, communities, and individuals are asking NOAA for climate information so they can make informed long-term decisions that impact the economy, public health, and safety. By continuing to oppose all things 'climate', Republicans have denied NOAA the ability to provide these critical products and services.

This bill also unfortunately reduces funding levels for NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service to 2005 levels. NOAA is responsible for the conservation and management of fisheries in the United States and adequate funding is needed to protect our iconic American fishing industry. Our fishing industry is a critical component of our national economy. In 2010, the United States landed 8.2 billion pounds of fish valued at $4.5 billion dollars. We know improved data collection and stock assessments allow NOAA to make better and more timely fishery management decisions. We must continue to push for adequate fisheries science funding, which is critical to supporting our fishermen and coastal communities.

I remain concerned that NOAA's role in climate and fisheries science will be hindered by these funding levels, but will support this bill.