Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing with this energy bill is the result of a highly partisan, secretive process in which Republicans have been talking only to other Republicans and the oil and the gas and the nuclear and the coal and the electric utility industry. Well, they have treated the Democratic minority and the environmental and consumer groups with the maximum possible disregard and with political arrogance. It is the final stages of the implementation of the secret energy task force meetings that began in Vice President Cheney's office.

This bill is the worst piece of legislation that has been brought before this legislative body in many decades. It is an appalling concoction of tax breaks, subsidies, and pork barrel spending for wealthy oil, natural gas, nuclear, coal, and utilities industries. It turns over control of the American people's lands to energy companies that will be free to ravage and rape the environment with little or no restraint.

It pays polluters, pays polluters to clean up the messes that they have created and subsidizes them to pollute some more. It will make our Nation's air dirtier. It will make our water dirtier, and it will make ordinary people pay higher energy bills for the privilege of having dirtier air and dirtier water, more asthmas, more cancers, and more deaths due to pollution. And

all of this done with $138 billion in borrowed money from the Social Security and Medicare trust fund because our country is in deficit and it must borrow the money.

And worst of all, it dishonors the sacrifice made by 130,000 of our young men and women in Iraq today, guarding oil fields. We know we now import 60 percent of our oil from overseas. If we do not do something that deals with the amount of oil that we consume in our SUVs and our automobiles, if we do not do something about fuel economy for air conditioners, then in another 10 years we will be 80 percent dependent upon imported oil from overseas. That is where we are heading.

This bill does nothing to deal with where we put oil in our country. We put it into gasoline tanks. We ignore that fact. It deals not with the fact that 70 percent of peak demand in the summer goes for air conditioning. Are we kidding ourselves out here today? This bill is a disaster. And meanwhile, there is $138 billion worth of subsides in tax breaks, in new authorizations for which industries? Oil, gas, coal, nuclear, the wealthiest industries getting all of these tax breaks.

This is a terrible bill. Vote no on the rule and no on final passage.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

(Mr. FARR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is a historic failure. Our country has 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world; 75 percent of the oil reserves in the world are in the Middle East. We put 70 percent of all the oil we consume in our country into gasoline tanks. This bill does nothing about the ever-increasing percentage of the oil which we consume that goes into gasoline tanks.

It is a disservice to those 130,000 young men and women who are in the Middle East right now fighting to protect the flow of oil into the Western industrialized countries. This bill does nothing to protect against that.

This bill harms the environment. This bill will weaken the Clean Air Act, weaken the Clean Water Act, increase the number of children with asthma. Eight million have asthma today. It increases as each year goes by. Twenty-four million Americans have asthma. Other respiratory illnesses increase as each year goes by.

This bill will increase pollution. It will increase the amount of damage to the environment. It does nothing to help on the global warming issue. It is without question the single worst environmental bill of all time. And in addition to that, it gives enormous subsidies to industries across America. It gives subsidies to the oil industry, the gas industry, the coal industry, the nuclear industry. It at the same time underfunds conservation, renewables. It is a complete distortion of what the agenda for our country should be as the years move along.

With regard to fuel economy standards, this bill includes a $100,000 subsidy for Hummers. The Senate took it out last night. But the Republicans in the House insisted that a $100,000 subsidy for the purchase of Hummers remain in the bill. That is all you have to know about this bill, because we put 70 percent of all the oil we consume into gasoline tanks. They could not repeal it last night. They did not think there was time. Maybe we will do it next year, they said.

Well, in addition, they did not think it was the right time to do anything about air conditioning standards. We use about 70 percent of all peak electricity in the summer to put into air conditioners. Nothing in the bill on that. On computers, we have about 200 million of them in America. We could have mandated the improvement of efficiency and electricity consumption in computers. That would have saved about 30 new large coal or natural gas plants from being built. Air conditioning would have saved about 40 new plants.

There was a renewable portfolio standard mandating that utilities have to use renewable energy for about 10 percent of their electricity generation. That would have saved 156 new power plants from being built, large power plants. But the Republican majority in the House stripped that out yesterday as well. Air conditioners, Hummers, computers, renewables, all of it out that could have made a huge difference in reducing our dependence on import oil.

We import about 60 percent of all the oil we consume today. This bill does nothing about that problem. In another 10 years we will be up to 80 percent of the oil that we consume being imported. There will be irresistible pressure as generation after generation of American young men and women are sent to the Middle East to protect those oil supplies.

It is an environmental disaster. It is a public health disaster. It is an energy policy disaster. This bill on all fronts is the worst bill to come before Congress in a generation given the challenge from Iraq in the Middle East that we are confronted with.

And on electricity, there are sensible justifications for moving at this time. There is no antifraud protection built into this bill. It actually directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to raise electricity rates. And it repeals PUHCA, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which is an invitation to Enron-like scandals, making that scandal look like child's play in the years ahead. This bill is a historic failure.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the leader of the Democratic Party.

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

Mr. Speaker, what did George Tenet know? What did Colin Powell know? What did Donald Rumsfeld know? We need to know why it was that the intelligence information relating to the presence of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons in Iraq was so flawed. Either our intelligence agencies did not know the truth, or they knew the truth, but deliberately exaggerated or distorted the truth to advance a decision to go to war that had already been predetermined; or the intelligence community allowed itself to be bullied or intimidated or cajoled into providing senior Bush administration officials with the answers they wanted to get so that they could begin a war. Any of these options raise very disturbing issues, but we have an obligation to get to the bottom of the situation.

Young men and women are dying in Iraq, and they were supposedly sent to Iraq to prevent Saddam from using weapons of mass destruction that we now know they did not have. We need to learn the lessons of this massive intelligence failure now so that we never have such a situation occur in the future. Our brave young men and women should never be asked to sacrifice their lives for a war whose justification was largely based on faulty or misleading intelligence.

What did George Tenet know? What did Colin Powell know? What did Donald Rumsfeld know? The American people have a right to know.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the United States Marine Corps on its 228th birthday. This organization, founded on November 10th, 1775, has a proud history of challenges met and overcome in every war in which our country has been involved. From the historic battles of Mellow Wood in the First World War to the battles of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Tarawa in the Second World War, to the modern conflicts in Panama, Somalia, and Iraq, the fighting men and women of the U.S. Marines have displayed the greatest valor and spirit. I wish to congratulate and honor all Marines and Marine veterans, with particular attention paid to those currently serving from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including 2,934 active duty Marines and 3,989 active reserve Marines in addition to the 2,259 retired Marines from our state. The U.S. Marines continue to be a storied organization upholding a proud tradition of freedom throughout the world. Congratulations to the U.S. Marine Corps.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that this is a moment in American history where we begin to pay the price for the Bush tax cuts. For 3 years, we have been told that the $3 trillion worth of tax cuts that are now going to be put in place over the next 15 years, that we do not have to worry because it will not impact on education, it will not impact on Social Security, it will not impact on Medicare, it will not impact on Medicaid, it will not impact on NIH. Do not worry.

Well, the gentleman from Ohio did a wonderful job doubling the NIH budget over a 5-year period. He has got a heart of gold. But this issue is now out of his control. There is no money left. We have got to tighten our belt.

How about in Iraq? Well, not there. There, we have an ability to send $87.5 billion this year, on top of the $75 billion we have already spent. For NIH, sorry, no increase. No increase? Fourteen million Americans are going to have Alzheimer's by the time all the baby boomers have retired, 14 million. Five million are going to have Parkinson's disease by the time all the baby boomers have retired; 1\1/ 2\ million Americans are going to have ALS by the time all the baby boomers have retired.

For Iraq, $150 billion over a 1-year period. For NIH, for all of the health care security for every American family, after inflation, after some of the money which is going to have to now be spent on bio-defense and antiterrorism at NIH as well and coordination with the antiterrorism effort, we are going to see a net decrease in NIH spending.

Now, one of the by-products of all the NIH spending over the years has been the lengthening of life expectancy. That is good. But the problem is that it has made it clearer that when people age, all of these other diseases then manifest themselves, Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's and many others for which we do not have a cure. We have cured the diseases that people died from in 1900, remarkably because of NIH; but we have not cured the diseases of the 21st century yet. That only can happen if NIH is fully funded.

Now, for smart bombs, an unlimited budget; for smart medical research, I am sorry, no increase.

Mr. Speaker, if we are not going to fund and leave the money in for the nursing home care for all of these people, and, by the way, half the people in nursing homes have Alzheimer's, guess who pays for it? Medicaid. When it hits 14 million, it is going to be Medicaid. But this tax cut is now going to make it impossible for us to fund that nursing home care for those senior citizens across our country.

So they either have to have it one way or the other in the Bush administration: cure these diseases, or leave the money in for the nursing home care. You cannot have it both ways.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the congressional fellows program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The mission of the AAAS is to ``Advance science and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people''. In pursuit of this mission, in 1973 the AAAS established a fellowship program designed to provide a unique public policy learning experience for scientist and to demonstrate the value of science-government interaction. From an initial cohort of seven Fellows, the AAAS program has grown over thirty years to include nearly one hundred Fellows each year, serving in both Houses of Congress and many agencies of the executive branch. Bringing technical backgrounds that range from astrophysics to veterinary radiology, AAAS Fellows have made important contributions to all areas of government policy. Many former Fellows have remained in Washington at the end of their twelve-month tenure, to become members of the scientific policymaking community. Others have returned to scientific careers with an enhanced appreciation of public policy, sharing this knowledge and experience with colleagues and students.

I have welcomed over twenty AAAS Fellows into my office since 1979 and have been consistently impressed by their contributions to policymaking and advising. They have made a significant positive impact on the quality of life for the people of Massachusetts, the United States, and the world by instilling a measure of science and humanity into the decisions we are asked to make in these chambers every day. I look forward to working with AAAS Fellows for another thirty years.

The following article from the Washington Post provides a useful look back at 30 years of the outstanding achievements of the AAAS science policy program.

[From the Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2003]

Bridging This Gap Isn't Rocket Science

(By Rick Weiss)

In his famous 1959 treatise ``The Two Cultures,'' British

scientist and novelist C.P. Snow decried the divide between

scientists and ``literary intellectuals,'' warning that

society's problems will remain largely intractable as long as

scientists eschew Shakespeare and literary types remain

ignorant about the second law of thermodynamics.

Washington has its own version of that cultural divide--

this one involving scientists and politicians. How can the

nation craft policies in such scientifically complex areas as

embryonic stem cell research, global warming, agricultural

biotechnology and ``Star Wars'' missile defense, experts in

both camps moan, when so many politicians know so little

about science and most scientists remain so clueless about

how policy is made?

Enter the AAAS Science and Technology Fellows Program, a

little-known but influential cultural exchange that serves as

a wormhole between the largely alien universes of science and

politics.

The program--coordinated by the American Association for

the Advancement of Science, the nation's largest general

science organization and publisher of the research journal

Science--places about 60 PhD scientists in congressional and

executive branch offices each fall for one-year stints.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this week, the program gives

scientists a chance to explore the world of policy and

politics while allowing lawmakers and administration

officials to take advantage of the fellows' well-wired

brains.

Scientists learn about a kind of sausage-making that never

came up in their PhD food chemistry courses and bureaucrats

get reminded that the universe cannot run on hot air alone.

Sometimes there is even a profound synthesis. In at least

one case, involving a psychology fellow and a Treasury

official, the cross-pollination between science and politics

got so personal as to culminate in matrimony.

But perhaps the best measure of the program's success is

the ubiquity of former fellows inside the Beltway today. Ten

of about 50 staff members on the House Science Committee--

including the committee's deputy chief of staff--are former

fellows, as is one member of Congress: Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-

N.J.). Other former fellows include the deputy director of

the Department of Homeland Security's Advanced Research

Projects Agency; the new chief science adviser at the State

Department; and the deputy associate director of technology

at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Perhaps no fellow is as appreciative of the program as

psychologist Karen Kovacs North, now assistant dean for the

School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University

of California at Los Angeles. She met her husband in 1994

while on her AAAS stint in the office of Rep. Edward J.

Markey (D-Mass.).

``We met banning Chinese assault weapons,'' she said.

Specifically, she first got Erik North, a Treasury

official, in her cross hairs when he and some colleagues went

to Markey's office to work with her on the wording of the

pending Clinton importation ban.

``They came over with a bunch of guns and it scared the

hell out of me,'' Kovacs North recalled. After months of work

together, with the ban written and passed, it was dinner for

two, long talks into the night ``and the rest,'' Kovac North

said, ``is Hollywood history.''

They married in Malibu, Calif., in 1997. C.P. Snow would

have cried with happiness.

Madam Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

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

I am offering this motion today to address one of the most inexplicable and indefensible decisions made by the House and Senate Republican energy conferees in their closed-door meetings. I am talking about the decision that has apparently been made by the Republican majority to weaken critical nuclear security provisions Democrats had earlier attached to the energy bill, H.R. 6, in order to better secure our Nation's 103 currently operating civilian nuclear power plants from the threat of terrorist attack.

Remember less than 2 years ago, President Bush told the Nation in his State of the Union address, quote, our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears and showed us the true scope of the task ahead. We have seen the depths of our enemies' hatred in videos where they laugh about the loss of innocent life and the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world.

So we know that nuclear power plants are at the very top of al Qaeda's list of potential targets in the United States. Despite this fact, the Republican conferees have apparently decided to weaken the nuclear security language in the energy bill. My motion covers three of the major weakening changes that have been made in the nuclear antiterrorism provisions in the energy bill.

The first part of my motion addresses the decision by the House Republican conferees to eliminate the requirement for a mandatory Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulemaking to upgrade nuclear security regulations. Section 14012 of the House bill entitled Nuclear Facility Threats requires the NRC to issue regulations, including changes to the design basis threat, to ensure that licensees addressed the threats of a terrorist attack against a nuclear power plant in the United States. Under the provision, these new rules are required to be issued not later than 270 days after the submission of a detailed report by the President assessing the nature of the terrorist threat to the nuclear facilities in the United States or a year after enactment.

The Republican conferees have now weakened this provision so that it no longer mandates a new NRC rulemaking, but instead merely authorizes the NRC to make such revisions to the design basis threats promulgated before the date of enactment of this section as the commission deems appropriate, based on the summary and classification report. There is no deadline. There is no requirement for any formal Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulemaking. This language guts the entire section and appears to allow the NRC to deem the interim orders that it has already adopted since the September 11 attacks to be sufficient and take no further action.

This new language reflects what the NRC and the nuclear industry have always wanted, no action by Congress to require them to do anything more than that which they have already done on nuclear security. But is that the position that this body, which has twice voted to mandate Nuclear Regulatory Commission nuclear security rulemaking, really wants to take?

You might say, perhaps the NRC has already addressed the problem in its secret orders. No, it has not. The NRC orders are classified and were prepared following closed-door consultations with the nuclear industry and no opportunity for public comment. I have read the NRC orders very carefully. And while I cannot discuss them in a public forum due to their security classification, I can tell this House that the NRC's orders are inadequate in several respects and fail to address the kind of threats that we now must be prepared for in a post- September 11 environment. I would suggest to the Members that if they took the time to read these orders and to consult with anyone with any real expertise on security matters, they would share my concern that the NRC has failed to do enough to beef up security at our Nation's nuclear facilities.

But despite the President's warnings, the Republican energy conferees have now decided not to even require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to undertake a rulemaking to tighten up security at these sensitive facilities.

The second part of my motion addresses the Republican conferees' decision to weaken the House-passed requirements for full consultation with Homeland Security regarding nuclear security risks. Section 14013 of the House bill, ``Unreasonable Risk Consultation,'' requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consult with the Department of Homeland Security concerning whether the location of a new nuclear power plant or its design provides for adequate protection of public health and safety if subject to a terrorist attack before Price- Anderson liability indemnification is provided to the plant.

This provision originated as an amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) to last year's Price-Anderson bill, which this year was attached to the base text of H.R. 6. It also requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consult with the Department of Homeland Security before issuing or renewing a license to operate a new or existing nuclear power plant to determine the adequacy of the emergency evacuation plan for communities around the plant. This provision originated as an amendment that I authored. We have also been informed that they are preparing to eliminate the requirement for consultation prior to a relicensing of an existing power plant, although the Republican conferees have yet to share this new language with us in this bill.

The Republican conferees have now de-linked the Waxman amendment's consultation requirement from Price-Anderson's liability indemnification and eliminated the Markey amendment's requirement for consultation regarding adequacy of emergency evacuation plans. We have also been informed that they are preparing to eliminate the requirement for consultation prior to a relicensing of an existing power plant, although the Republican conferees have yet to share this new language with the Democrats.

The elimination of the Waxman amendment's linkage between NRC consultation with Homeland Security and Price-Anderson indemnification takes all of the teeth out of the Waxman provision. Instead of mandating a consultation aimed at determining whether the design or location of a nuclear facility poses an unreasonable risk before giving the owner government-subsidized insurance, we are now merely calling for such consultation to take place.

Moreover, tying consultation to the initial licensing of a plant, and not recovering relicensing of the 103 currently-operating nuclear power plants, greatly narrows the application of the amendment since no new nuclear power plant has been successfully ordered since 1973 and no new nuclear power plants are likely to be ordered for decades, if ever. If this change is made, there would be no mandatory consultation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the Department of Homeland Security for any of the existing nuclear power plants in this country, not for Seabrook, not for Pilgrim, not for Indian Point, not for Diablo Canyon, for none.

Finally, eliminating the specific requirement for consultation regarding

the adequacy of emergency evacuation plans in the event of a successful terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant means that we are failing to do what is needed to ensure that citizens living near plants such as the Indian Point reactor right outside of New York City are fully protected against the threat of a terrorist attack.

And third and finally, my amendment addresses the decision to weaken nuclear materials transportation requirements: section 14011 of the House-passed bill, requiring the NRC to establish a system to better ensure the security of nuclear materials transferred to, from, or within the United States. This provision originated as an amendment I authored that has now passed the House twice in H.R. 6 in this Congress and as part of Price-Anderson reauthorization last year.

The latest Republican conference report draft, in contrast, limits the NRC's regulations to the security of imports or exports of nuclear materials, failing to cover the transportation of these materials within our own country. This limitation is inexplicable in light of the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Congress in 2002 that there are 2 million radioactive sources in the United States and that each year there are on average 300 reports of lost or stolen or abandoned radioactive materials.

The NRC also reported at that time that in the past 5 years, there have been 1,495 reports of lost, stolen, or abandoned radioactive materials; 835 these have not been found. According to the NRC, a radioactive source as small as 1Curie, if dispersed by a bomb, ``could spread low-level contamination over an area up to several city blocks, possibly resulting in restriction of the area until the area was surveyed and decontaminated.'' But the Republican energy conferees have exempted transfers of these radioactive materials within the country from the new nuclear security requirements. That makes no sense.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this motion today and send a strong message to the House and Senate Republican energy conferees that this body insists on tougher protections against a terrorist attack on our Nation's nuclear facilities; that this body insists on tougher protections against the threat of a radiological dirty bomb; and that this body rejects secret, back-room talks that result in the weakening of critical antiterrorism protections.

I heard the majority leader earlier make reference to the fact that a motion to instruct might just reflect what the Members in this body are feeling that day. That is not what the provisions that we are talking about reflect. They reflect what has happened on this House floor several times with the Members voting for it. In fact, taking it out reflects what, in my opinion, a small number of Members and nuclear industry officials might feel on any particular day. But they do not capture what the consensus was that was reached by House Members and the general public about what must be done to enhance nuclear security.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush).

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume in order to conclude this debate.

Madam Speaker, without question, back in 1787 when a deal was being cut on the construction of the Union and the small States demanded that, rather than equal representation for all States, that another body be created in order to represent them, that other body that was created at the time has developed peculiar characteristics that, unfortunately, are manifesting themselves here on the House floor today.

There are many who look back with regret that that deal was ever cut, the grand compromise in the Constitution, allowing for that disproportionate influence, and I see nodding bipartisan agreement on the Republican side on this subject.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman very much. I regret that Texas was not part of the Union at the time. Perhaps they could have exercised some influence in that final decision making.

But the other body, as it likes to be called, and I understand why in many instances, this is a good example of where anonymity is something to be much desired and sought, that the other body here, according to the majority, is calling all the shots in terms of nuclear security, which is a premise which I doubt is actually accurate. I do believe that it was a bicameral Republican decision to take out the nuclear security issues, since we know that the Democrats in the Senate, like the Democrats in the House, are searching the corridors of this building trying to find where the meetings are taking place. We have no idea.

We do know this though, that reports are rampant that the bill, when it comes out on the House floor, is going to be loaded with billions of dollars of subsidies for the nuclear industry. I understand it is that time of the year where the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries just really think that they deserve billions of dollars in subsidies for each one of their industries from the taxpaying public, even though they are the wealthiest industries in the United States.

But, it seems to me, the least that the nuclear industry should be willing to accept are antiterrorism provisions that are attached to the nuclear gifts which it appears the Republican House and Senate and White House is willing to, and I am sorry I said ``Senate,'' I meant the other body, that they appear willing to confer upon them.

They should accept those additional safety measures, because the public, without question, gave an additional measure of wholehearted support to the President in his campaign to eradicate the threat of Saddam Hussein to the world because of his nuclear mujahideen, because of the contention he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program.

Here, domestically, we know that nuclear power plants are similarly at the top of the terrorist target list for al Qaeda, and it seems to me the nuclear industry is acting in an irresponsible fashion in not accepting reasonable measures being adopted which guarantee that terrorists cannot be successful in using domestic nuclear materials to terrorize our country.

So I regret that that language has been removed, and at this point I urge an ``aye'' vote on this motion to instruct.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

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

Mr. Speaker, subject to rule XXII, clause 7, I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act.

The form of the motion is as follows:

Mr. Markey moves that the managers on the part of the House

at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses

on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 6 be instructed to

insist upon the provisions contained in--

(1) section 14011 of the House bill relating to secure

transfer of nuclear materials;

(2) section 14012(d) of the House bill relating to nuclear

facility threats, directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

to issue regulations, including changes to the design basis

threat, to ensure that nuclear facilities licensed by

Commission address the threat of a terrorist attack against

such facilities; and

(3) section 14013 of the House bill requiring the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission, before entering into any agreement of

indemnification with respect to a utilization facility under

section 170 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, to consult with

the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security (or any

successor official) with respect to that facility concerning

whether the location of the facility and the design of that

type of facility ensures that the facility provides for the

adequate protection of public health and safety if subject to

a terrorist attack, and that the Nuclear Regulatory

Commission also consult with the Secretary of Homeland

Security before issuing a license or a license renewal for a

sensitive nuclear facility concerning the emergency

evacuation plan for the communities living near the sensitive

nuclear facility.

Mr. Chairman, last fall we were told that Congress needed to authorize military force against Iraq in order to convince the U.N. to send the inspectors back into Iraq. But as soon as we did so, the Bush administration pulled the rug out from under the U.N. inspectors and decided it would use the authority Congress granted them to fight a unilateral war.

Now we are learning that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Congress and the American people were deceived, misled, and manipulated with false and misleading intelligence and political spin from the Bush White House.

Now the Bush administration cannot find any weapons of mass destruction. It cannot find Saddam Hussein. It cannot find Osama bin Laden. It cannot find Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and it cannot even find out who within the White House staff leaked the name of that covert CIA operative.

What does the Bush administration now ask the Congress for? They ask us to trust them and to grant their request for another $87 billion going into Iraq, a blank check with no clear vision of how we are going to extricate ourselves from this morass.

Now, I hear a lot of talk from the administration and its supporters about how we are crafting with this legislation a new Marshall Plan for Iraq. Well, let me tell you, when George Marshall was crafting a plan for Harry Truman to reconstruct Europe after the devastation of World War II, he was not setting up a sweetheart, no-bid contract system for companies associated with the old Pendergast Machine in Kansas City.

That is what we are seeing today with the contracts being given to Halliburton and other favored companies. We are providing broad transfer and reallocation authority to the executive branch that gives the Bush administration virtually unfettered discretion to spend the monies we appropriate in any way they wish. At the same time the President asks us to spend $87 billion in Iraq, he is also going around the country giving speeches calling for additional tax cuts for the top 1 percent wealthiest people in the United States of America.

So if you are wealthy in this country, you get tax cuts and fat government contracts. But if you are an ordinary working American, you get Social Security and Medicare trust funds raided, the 50 percent who are in nursing homes, the elderly dependent upon Medicaid, payments for their nursing home care, they are cut; and meanwhile it is all raided for the reconstruction of Iraq, while at the same time tax cuts of the same amounts are being given to the wealthiest 1 percent in our country.

So the Republicans are busy at work coming up with new schemes to increase your Medicare co-pays, means test your benefits, increase payments for seniors with home health care visits. All of it is wrong, just plain wrong. It is a blank check. It gives the President and Secretary Rumsfeld too much authority. And it fails to do what is needed to build international support for peacekeeping and reconstruction in Iraq or craft an appropriate exit strategy to get our troops back home. And that can only happen if we have multilateral support for this effort, if we have a real vision for what is going on.

As long as this administration believes that it is going to bring Jeffersonian democracy at the point of a gun to an occupied country, then we are operating with one of the most naive political schemes ever put together in the history of this world. And it is time for us to be ensuring that the Congress makes this administration accountable, rather than handing over a blank check with no accountability with at least 60 to 70 percent of this money capable of being reprogrammed by the administration at its own whim without Congress voting upon it again, all of it a mistake of historic proportions.

This is where Congress must check in. It did so after World War II. Today it is just providing a blank check.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Let me begin by saying that if we pass this bill with the type of blank check transfer authority that it currently contains, we will live to regret it in this House. We will only be furthering the restoration of an unaccountable imperial Presidency, a phenomenon that many of us saw emerge during the Vietnam era, much to our Nation's regret; and we will have handed over one of the principal powers of the Constitution that is granted to this body, the power of the purse.

While there is lots of debate and discussion about President Bush's $87 billion supplemental request for military operations, there is no discussion about how Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush can use most of this as a slush fund pretty much any way they want.

Most of the supplemental is pretty straightforward: $87 billion in total funding, $64.7 billion in military spending. But buried in the supplemental, there are also a number of provisions which would grant the Bush administration broad authority to transfer billions in funding appropriated in the bill for one purpose to be instead used for a completely different purpose with only minimal congressional oversight. Nearly, listen to this, $53 billion of the $87 billion appropriation is subject to one or more of these retransfer or reallocation provisions.

What exactly do these blank check provisions do? Essentially they allow Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush to create their very own slush funds that they can use for virtually whatever they want to do. Number one, there is $1.3 billion in defense-wide operations and maintenance funds that can be transferred over for use ``for payments to reimburse Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations, for logistical and military support provided, or to be provided, to United States military operations.''

So here we are essentially letting Secretary Rumsfeld take money appropriated for operations and maintenance and the military and instead using it as walking-around money to pay off countries that he thinks may be helpful to us. He decides who gets the money. He decides how much they get, and he decides whether or not those expenditures are really justified. All we are going to get back here in Congress are quarterly reports as he will tell us who he gave the money to.

Second, there is $1.98 billion appropriated for the Iraq Freedom Fund that can be transferred over to appropriations for military personnel operations and maintenance; overseas humanitarian, disaster, and civic aid. So if the Secretary does not like how the Congress has appropriated for these accounts, he can increase them by $2 billion. Congress just gets notified about what the Secretary has done, but we have no ability to stop him.

Third, there is $73 million in drug interdiction and counter-drug activity funds for Afghanistan which can be transferred by Secretary Rumsfeld to appropriations for military personnel; operation and maintenance; procurement; and research, development. In this section there is not even any requirement for congressional notification. The money just gets shifted out of drug interdiction.

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

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

The problem with the bill the way it is written is that, for example, the $73 million, which we all agree should be put in for drug interdiction, could just get shifted out of drug interdiction over to a Defense Department R&D program, a procurement program. We will not have any say over that. We agree on the drug interdiction, but Rumsfeld can put it anywhere he wants.

My amendment does not cut a single nickel out of this entire budget. What it says, though, is if they want to reprogram it, they have got to come back to us. If they have changed their mind on drug interdiction, if they want $1.3 billion in walking-around money to give to Jordan or any other country, they come back to us. They ask for our permission. This is a war in which we are the elected people of our country. This is where ``no taxation without representation'' started as a revolution in my district. It was about a war. It was about taxation. It was about proper representation.

I do not believe the American people want to hand over to Donald Rumsfeld and over to Condoleezza Rice and over to Wolfowitz and all of them the authority to make decisions which we, as their elected representatives greeting the body bags coming back to our district, are expected to make on behalf of our constituents.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

This is a curious provision. It was not in the House bill, it was not in the Senate bill, but it miraculously shows up when the Republicans from the House and the Senate meet in secret somewhere here in the Capitol and the Cheney Task Force moved from the White House down here as an integral part of the plan, which neither the House nor the Senate voted for. That is just an incredible achievement.

At the same time, the Republicans are saying, we do not believe we can improve the fuel economy standards of SUVs or automobiles; we do not believe we can improve the efficiency of air conditioners; and, by the way, we put 70 percent of all of the oil which we consume in the United States into gasoline tanks; but the Republicans say, we cannot improve that technology. That is impossible. On air conditioners, we cannot improve that technology. That is impossible, even though during the summer, in all of the Southern States, the peak demand for electricity is 70 percent air-conditioning. We cannot improve that technology.

But what do they think they can do? Well, they think, rather than making ourselves more efficient so we consume less oil or consume less natural gas, they are going to go up the coastline of California, of Florida, of North Carolina, of Massachusetts to Georges Bank. I asked Secretary Norton 2 years ago when the Cheney Task Force first brought this measure up, I asked her if she planned on drilling off of Georges Bank and she said to me, where is Georges Bank? And I said to her, Madam Secretary, the people of New England hope you never find out where Georges Bank is, because we do not want you to be building these oil pumps off of our beaches, while telling the auto industry, the SUV industry,

the air-conditioning industry, they can continue to be less and less and less efficient. Of course we are going to have to drill off of beaches if that is the attitude, because the whole Republican philosophy is antitechnology.

And, by the way, the majority leader was very honest, very honest last week. He said that the Republicans have to hold on to drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, have to hold on to it because it will, ``set a precedent'' so that they can drill in other pristine areas, including off the coasts of our country. So it is an important precedent. We are not going to be a country, said the Republicans, that have increased efficiencies in our technology. They say, no, we are just going to continue to drill in places where Americans do not want oil and gas drilled for, because we do not have the nerve to take on the auto industry, the air-conditioning industry, or any other industry that is forcing our dependence upon imported oil from the Middle East.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman on a bipartisan basis, because this is a time for all of the other cities with losing histories in baseball to all band together and root for the Red Sox to end this terrible reign.

Oh, I understand that. I am talking about the bipartisan cities with losing baseball histories.

Mr. Speaker, this camaraderie that we can share on this one issue is hopefully one that we might be able to spread to other issues.

Perhaps on oil and gas and other environmental issues as well, but at least on this one issue I do agree with my colleague that the New York Yankees are the oil and gas industry of the baseball industry.

Mr. Speaker, Massachusetts will miss Millie O'Neill dearly. She and Tip were one of the greatest couples of the greatest generation. I am sure that if Tip were with us today, he would say that he was the luckiest man in the world to have met his sweetheart Millie in high school, to have her willingly and joyfully join him on a journey through the highs and the lows of national politics in America's last half century, to have raised three wonderful sons and two outstanding daughters. Tommy, who I met at Boston College; Susan, who was my classmate and a history major with me at Boston College. I have known them my whole life.

This is a wonderful family, and they balanced the demands of that journey against the love and attention that a family requires. And Millie emerged from it all with her love for Tip as strong and as deep and as transparent as the two schoolkids they once were. She leaves a legacy of warmth and companionship that will glow for the ages.

Millie was pretty good at taking Tip's favorite sayings and turning them around to her advantage. One of my favorites is retold in Tip's wonderful autobiography, Man of the House. Tip loved to remind people in politics of the priceless advice of Mrs. O'Brian, a neighbor and teacher in North Cambridge. She taught him the lesson that you should never assume someone will vote for you. You have to ask, said Mrs. O'Brian. So Tip writes, ``Poor Millie is sick of hearing me tell the Mrs. O'Brian story, and I can't blame her. But during my long career in Congress, we would always go to the polls together on election day, and before leaving the house I would say to her, Honey, I would like to ask for your vote. Tom, she would reply, I will give you every consideration.''

Millie's selfless devotion to her children and her grandchildren and her support for the March of Dimes and the arts was unparalleled. All of us in Massachusetts and our country feel like we have lost a pillar of public service. And, oh, how she loved the trips with the Rangels and the Contes and the Moakleys and the Michels on their journeys around the world, this incredible congressional delegation, with each of them becoming a family member of the other family in the course of all of the years that they traveled together.

So for us it is a great loss, but it is I think our country's great, great, great honor to have had Tip and her be the Man and the Woman of this House for 10 years, providing a family-like atmosphere that so many Members long for; that brought a joy to this place, as almost a second home for Members when they were away rather than a place that they just saw as one in which they worked. Those days we all long for. And we thank the O'Neills for the blessings which they conferred upon each of us during their lives because they are amongst our fondest memories.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to refresh and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the subject of this special order on Mildred O'Neill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Doyle).

Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the excellent comments and argument of the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).

(Mr. BUYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the ranking member on the Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, which has jurisdiction over the Federal Trade Commission.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support for this bill, and I rise in strong commendation for the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) and for our ranking member, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell).

The gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) has brought this bill out at such a rapid pace that I believe that this legislation has set the Congressional land speed record for legislating in the aftermath of a terrible Oklahoma court decision, and I want to congratulate the gentleman from Louisiana. I think this record, like Roger Bannister's breaking of the four-minute mile, will be viewed as a landmark for all future legislation in the history of our country.

This legislation got to the House floor faster than a consumer can hang up on a telemarketer at dinner time. I mean, the gentleman just did a phenomenal job in ensuring that we are able to protect the American people, because we need this bill in order to ensure that by Christmastime, the only ringing bells consumers will hear are jingle bells and sleigh bells, not the jangling phone ruining people's family holidays.

Now, if we do not pass this legislation, the judge in Oklahoma will have to put his own courthouse phone number on a do-not-call list, because he will have millions of phone calls from complaining Americans demanding that this decision be reversed. So we are doing the judge a big favor today. We are saving him from the same headache that tens of millions of Americans feel that they are subjected to on a daily basis by the phone calls that come into their homes on an unwanted basis.

What is our purpose? The gentleman from Louisiana, the gentleman from Michigan, all the Members of Congress, all we are trying to do is to make the Direct Marketing Association, these telemarketers, more efficient. How efficient is it to know exactly who is receptive to your hundreds of calls a year than for us to put together a list for you of all of the people in America who want to get these calls?

Now, I do not happen to be one of them. I actually signed up at 12:01 a.m. on the first day that it was available to end these calls coming in to my own home, personally, and I threw my cell phone in as well. Those 50 million other phone numbers that are on that list, I was trying to be number one in that land speed race to end it once and for all.

What we have got now on our hands is, in my opinion, a very efficient telemarketing industry, one which can now use their huckster sales pitch to address just those Americans who kind of enjoy having people call them at all hours of the day, and we know there are people out there that really do like it.

If a salesman comes to your front door and knocks on the front door, you do not have to answer. That is your way of dealing with them. But if someone calls you on the phone, that phone just keeps ringing until you have to answer it. That is the difference between a door-to-door salesman and someone who calls you on the phone. That person can ruin your supper, can ruin your day. So this do-not-call database proposal is a winner for the millions of consumers who are plagued by those unsolicited commercial telemarketing calls.

The bill which we consider today permits the FTC to proceed on a timely basis, so that by October 1, consumers can begin to see a reduction in unwanted telemarketing calls.

Having first proposed a national do-not-call database registry in legislation that the Congress successfully enacted in 1991, I believe its implementation is action that is long overdue. Consumers across the country have clearly voted in favor of signing up for the database, indicating by the millions that they want an effective ``no soliciting'' sign on their home phone or cell phone.

They want this national database to help to bring a halt to the seemingly nightly ritual of phone calls, interrupting dinner or precious family time.

I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this bill with the gentleman from Louisiana (Chairman Tauzin). Again, I want to commend the chairman for his alacrity in bringing this bill to the floor so soon after the court decision. He and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and all of the Members who worked on this and the staff who worked on this overnight deserve an enormous amount of credit.

Finally, I want to commend FTC Chairman Timothy Muris for his pro- consumer action in creating the Federal Trade Commission do-not-call rules. This do-not-call database will be a powerful new tool for consumers to combat unwanted telemarketing intrusions. It is a landmark day in the history of consumer legislation in our country. Tim Muris deserves a lot of credit, the rest of the FTC, the gentleman from Louisiana (Chairman Tauzin), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), and all of the other Members.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no other requests for time to speak on this important bill, so I will continue to reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, with compliments to the gentleman from Louisiana (Chairman Tauzin) and to the gentleman from Michigan (Ranking Member Dingell), and to all of the Members who worked on this legislation, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) for her leadership on this bill along with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo).

We cannot be debating a more important issue to our homeland security than how much money the Federal Government is going to spend over the next year to secure the people of our country. The President has been able to find a way to spend $87 billion in Iraq to protect American security on top of an additional $65 billion which we have already spent, but this administration can only find an additional 2 percent for homeland security. And after inflation, that pretty much gobbles it up.

While this theory that somehow or other al Qaeda is going to be attacking us 5,000 miles away and not here on our own shore belies the reality of where the threat is to the American people which is in their homes, in their places of work.

Now, just a couple of months ago on this House floor, we passed an amendment by a vote of 278 to 146. That amendment required that in addition to each of us who are passengers on planes in America having to take off

our shoes, having to put our cell phones through security, having to put our computers through security, having to put our carry-on bags through security, having to put our luggage, if it is too big, down and under the plane through security, that the cargo which goes on those very same passenger planes is also screened.

Believe it or not, although 22 percent of all air cargo in the United States is placed on passenger planes that we all fly on, there is no screening program. So as we all sit up in the passenger seats now, thinking that everyone who is seated with us in the passenger section has also been screened, and thereby we are safe because there are two air marshals, there is a double-reinforced steel door on the pilot's cabin, the pilot may have a gun, every passenger may be looking to see how they may respond if al Qaeda jumps up on that plane as to how they will tackle al Qaeda, but in the cargo bin of that very same plane, a package just this size, the same size as your luggage goes on that plane without being screened. Cargo.

Now, there is something wrong when your luggage, which is this size, gets screened but a piece of cargo does not get screened. Al Qaeda, not even flying on that plane, not even flying on that plane, can send cargo on that same plane unscreened, unseen, that destroys that plane. And the consequence would be another half-a-trillion or trillion-dollar hit to our economy.

So here is the bizarre situation in which we now see ourselves as the Republicans bring this bill out on the House floor, we, the average American, will have to go through airport security doing whatever it is that those screeners ask us to do. And we do not mind, we want security for our families, for our country, but going around the screening is the cargo on the very same plane.

By the way, with those people who put the cargo on the plane not flying on it, unless, if you followed this a couple of weeks ago, there was a young man who actually shipped himself across the country. Thank God that young man was a tourist and not a terrorist. That is where we are.

You can get a bomb onto a plane without a boarding pass. You can go right around the whole system that all of us have to go through to get on that passenger plane. So in this bill, rather than accepting the amendment which passed here on the House floor, which would require the TSA to construct a plan to ensure that there is a screening for cargo which goes on passenger planes, instead they removed it on a partisan, Republican-Democrat, vote in the conference committee, party line.

So while the passengers are having their nail clippers taken away from them because it may pose a threat to security on the plane, a piece of cargo can go on without any screening whatsoever. Now, that is just wrong. At Logan Airport, which I represent, 2 years ago, 10 al Qaeda, who had a sleeper cell in our city, got on 2 planes and terrorized our country and the world by then destroying the lives of not only the passengers on that plane from New England, but also 3,000 additional lives in New York City and a good chunk of our economy. We cannot run the risk on those very same planes taking off today, that al Qaeda could put cargo on the very same passenger flights without any screening. And I do not think the American people want to fly on planes that do not have cargo which is screened.

This provision, which has been deleted, has been endorsed by Coalition of Airline Pilots Association. All the airline pilots in America endorse the provision.

Let me read what the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 have to say about this provision. Here is what they say in a letter to us: ``The victims of Pan Am Flight 103 Organization is dedicated to and strives for passenger planes to be as secure as possible. Our goal is to have 100 percent physical screening of passengers, crew, luggage and cargo. Trading lives or dollars is totally unacceptable to the families who have paid the price of ineffective security.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time.

Let me go through this once again. If you are on a passenger plane, and this is the size of your carry-on luggage, you have to put that luggage through screening, each person in America, no exceptions; Members of Congress, no exception. We are known trippers. They do not say to Members of Congress, oh, we know who you are, you are a known tripper, just bring that bag right around security. They do not say to businessmen who fly between New York and Boston every day, you are a known tripper, come right around security, we are only going to check these people who do not fly that often. No. Every single one of our carry-on pieces of luggage gets screened, and that is the way it should be, no exceptions for Members of Congress, no exceptions for business people, no exceptions for anybody.

But if you have got a piece of cargo, and they say you are a known shipper, they do not put it through any screening on the same plane that we are on.

But listen to this: If it is under 16 ounces, and, by the way, Richard Reid, who had explosive plastic material in his shoes had less than this, this does not get screened. There is no paperwork required. There is no known shipper program. Nothing, if it is 16 ounces and under to go on passenger planes if it is cargo.

Now, that is a huge loophole. Why can we not screen this? What is so complicated about screening this going onto passenger planes?

Why is there no equipment to do this? If you can screen a huge bag which we are all taking on our vacation for 10 days, how can a cargo shipper who is putting this on a plane not have it screened; does not even require paperwork, if we know an explosive could be put in it? It is wrong, and this bill should be defeated.

We owe the passengers of America the knowledge that as they put their families on planes to fly around this country that this package is being screened; that there is paperwork that is attached to it; that we know what is in it as we are putting it on a passenger plane. This bill says no, we are not going to have a requirement. We are not going to make that a part of the compact which we have with American people for homeland security.

We know there is no uranium or nuclear weapons in Iraq. We now know that. But we know that al Qaeda is still in our country trying to figure out ways of targeting the airline industry. Give them the right to know that their families are safe. Vote ``no'' on this homeland security bill until they give every American family that level of protection.

First of all, Madam Speaker, all packages 16 ounces and under are not checked by canine. They have a pilot project to check some of the packages 16 ounces and under. They do not have every 16- ounce package checked by canine.

Moreover, why in the world should everyone in these galleries, every American have to take off their shoes, put through their computer, put all of their packages through screening and then have a dog sniff however many packages the cargo shipper or the airlines feel like they should sniff? Why should those packages not get the same screening? Why should there be any risk of mistake?

They do not screen us by sniffing dogs. They do not have dogs sniffing our bags or our packages. They want to make sure that it is absolutely guaranteed that no one is getting on to the passenger section of a plane with an explosive. It is just wrong. It makes no sense, in fact. Why make people take off their shoes if someone can put it on in the belly of the same plane without the same screening? It makes no sense.

We should have a known-tripper program, then. Let 98 percent of all Americans get on with no screening because we know they are not a big risk. We do not say it that way. We say we are not taking any chances with the lives and safety of Americans on planes. We are going to have everyone go through. Regardless of status, regardless of income, everyone goes through. And I think it is reassuring to other Americans when they see Members of Congress taking off their shoes, putting their own carry-ons through. I think they know that we are serious about it. But they know we cannot possibly be serious when their nail clippers are being confiscated and they bite their own nails while they watch the cargo go onto the same plane with no physical screening at all.

Vote ``no.'' It is just not a good enough bill on the issue that we know al Qaeda still puts at the very top of their list the airlines of our country with passengers on them. We owe those people better 2 years after what happened on September 11.