Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, next to voting rights, the highest priority for District of Columbia residents is to achieve the right to control the funds they themselves raise to support their city, as resident in other jurisdictions do. Therefore, today I introduce a bill, the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act of 2011, to allow the District's local taxpayer-raised budget to take effect immediately when passed by the city, without being subject to affirmative congressional approval.

Control over the dollars raised by local taxpayers is central to local control, the oldest American principle. Moreover, permitting the city's local budget to become law without first coming to Congress would have multiple practical benefits for both the city and Congress. For the city, a timely budget means: eliminating the uncertainty of the congressional approval process, which has a negative effect on the city's bond rating, adding unnecessary interest costs for local taxpayers; significantly increasing the District's ability to make accurate revenue forecasts; and reducing the countless operational problems that result because the city's budget cannot be implemented until Congress approves it. Of major importance, eliminating congressional approval of D.C.'s local budget would also align the District's fiscal year with the typical state and local government July 1st fiscal year instead of the congressional fiscal year, which starts in October, allowing ample time to prepare for the usual opening of schools in September. The D.C. local budget consumes valuable subcommittee, committee, and congressional floor time in both houses of Congress even though it is of interest only to those members who use it to promote their own issues, violating the principle of local self- government.

Increasing recognition of the hardships and delays caused by the annual appropriations process has led Congress to begin freeing the city. When I was last in the minority, I negotiated an agreement with the appropriators that has ensured that the city's local budget is always included in the first continuing resolution, if it is not approved by the start of the fiscal year. This approach has ended the lengthy delay of the budget of a big city until an appropriations bill is passed, often months after October 1st. As a result, the city has been able to spend its local funds at the next year's level, even though the budgets for federal agencies are often delayed for months. We hope that this process, which ended some serious problems in the functioning of the local government, will continue.

We nearly secured budget autonomy for the District in the last days of the lame duck session last Congress. I used an unusual procedure, getting subcommittee and committee authorizers to agree to place budget autonomy in the D.C. appropriations bill that was passed by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. Unfortunately, Congress passed a Continuing Resolution instead of regular appropriations bills.

If the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act is enacted, Congress would retain jurisdiction over the District of Columbia under article I, section 8, clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution. Because this authority allows Congress to make changes in the District's budget and laws at anytime, it is unnecessary to require a lengthy repetition of the District's budget process here. The time is overdue to permit the city to enact its local budget, the single most important step Congress could take to help the District better manage itself.

Members of Congress were sent here to do the business of the nation. Members have no reason to be interested in or to become knowledgeable about the local budget of a single city. In the past, the House and Senate have more often than not passed the District's budget as is. Our bill takes the Congress in the direction it is already moving. Congressional interference into one of the most vital rights to self- government should end this year with enactment of the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act of 2011.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce three bills that provide different approaches for obtaining congressional representation and full democracy for the more than 600,000 American citizens who reside in the nation's capital and pay the full array of federal taxes that support the government of the United States, but have no voting representation in Congress. These bills are the New Columbia Admission Act, the District of Columbia Equal Representation Act (formerly titled the No Taxation Without Representation Act) and the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act. These are the first bills of our Free and Equal D.C. series--bills that address the missing rights to self- government and democracy that other American citizens enjoy--to be introduced in the coming weeks. I have introduced all three of these bills during different periods in the past. I introduce them today after listening to residents at the many Community Conversations I have held in each ward of the District since a dangerous gun amendment-- which would have eliminated all of the District's gun laws and would have done much more--forced delay of the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act in April 2010.

These Community Conversations, as well as other constituent meetings and correspondence, have indicated that these three bills have significant support among D.C. residents. I introduce them today, a week after the new House majority eliminated the District's vote in the Committee of the Whole, despite a finding by the federal courts that this vote is constitutional. Recognizing that the House would not consider any approach to representation and full democracy for D.C. residents at this time, I am introducing bills that each had majority support in the District among residents during the years that each was under consideration. D.C. residents, in their quest for full democracy, have always embraced the approach that appeared most timely and possible. Because we are blocked from pursuing any approach at this time, I am introducing the bills that residents have indicated would have their continued support. These bills send a direct message to Congress that residents are undeterred in the pursuit of our rights, and the bills also will help ensure no weakening in the momentum residents have built here and throughout the country over the past several years for full democracy. However, I have not included a bill to fully or partially retrocede the District of Columbia to the State of Maryland, ideas that also have been mentioned for many years. Few District residents have indicated support for retrocession approaches, and, in our experience, even fewer Maryland public officials and residents support them. It is inconsistent with the District's pursuit of self-determination to impose upon another jurisdiction without consent from that jurisdiction.

D.C. residents are entitled to nothing less than full and equal citizenship, which can only be achieved through statehood. Accordingly, the first bill I introduced when I came to Congress in 1991, the New Columbia Admission Act, would have made the District of Columbia the 51st state, the State of New Columbia. The New Columbia Admission Act would create a state from essentially the eight home-town wards of the District. However, the state would have no jurisdiction over the federal territory in the District of Columbia, consisting of most of the Washington that Members of Congress and visitors associate with Washington, DC, the capital of our country. The U.S. Capitol premises, the principal federal monuments, federal buildings and grounds, the National Mall and other federal property here would remain under federal jurisdiction, as elsewhere. Our bill provides that the State of New Columbia would be equal to the other 50 states in all respects, in that the residents of New Columbia would have all the rights of citizenship they are entitled to as taxpaying American citizens. New Columbia would have two senators and, initially, one House member.

The New Columbia Admission Act has received significant support in the House in the past. In 1993, we got the first vote on statehood for the District of Columbia, with nearly 60 percent of Democrats and one Republican voting for the New Columbia Admission Act. The Senate held a hearing on its companion bill, introduced by Senator Ted Kennedy, but declined to hold a markup in committee or to consider it on the floor. Soon thereafter, the District, which is the only U.S. city that pays for state functions, found it necessary to ask the federal government to take over the cost of some state functions, posing fiscal barriers to entry into the Union on an equal basis, and the Democrats lost control of the House. This temporary setback led me to introduce the second best option then available, a bill for Senate and House representation for D.C.

Today, I also introduce the District of Columbia Equal Representation Act, which would give the District of Columbia two senators and, initially, one House member. With statehood delayed, Senator Joseph Lieberman and I introduced this bill for several years as the No Taxation Without Representation Act. The House, which was controlled by Republicans, did not act on the bill. The Senate held hearings and marked up the bill in 2002, but did not bring it to the floor.

Today, I also introduce the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, a bill for one House member, initially, for D.C. residents. In 2005, when I continued to be in the minority, then-Representative Tom Davis and I partnered on a bipartisan bill, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, giving House votes to Democratic D.C. and Republican Utah. The D.C. House Voting Rights Act marked the first time in decades that we achieved large House and Senate majorities for voting rights for D.C. residents, and brought the city closer than we have ever come to voting representation in more than two centuries. This bill likely would be law today had the gun lobby not insisted on adding an amendment that would not only have eliminated the District's gun laws, but also would have added measures making the nation's capital a virtually gun law-free jurisdiction.

In introducing these bills, we lay down a marker of our determination to never relent or retreat until we have obtained each and every right to which we are entitled, whether through the frustration and anguish of the incrementalism that Congress has always forced upon us or with the full and complete set of rights, which would be achieved through statehood. We will be watchful to both make and seize every opportunity to pursue our rights, regardless of who controls Congress. We accept no imposed limit on our equal rights as American citizens, and we will pursue them all until the day when there is no difference in citizenship between residents of the District of Columbia and other American citizens.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, a gunman has underestimated the will and undaunted bravery of Gabby Giffords.

Tragically, we have lost Gabe Zimmerman, her director of community outreach; her constituents; Judge John Roll; Christina Taylor Green; Phyllis Schneck; Dorwan Stoddard; and Dorothy Morris, all of whom were engaged in the very civic activities we most encourage, along with 13 others who were injured along with Congresswoman Giffords.

Together, these Americans have brought this House together as never before for a much needed time of reflection. I am heartbroken for all who were in the line of fire and for their families.

I focus now on Gabby because I cannot get her out of my consciousness. I am trying to understand her prescient fearlessness of her own safety in the days before the attempt on her life given what has happened to civil discourse in our country.

Can Gabby's selflessness and her concerns for our country give us the fortitude to follow her example in assuming that it is not the safety of Members that is at risk? Do we dare follow Gabby in her search for ways to be at once resolute and respectful?

Remarkable courage and determination have made Gabrielle Giffords the living manifestation of what Members of this institution and the citizens of our great country want to be. May Gabby Giffords' words prove as contagious as her courage.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer a motion that is at the desk.

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

I thank the gentlelady from New York for yielding.

Madam Speaker, for myself and for the Delegates from American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico, I offered a motion earlier that the House conduct a full and complete study of the constitutionality of the vote in the Committee of the Whole for the Delegates which is eliminated by this rule. This is nearly the same motion that the Republicans offered when we first were granted the right to vote on the House floor. The delegate vote was challenged by the Republicans in the courts and found to be constitutional, however.

Madam Speaker, this vote is a mere recognition of our American citizenship. The Delegates are no different from others in this House. It is one thing not to have the vote. It is quite another to be stripped of your vote. The vote is said to be symbolic by some. Well, to us it is symbolic. It is symbolic of the American citizenship of our constituents. It meant everything to us. There are differences among us, of course, but we ask you to think again about this vote and to restore the vote of the Delegates on the floor in the Committee of the Whole.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of S. 3481 to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which clarifies that the Federal Government, like private citizens and businesses, must take responsibility for the pollution it produces. This bill is the Senate companion to my bill, H.R. 5724, cosponsored by my good friends from Virginia and Arizona, Rep. Jim Moran and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The bill passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support because the Senate understood that this is simply an issue of fairness and equity to users and a matter of managing pollution and protecting the environment, In fact, this bill simply clarifies current law, that the Federal Government has a responsibility to pay its normal and customary fees assessed by local governments for managing polluted stormwater runoff from federal properties, just as private citizens pay. The consequence of failing to pass this bill is that we give the Federal Government a free ride and pass its fees on to our constituents throughout the United States.

Section 313 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act states, ``Each department, agency, or instrumentality . . . of the Federal Government . . . shall be subject to, and comply with all Federal, State, interstate, and local requirements . . . in the same manner, and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity including the payment of reasonable service charges.'' However, the Government Accountability Office issued letters to Federal agencies in the District of Columbia instructing them not to pay the District of Columbia's Water and Sewer Authority's (D.C. Water's) Impervious Area Charge. D.C. Water calculates the charges to manage stormwater runoff based on the amount of impervious land occupied by the landowner. Impervious surfaces, such as roofs, parking lots, sidewalks and other hardened surfaces are the major contributors to stormwater runoff entering the sewer system and local rivers, lakes and streams, causing significant amounts of pollutants to enter these waters. This bill clarifies that in my district and all others congressional districts, Federal agencies must continue to pay their utility fees instead of passing the fees to our constituents.

Nothing in this Act was intended to affect the payment by the United States or any department, independent establishment, or agency thereof of any sanitary sewer services furnished by the sanitary sewage works of the District through any connection thereto for direct use by the government of the United States or any department, independent establishment, or agency thereof. The rules for those payments are set forth in law codified at section 34-2112 of the D.C. Code and nothing in this Act amends or otherwise affects those rules. This bill requires that Congress make available, in appropriations acts, the funds that could be used for to pay stormwater management charges, but not that the appropriations act would need to state specifically or expressly that the funds could be used to pay these charges.

This bill is supported by the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the International City/County Management Associations, as well as the National Association of Clean Water Agencies. All of these national groups understand that stormwater management fees, without any exceptions, are necessary for managing and reducing water pollution caused by stormwater runoff. Moreover, they understand that many agencies in States and localities may stop paying their water and stormwater management fees if we do not act, putting even more financial burden on residents.

Federal law has mandated that these local governments must collect these fees. No exemption has been granted to Federal facilities. Please support S. 3481 to clarify the original intent of the law.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of S. 3481 to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which clarifies that the Federal Government, like private citizens and businesses, must take responsibility for the pollution it produces. This bill is the Senate companion to my bill, H.R. 5724, cosponsored by my good friends from Virginia and Arizona, Representative Jim Moran and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The bill passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support because the Senate understood that this is simply an issue of fairness and equity to users and a matter of managing pollution and protecting the environment. In fact, this bill simply clarifies current law, that the Federal Government has a responsibility to pay its normal and customary fees assessed by local governments for managing polluted stormwater runoff from Federal properties, just as private citizens pay. The consequence of failing to pass this bill is that we give the Federal Government a free ride and pass its fees on to our constituents throughout the United States.

Section 313 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act states, ``Each department, agency, or instrumentality . . . of the Federal Government . . . shall be subject to, and comply with all Federal, State, interstate, and local requirements . . . in the same manner, and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity including the payment of reasonable service charges.'' However, the Government Accountability Office issued letters to Federal agencies in the District of Columbia instructing them not to pay the District of Columbia's Water and Sewer Authority's, D.C. Water's, Impervious Area Charge. D.C. Water calculates the charges to manage stormwater runoff based on the amount of impervious land occupied by the landowner. Impervious surfaces, such as roofs, parking lots, sidewalks and other hardened surfaces are the major contributors to stormwater runoff entering the sewer system and local rivers, lakes and streams, causing significant amounts of pollutants to enter these waters. This bill clarifies that in my district and all other congressional districts, Federal agencies must continue to pay their utility fees instead of passing the fees to our constituents.

Nothing in this Act was intended to affect the payment by the United States or any department, independent establishment, or agency thereof of any sanitary sewer services furnished by the sanitary sewage works of the District through any connection thereto for direct use by the government of the United States or any department, independent establishment, or agency thereof. The rules for those payments are set forth in law codified at section 34-2112 of the D.C. Code and nothing in this Act amends or otherwise affects those rules. This bill requires that Congress make available, in appropriations acts, the funds that could be used to pay for stormwater management charges, but not that the appropriations act would need to state specifically or expressly that the funds could be used to pay these charges.

This bill is supported by The National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the International City/County Management Associations, as well as the National Association of Clean Water Agencies. All of these national groups understand that stormwater management fees, without any exceptions, are necessary for managing and reducing water pollution caused by stormwater runoff. Moreover, they understand that many agencies in states and localities may stop paying their water and stormwater management fees if we do not act, putting even more financial burden on residents.

Federal law has mandated that these local governments must collect these fees. No exemption has been granted to Federal facilities. Please support S. 3481 to clarify the original intent of the law.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 1746) to amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to reauthorize the predisaster mitigation program of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous materials in the Record on the Senate amendment to H.R. 1746.

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

I rise today to support H.R. 1746, as amended, a bill to reauthorize the predisaster mitigation program. This program's authorization expires with the current continuing resolution.

The predisaster mitigation program is authorized by section 203 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, or the Stafford Act, and was first authorized by this committee in the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000. My subcommittee held a hearing in which we received testimony on empirical evidence that show that this predisaster mitigation program manages to get a substantial return on this investment, with some estimations as high as a 4-to-1 return to the national government.

Examples of mitigation activities highlighted at the hearing include the seismic strengthening of buildings and infrastructure, acquiring repetitively flooded homes, installing shelters and shatter-resistant windows in hurricane-prone areas, and the building of ``safe rooms'' in houses and other buildings to protect from high winds. The subcommittee came to the conclusion that predisaster mitigation is effective in accomplishing the goal of reducing the risk of future damage, hardship, and loss from all hazards, including loss of life.

H.R. 1746 would reauthorize the program for 3 years, make the minimum $575,000 or 1 percent of the total funds appropriated to carry out this section for the fiscal year, and codify the competitive aspects of the program. Senate changes to the bill include an explicit ban on earmarks or any congressionally directed spending, along with reducing authorization levels of $250 million annually to $180 million for fiscal year 2011, and $200 million for fiscal year 2012 and 2013.

This legislation has been endorsed by the National Association of Counties, International Association of Emergency Managers, the Association of State Floodplain Managers, the National Emergency Management Association, the National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies, and the American Public Works Association. In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested a reauthorization of the predisaster mitigation program.

This program has consistently shown to provide an excellent return on investment, and I ask Members of the House to support the bill that protects both lives and property.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida. His kind and gentle words are typical of the way he has operated on the committee-- always in the most collegial fashion when he talks about the District of Columbia and its not experiencing what, for example, his own district does in Florida.

I can only say we empathize with you in Florida and all over the country. We are all Americans; and every time that we sat together in hearings, we were, of course, cognizant of the fact that we were dealing with issues that affected the entire country.

It has been a great pleasure to work with the ranking member. We worked together on each and every bill. I cannot think of a single bill on which we found a disagreement, where we had something that we wanted to change and where we didn't discuss it or staff didn't discuss it.

I know Mr. Oberstar would very much appreciate your remarks as well. He is a one-of-a-kind chairman who had been here as a staff member with enormous influence, and then he became a chairman with outsized influence as well.

I understand that my good friend Mr. Diaz-Balart thinks he has found sunnier shores on another committee, but I want him to know that I don't think he will ever have a better relationship with another Member on this side of the aisle. In the relationship that he and I have formed, it has come to be, indeed, a friendship.

So I say to him, Until we meet again, Mr. Diaz-Balart.

I want to simply emphasize, in closing, the little bit of money for which there is a great return for 3 years. The Federal Government spent a token amount, $500 million; but according to the CBO, the reduction in future losses associated with that small $500 million is $1.6 billion in present value. No wonder this bill passed in the other body.

I urge my colleagues to approve this bill as well.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of Representatives to honor Carla Furstenberg Cohen, whose creative ideas and feisty energy were embodied in her legendary bookstore, Politics and Prose, here in the Nation's capital. With her partner, Barbara Meade, Carla Cohen, who died on October 11, 2010, built a small storefront with eclectic books into a major public literary salon that defined Washington as more than a gray government town.

Her love of books could not be contained inside the book covers alone, however. Politics and Prose also became a combination discussion platform for authors--from Bill Clinton to Alice Walker--basement coffee shop with open mics for musicians, and a hangout for browsers turned off by the big box chain stores.

No one who knew Carla, as I did at Antioch College, can be surprised that Carla Furstenberg, with her effervescent personality, had the power to create an institution. She did not leave all that energy at college, however. Of course, Carla, like the brightest young women of her generation, got a master's degree, was married for 52 years to David Cohen, and had two children. She worked in urban planning and housing and served as a staff member in the House of Representatives before joining the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

However, Carla found her true calling at Politics and Prose, ``a place where books are not commodities.'' The bookstore was a meeting place for those who wanted to do more than buy books. People who found it important to have a place to talk about books and about politics, art, and the issues and items of the day often found their way to Politics and Prose.

Carla Cohen threw herself and her savings into Politics and Prose, mortgaging her house and borrowing from family and friends to open the store in 1984, when the mega bookstores were at their high point. The giant retailers responded by trying to copy what they could from the book lovers' intimate atmosphere of Politics and Prose. The bookstore continued to thrive. Despite the recession, its sales, at $7.5 million, were $3 million more than two years ago.

Politics and Prose will survive its extraordinary creator. Though the bookstore was put up for sale shortly before Carla Cohen's death, co- owner Barbara Meade is conducting the sale by actually interviewing the six finalists, among more than 50 who made offers.

The lessons should be clear enough. If bookstores want to survive at all in the age of electronic books, they had best study the model that Carla Furstenberg Cohen created.

Madam Speaker, I ask the House of Representatives to join me in celebrating the amazing life of Carla Furstenberg Cohen of Politics and Prose, a legacy with life still to give.

I thank my good friend from American Samoa, with whom I work so closely and so often.

Mr. Speaker, I am particularly grateful this evening to Chairman Brady for working so closely with me on the bill for statues for the District of Columbia, a bill I have introduced for years but that did not move until Mr. Brady became chair.

However, Ranking Member Dan Lungren deserves special thanks for today's bill. When he said he could not support my bill for two statues for the District, he didn't say ``no'' to everything. He introduced his own bill for one statue for the District and one for each of the territories. The bill before the House this evening is essentially that bill, the Lungren bill.

Our original bill for two statues for the District of Columbia was introduced only to give some small recognition to the taxpayers of the District, who get little enough recognition for their taxpaying status. In the end, in the spirit of compromise represented by Mr. Lungren's bill, I decided that we should seek to move Mr. Lungren's bill at this time, and I thank him for his bill.

We recognize that the statues for each State are mere symbols, but for us, they are symbols of American citizenship itself, as embedded in the recognition of their own outstanding citizens by each State. One need only go

downstairs in this House to watch visitors from their own congressional districts as they view their statues to see the power of the patriotism and pride the statues inspire in their own constituents.

The Lungren bill creates a dilemma for the District of Columbia, however. So great was the desire for the statues generated by my bill that when citizens were asked to indicate who they wanted to represent the city in statue for the United States Capitol, well, the citizens chose two great Americans, had their statues designed and actually built and placed in the District's city hall until such time as this bill, or my original bill, passed the House. And if this bill passes, for now, they will have to decide which one of two great men will represent the city. This will be difficult because it speaks volumes about who we are in the District, that the two men chosen were not only longtime distinguished District of Columbia residents but also are great Americans apart from their District identity.

Frederick Douglass, born a slave, who became the greatest human rights leader of his time but also was U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. And District of Columbia recorder of deeds. And, of course, resident of Southeast Washington, whose majestic home is now a National Park Service site with thousands of visitors who come each year. And Pierre L'Enfant, the great patriot of the American Revolutionary War, later appointed by George Washington to design the Nation's Capital.

We have decided it is better to have to decide which one of two great residents of the District of Columbia will represent our city for now than to have no choice at all. I ask this House to support this bill. And again, I thank Mr. Lungren for his compromise in introducing it.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) for her initiative in seeing a problem and seeing to it that we deal with this problem while we have got a hand on it.

Actually, her bill is very timely. The census is about to come out for the past 10 years, on December 30, and I can tell you, Madam Speaker, as a member of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the census that the census has been controversial throughout my service in the Congress. Time and again we have seen these controversies before this committee. But the census should never be controversial. Neither should a bill that fixes much of what is wrong with the census in a systemic way, and handily passed the other body, which doesn't pass much these days.

When it comes to the constitutionally required census, there really is only one way to act, and that is preventatively. I just want to say to the House that the handwriting is on the proverbial congressional wall. We were shocked that only a couple of years ago there was a serious and very expensive design change in the upcoming census so close to when the new census was coming into operation.

Now, somebody should have seen this coming, certainly before our committee found it out and was left with no choice. Remember, this is the constitutionally required census. Thus, there was no choice but to accept the added cost. If my friends on the other side are interested in reducing costs, the way to begin is with this bill, which, it seems to me, ought to be a consensus bill right now.

Crisis has been a part of every census in modern times, yet most of what Congress does, if you think about it, is not required; our appropriations bills, the defense bills, but the census is constitutionally required. It should not be buried. The census and those who are responsible for the census should not be buried in an agency bureaucracy. Direct reporting to the Secretary, not taking the Census Bureau from the jurisdiction of the Secretary, but direct reporting to the Secretary of Commerce and complete independence with a 5-year term, is what this bill is after.

The bill also contains urgently needed management reforms. It should be a top priority of this Congress, as it faces a new census, to go home and be able to tell people, We have acted this time ahead of the next census to make that census less controversial than censuses since the past decennial census has been in the lifetime of all of us. The care that has gone into this bill before our subcommittee and committee should be enough to say to the Congress this afternoon, The time has come to fix the decennial census once and for all.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6510) to direct the Administrator of General Services to convey a parcel of real property in Houston, Texas, to the Military Museum of Texas, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 6510.

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

H.R. 6510 directs the Administrator of General Services to convey a parcel of real property in Houston, Texas, to the Military Museum of Texas. The Military Museum of Texas is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) based in Harris County, Texas, that was created to honor the contributions of the citizens of Texas to the armed services of the United States.

The museum was founded in 1992 as a charitable organization and has an all-volunteer staff with an annual operating budget. The Military Museum of Texas' main activities include educating citizens on Texas' military history and preserving military memorabilia. The memorabilia include artillery field pieces, field equipment, et cetera, but primarily military vehicles for display that are shared with the public. Its income is derived directly from the sale of items to the general public, membership dues, event fees, and contributions of private individuals and corporations.

The museum devotes a significant portion of its funds to its military vehicle restoration program, and these vehicles are often shared with the public on site and at local parades. The Military Museum of Texas estimates the value of its military vehicles and military memorabilia collection in its inventory at $10 million.

The museum is currently housed in approximately 20,000 square feet owned by the General Services Administration. Originally, GSA leased the facility to the State of Texas starting in the early 1970s, before the museum took control of the facility in late 2004 under lease with the State of Texas for nominal rent plus utilities and minor repairs.

Since its initial occupancy, the Military Museum has worked with a private consultant to put together a 5-year capital improvement plan for fiscal years 2010 through 2015, to improve the facility and address storm damage to make the museum more of a world-class museum.

The General Services Administration declared the property excess on December 16, 2009, and the Military Museum of Texas has expressed an interest in purchasing the property at its full market value with a museum use restriction. The government interest in this property is protected because if the site is used for anything except for a museum during the next 30 years, the owners will be required to pay the market value of the parcel at the highest and best use.

Given that the GSA has declared this property excess and the Military Museum of Texas is willing to purchase at market value, we find this transfer to be in the best interest of the government, and I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the sponsor of this bill, such time as she may consume.

(Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

First, I want to thank the ranking member, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart), with whom I have worked so well and so closely, to thank him for the collegiality he and I have had on the subcommittee. It is a model, it seems to me, that the Congress might want to follow.

I must say, when my good friend tells me that he probably will be leaving the committee altogether, it is a sad note for me, given the way we have tried to reach agreement whenever there has been disagreement. And, frankly, on most matters he and I have found little upon which to disagree.

I can only wish him well on the Appropriations Committee. That must be his preference. Therefore, I wish the best for him, and I certainly hope to have the opportunity to work with him again in connection with that committee or otherwise on this floor or in this Congress.

I want to congratulate my good friend from Texas for her strong leadership on this bill and in wanting to make sure that this bill got on the floor before the end of the session and for her devotion to a bill that should be received, I'm sure, by all because of the recognition she so wisely understands all members of the Armed Forces are due.

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

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

I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for yielding.

I come to the floor this evening because a colleague of iconic reputation is about to leave this House.

Now, Jim Oberstar will do very well. I wish I could say the same for those of us he leaves behind. Jim carries with him much more than the institutional memory of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Sure, Jim has a legendary encyclopedic memory that he lends to the committee members every so often, but you cannot describe Jim's work with particular pieces of infrastructure that you may see here and there. You just can't do it. Jim's work is so long, so deep, and so influential that it will be almost impossible for it to ever be repeated in this House, for Jim has spent his entire career--and by that, we mean not only his career as a Member but as a staff member most influential with Members--with the T&I Committee or with Public Works or whatever you want to call it. We call it ``Jim's committee.''

Members often expect staff to specialize in the facts and to know more than they know. Nobody expects a committee chair to know more than the staff and the subcommittees put together. No. We sat in committee in wonder that one man could know and remember and integrate so much into the ongoing discussion. The effect on members of the T&I Committee was to make us feel we just had to work harder, not to meet Jim's standard--we're not crazy--but to at least know what the highest standard looked like.

You might wonder why this Francophone, who majored in French and political science, became the most influential expert on Transportation and Infrastructure in the United States of America. I believe it has little to do with Jim's brilliant intellect. After all, Jim would have been an intellectual leader on any committee on which he chose to serve. I believe it has to do with his own roots that may have guided him to this committee--Jim, whose immigrant grandfather was a steelworker and whose father was an ironworker in the open iron pits of Minnesota. That Jim--that Jim--got to know, as few of us do, the plight of the American worker, his relationship to hard work and to building America, itself. So, you see, it's quite simple. It's in Jim's DNA.

Jim brought an unrelenting dedication to hard work, the same dedication to hard work that his father put in in the iron mines, to the Congress of the United States. He is the only chairman I know who regularly attended subcommittee meetings and then proceeded to join in the discussions at any point they were going on and with what only he could have possibly added to the discussion--and brilliantly so.

Now, some of us are trying to name the new transportation headquarters here in my district, in the District of Columbia, for Jim Oberstar. I can't imagine that that wouldn't happen. Yet I know Jim Oberstar, and I have a feeling that that's not what he really wants his legacy to be. I think Jim wants his legacy to be the transformational Transportation bill he fought mightily to bring to this floor and that he brilliantly crafted for the 21st century.

Well, Jim, it may not have been in your time, but it must happen in ours. So this evening, Jim, I pledge to you to do all that I can to see to it that your prodigious work on that final brilliant transportation authorization bill shall not have been in vain.

Farewell, friend. Have pity on us. Please, don't go far.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, but I need to thank him for much more, for not only sponsoring this bill, but for shepherding this bill. It was not always smooth sailing, but it was mostly smooth sailing because its underlying purpose is so clear and necessary. I appreciate that it has been a bipartisan bill both here and in the Senate. I certainly appreciate its bipartisan sponsorship by Representative Biggert and you, Mr. Carnahan. I know that this bill will be gratifying to Mr. Oberstar, who has presided over much of the building of the Federal inventory during his extraordinary service here in the House.

May I thank my good friend, the ranking member, Mr. Diaz-Balart, with whom I've worked so closely and so well since I became chair, for his work not only on this bill but on the many bills and the many hearings we have held together.

Madam Speaker, what we have to consider is that the Federal building inventory amounts to $43 billion of investment of the taxpayers of the United States over many decades. It is clearly irreplaceable. Some of it is familiar to us all--the buildings here in Washington, such as the Justice Department, or your own office building when you go home to invite in your constituents and to do your constituent service, the courthouses where you are. But there has been little investment in this inventory, even inventory close to home.

We had a hearing in our subcommittee that showed scores of violations in the buildings of the Capitol complex, which I am pleased to say are now being quickly remedied, but some of them would have endangered the lives of the millions of people who visit the Capitol every year, not to mention the many thousands who live here. So this is a particularly gratifying piece of legislation.

Every year, our committee approves hundreds of millions of dollars in projects of construction and repair and modernization, nothing, however, like what we have done recently. Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Congress took the opportunity to invest in the updating of

more than $5 billion in GSA inventory which had been untouched and was a growing backlog. And we didn't simply invest in it by saying fix the roofs. We said save the taxpayers money by upgrading to state-of-the- art energy systems so that we save the taxpayers more money than we are investing today and we begin to catch up on the backlog of many decades of disinvestment in our own priceless inventory.

So we are upgrading these federally owned facilities with more energy-efficient and sustainable building components for the first time in memory. This investment will be important; but if we allow these buildings to deteriorate as so much of our inventory has, we will pour the investment right down the drain. That means that you now will have contractors, subcontractors, yes, and many employees who are being asked to maintain inventory that has entirely new components of the kind they have never had to operate and maintain before, because these are energy-efficient, new state-of-the-art materials.

In order to maintain this extraordinary investment, this once-in-a- lifetime investment for the Congress, we will want a workforce that is trained and operating to keep this inventory at peak performance so that we don't see it deteriorate before our eyes as we have seen so much of the Federal inventory.

We now know that design and construction costs, for example, represent only about 5 or 10 percent of the costs of a facility.

But operations and maintenance represents 60 to 85 percent of the costs of a facility over its lifetime. Look what we're doing here today. We've saved the taxpayer money by investing in energy efficiency. Now we're going to save money for all of us, and especially the taxpayers, by investing in what it will take, curriculum and training, to keep these buildings at peak performance and thereby maximize our investment.

I thank the gentleman for his hard work and for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of Representatives to join me in celebrating the graduates of the ``I Am . . . We Are'' community service program.

The ``I Am . . . We Are'' community service program is run by Project Director Michael Williams and Tamara Jenkins through the offices of the TimeBanks, USA program initiated by Chris Gray and Edgar Cahn.

The 40 graduates performed community service in the District of Columbia at the National Park Service, The Frederick Douglass House, The D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, the Metropolitan Police Department and many other places, with the support of several D.C. Council members.

Despite coming from underprivileged and impoverished neighborhoods, the teen graduates devoted their summer beautifying our many parks and assisting the National Park Service with sprucing up the Frederick Douglass House.

The Honorable Lee F. Satterfield, Chief Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, offered these young people his inspirational and hearty congratulations as the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony. D.C. Council members Phil Mendelson and Michael Brown also praised the graduates at the ceremony. The awardees and honorees include Brenda Richardson, Community Liaison in the Office of D.C. Council member Marion Barry; Ivana Williams, who successfully secured the grant for this program; Nicole Straughter, of the Campbell Group, who is a third-year student at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) David A. Clarke School of Law; Jeanne Campbell, CEO of the Campbell Group; Katherine S. Broderick, Dean of the UDC law school; Madelyn Yates, of the National Park Service; Julie Kutruff, Director, Frederick Douglass House; and Sheila Lock, of WINN Development Corporation. Supporters and parents of the graduates also attended the ceremony to congratulate the students on their hard work in the District of Columbia.

Madam Speaker, I ask the House of Representatives to join me in celebrating the graduates of ``I Am . . . We Are'' community service program as they look forward to welcoming another class of inspiring youth.

I want to thank Chairman Lynch and Mr. Sarbanes for this important bill which takes telework from policy to practice. What progress we have made in telework we owe largely to members of this region, but especially to Mr. Wolf.

The Telework Enhancement Act takes telework all the way from a piece of policy lying on paper to be picked up at will, or not picked up, to a real practice with savings in productivity flowing directly to the Federal Government. The bill converts telework from a passive to an affirmative policy of the Federal Government, along with all the productivity and savings that have been documented to occur. It essentially makes going to work by telework the functional equivalent of getting on the road or getting on a crowded Metro car.

Although this bill will be implemented nationwide, the two snowstorms in this region should have shocked private and public entities alike into telework. Admittedly, though, those are exceptional circumstances--9/11, natural disasters, continuity of operations--all are important, but they are far from the only reasons for this bill.

Government has spent billions of dollars in state-of-the-art technology. This technology is underutilized as long as telework itself is underutilized. Nothing is more inefficient for employees and the government alike than compelling an employee to fight some of the worst traffic congestion in the Nation to get to a Federal office. Nothing is more costly to the government than requiring every employee lockstep to come to a physical place and do the work that could be accomplished with increased productivity and output at home. Nothing is of greater benefit to the oil cartels and to the trade deficit than forcing people on the road. Nothing is more disruptive to two-parent and single-parent families alike than time spent from home, sometimes an hour or two each day in this region, which can now be converted to family life and more work accomplished right there at home.

This bill had a bipartisan vote in committee because there was no addition to the deficit, because management, training limits on who can qualify, and emergency measures are all in place. Going to the office to do a job that can be done in less time, more output, greater savings to the government is so 20th century. This is not 1950. It's time our government came into the 21st century to have in place a set of alternatives that provide employees a better way to get the same job done.