Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate and pay tribute to a fine American, James Carello, on an occasion when he and his business have received a prestigious honor: the International Circle of Excellence Award for 2009.

The Circle of Excellence, which is awarded by the International dealer organization of Navistar, Inc., honors International truck dealerships that achieve the highest level of dealer performance with respect to operating and financial standards, market representation, and most importantly, customer satisfaction. It is the highest honor a dealer principal can receive from the company.

Mr. Carello's business, Regional International Corporation, is headquartered in Henrietta, New York. Under his leadership, it has grown into one of the preeminent truck dealerships in western New York, with 160 employees and two secondary locations in Buffalo and Geneva. Jim is a recognized leader in the industry, as Regional spent six years on the Rochester Top 100, a listing of privately-owned companies recognized in the area. With this most recent award, Regional International has now received the Circle of Excellence Award a total of seven times.

An International dealer since 1989, Jim is a member of International's Dealer Development and Systems Advisory Board. Jim has achieved this level of accomplishment and recognition through years of hard work and service to his industry and community. An avid sports fan, Jim can frequently be found cheering for his favorite NASCAR driver or the Buffalo Bills. He also has a keen interest in a variety of other vehicles, including a 1934 Ford roadster, a customized motorcycle and two show trucks called Mayhem and Bad Habit. Both of his children, Jason and Gina, are now active in running the business, becoming the next generation of participants. Jim and his wife Lyn dote on their two grandchildren.

Through his dedication, hard work and outstanding customer service, he has built an economically vital business of which he can be justly proud. On behalf of the 111th United States Congress, I congratulate Mr. James Carello for his record of accomplishment.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to laud the lifelong achievements, patriotism and honorable milita service to our country by U.S. Marine Corps veteran John D. Day of Hornell, New York. It is a distinct honor to submit his name before the United States House of Representatives for his numerous contributions to the 29th Congressional District and a grateful Nation.

A graduate of Hornell High School, John went on to study Criminal Justice at Finger Lakes Community College and Corning Community College where he balanced his academic studies with his participation on the collegiate baseball teams. After completing his studies, John heeded the call of duty and enlisted with the U.S. Marine Corps where he served until his honorable discharge in 2000, after 4 years of service.

John then embarked on a career path of public service as a member of various, local police departments where he achieved the rank of Sergeant while simultaneously working towards the completion of his associates degree.

As a training officer, John was credited with designing and implementing numerous programs to better train officers and to improve job performance. Tragically, while en route to work at the Bath VA Police Department on October 27, 2008, John was killed when his vehicle was hit by a drunk driver.

Since the accident, John was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant and was honored in April as the United States Department of Veteran Affairs Police Officer of the Year at the Annual Law Enforcement Banquet. John was also cited by the VA National Central Office for his perfect record maintaining and completing all training records. In addition, the last two classes at the Federal Police Officer Academy at Little Rock, Arkansas, dedicated their graduation and hard work to the way John performed his duties at work and the professionalism he demonstrated.

On behalf of the United States House of Representatives, it is my honor to recognize Officer John D. Day's contributions to his country and community.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Dr. Terri Julian, Director for the Jack H. Wisby Jr. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic and newly instituted Women's Residential Program, at the Batavia Campus of the Veterans Administration Western New York Health System VAWNYHS. Dr. Julian is the past recipient of the Federal Woman of the Year Award, 2006, and it is my privilege to recognize her significant contributions to the VA system, made on behalf of our veterans.

Dr. Julian was the major force behind the development of the Women's Residential Program at the Batavia campus of VAWNYHS. This is one of two programs nationwide in the Veterans Health Administration, VHA, that provides female veterans treatment for military sexual and/or combat trauma. The all-female staff includes a psychologist, social worker and social service assistants who collectively work to improve the care provided to afflicted female veterans. Dr. Julian's dedicated efforts to the program enable its practitioners to provide high-quality care to our nation's female veterans, who, it is recognized by the VHA, have a recovery process that is unique from their male counterparts.

In addition to the Women's Residential Program, Dr. Julian has improved the organizational capacity of the Jack H. Wisby Jr. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic used by the entire Batavia campus of the VAWNYHS so it now provides the highest quality care for stress- related injuries to all veterans, regardless of gender.

One need only look to Dr. Julian's numerous accolades to understand her commitment and passion for comprehensive care to veterans. As a leader in her field, she is often requested by her peers to lead workshop and training programs, author professional articles and give expert advice on PTSD program development and implementation.

Our servicemen and women sacrifice immensely for our great nation and I am honored that they are recipients of the quality care provided by Dr. Julian and those like her in the VHA. On behalf of the United States Congress, it is my privilege to publically and permanently laud Dr. Terri Julian's dedicated efforts to our veterans.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the anniversary of the longest standing unbroken treaty between the United States government and a sovereign Native People. This Wednesday, the 11th of November, will mark the two hundred and fifteenth anniversary of the signing of the Pickering Treaty in Canandaigua, New York, the treaty which established peace between the people of the Iroquois Confederacy and the United States of America.

Timothy Pickering, representing President George Washington on that historic day in Canandaigua, along with the leaders of the Iroquois Nation, signed the treaty which established peace and friendship on the western frontier of New York while securing lands in New York State for the Iroquois Confederacy. The treaty was signed into law by President Washington in January of 1795, following its ratification by the United States Senate in Philadelphia.

As a veteran, I note the appropriateness of this anniversary falling on Veterans Day. It is significant that Native Americans join the U.S. Armed Forces at a higher per capita rate than members of any other group in our country and have established a record of bravery under fire that stands as a monument to courage and national service. The service of our veterans, regardless of race or ethnicity, all sacrifice for what this treaty has stood for over two hundred years: Peace between peoples, cooperation between neighbors, and friendship among nations.

I stand today to remind this storied chamber that while the bonds of friendship that embody this treaty have been strained, they have never broken. It is an imperative that we, as Americans, keep and celebrate the promises that we make to other nations and that we always recognize the importance of our word. No other treaty signifies this sacred obligation more than the Treaty of Canandaigua.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the Corning, New York, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #524, who this Wednesday will be celebrating Veteran's Day with a ceremony in my district. This year, however, will be a special year, as they will be rededicating the POW- MIA monument in that town which I call home. Though obligations throughout my district will keep me from being able to attend this ceremony with my home post, my thoughts will be with them and with the millions of veterans across our Nation who served our country in times of war, and who even today work to protect our freedoms.

In 1998, Doug Herbert, a marine and Vietnam veteran had a plan. He wanted to build a POW-MIA monument to memorialize and honor the POW's and MIA personnel of all of our Nation's wars. Doug and his wife Jackie designed and drew plans for the monument, and they worked for over a year to raise the funds necessary to see Doug's dream become a reality. Indeed, this original monument was even built in their backyard, and on November 11, 1999, the Herbert's and their comrades at Post #524 dedicated this unique memorial to our Nation's heroes.

This year, on November 11, 2009, a new monument will be dedicated in the place where the original once stood. Doug Herbert's dream is now complete and a new monument of granite and will stand in place forever. For Doug, this was a labor of love as well as a personal journey, but for his comrades and his community, it is an incredible gift. The commitment and hard work of Doug and Jackie Herbert, as well as that of their fellow volunteers, make the rededication of this monument a poignant moment in the proud history of Post #524. And it is through this selfless commitment that the memory of those who served our Nation--the POW's, those missing in action, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice--will be enshrined forever in the hearts of all Americans.

Madam Speaker, on the 7th of October of 2001, when we invaded Afghanistan, a soldier's then 10-year-old child in 5th grade is now 18, and either out of the house, off to college, or starting a young adulthood of his or her own, having grown up virtually without the benefit of military parents, some of whom today face their fifth deployment.

Today marks the 2,950th day of combat in the war in Afghanistan; 2,950 days, without asking for a concurrent sacrifice from the American people. It is only the uniformed forces and their families upon whom we have placed the burden of these 2,950 days of war.

The Congressional Research Service estimates that we have now spent or committed $300 billion, and that is only the money for which we can account. Some will say it is twice that, for this war, like the war in Iraq, was funded off-budget with no transparency. $300 billion. That is about $101 million per day for 2,950 days. Or, to put out another average, that is $3,947 per family of four that every American family has paid to date.

Tragically, that is the good news, because the irrevocable loss is comprised of 911 American combatants killed and 4,198 seriously wounded, and we do not have the ability to estimate the long-term wounds that we cannot see or quantify that will be carried by the soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines of this conflict for the rest of their lives.

We have now been in Afghanistan for 2,950 days. We fought World War I for 584 days. We have been in Afghanistan five times longer than we fought the ``war to end all wars.'' And we have been in Afghanistan twice as long as the entire combined combatant days of World War II fought by the Greatest Generation.

Today is the 2,950th day of this war. It has cost us $300 billion, $3,947 per American family.

Enough is enough. It is time to bring our troops home.

More than any other issue that I have studied, sought counsel on, and drawn from my own life's experience for guidance since becoming a Member of the United States Congress, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan has drawn my late night focus. There, in the quiet of the office, I have arrived at the inevitable conclusion that the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this conflict is both not in the interest of our Nation, and, in fact, is on par with a potential error the size of our initial invasion in Iraq.

The recent election in Afghanistan has underscored the fact that we will never create a Jeffersonian democracy in that nation. After Hamid Karzai had about one-third of his ballots thrown out due to election fraud, his opponent withdrew from the coming election because he stated publicly there could not be a scenario under which he could trust the election process.

A continued escalation of this conflict to do things like secure elections and build an Afghan national identity is a false and foolish waste of American lives and treasure. Quite simply, we will never create a Jeffersonian democracy, and to continue to fight and die for what the people of Afghanistan will not fight and die for is simply wrong.

Our military should not be expended to secure elections, nor should we continue to engage in global nation building. To those who would say that we must win in Afghanistan, I simply ask after 24 years of service in the United States military and a degree from the United States War College, what does a victory look like and when can we obtain this indefinable goal?

Are we now to subordinate ourselves to an Afghan Government that has, at best, limited legitimacy in its own nation following a travesty of an election that only recently was determined to be the number one priority of our on-scene and on-the-ground commander?

When we first invaded Afghanistan, the mission was to identify, locate, capture and kill those who did or would do us harm. Al Qaeda terrorists and their camps were destroyed and the remaining elements of the organization are now in Pakistan. The regional Commander of U.S. military forces has clearly stated this reality.

Today, November 4, 2009, is the 2,950th day of the war in Afghanistan and I think that is long enough.

After these 8 years, it is clear that only the Afghan people themselves can determine their future. We built the army that destroyed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 3 years. We have now been fighting a war for the Afghan people for 8 years. Enough is enough. We have achieved our military goals, and our forces have been militarily victorious. We are now fighting an enemy who is attacking us because we are in their country and are perceived as an occupying military police force. We are not, and it is time to come home.

To continue this war at its current level and to escalate it beyond its current scope is a trillion dollar question. Are those who would so cavalierly make this commitment willing to demand another $3,947.36 from every American family of four to pay for it? Thousands have protested federal spending to rebuild America's schools, roads, bridges and critical infrastructure, but are they willing to do the same when their taxes are being spent to rebuild Kabul? At the end of the day, what will we have bought? What have we purchased for the $300 billion we have already spent or committed to the war in Afghanistan and where will the next $300 billion come from?

Should terrorist camps reemerge there, we must deal with that, but there is no evidence that any of the numerous tribal factions want this; in fact, it is clear that they do not. The ``war of necessity'' has been fought, our enemies killed or captured. We have won and it is our clear, patriotic duty to bring our military forces home to defend vital American interests; 2,950 days and $300 billion is enough.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, let me take this opportunity to thank Ms. Velazquez and to commend Mr. Schrader and his colleagues on the Small Business Committee for their efforts in crafting this landmark legislation to expand opportunities for many new entrepreneurs and for expanding business opportunities across the country.

Offering these business ventures this needed help in getting off the ground is essential, especially right now, for the creation of jobs and so as to boost economic activity in local communities, especially in local rural communities, which are so important to my district.

With my amendment, we can focus on a very pressing concern from many places across this country and on one of exceptional concern back home. This is the brain drain, the loss of talent, caused by the outmigration of so many young businesspeople.

As is a common trend for many regions in America, we have seen a great loss of young people in my district, in western rural New York. This is due to a longstanding scarcity of jobs and of many shrinking opportunities for bright, young entrepreneurs. By creating programs in the Small Business Administration which focus specifically on providing business advice, technical assistance, and lowering eligibility to younger entrepreneurs, we can give these young people who would like to stay in our districts better opportunities to do so.

Year to year, we continue to see our children leave their communities because they have limited opportunities to find good-paying jobs or to find any attractive means to make livings and to raise families. Our communities are shrinking in rural America, and the efforts of this outmigration to many places around the country and throughout the Nation are clear. With more and more young people forced to leave to find careers elsewhere, local economies are facing even higher degrees of challenges, and fewer jobs, therefore, are available. Many people back home question how long this can continue.

For those young folks who want to start businesses, who may want to earn steady paychecks, who may want to create jobs and hire others in their communities, where will they go to grow up and raise their families?

I believe we have an opportunity to help pave the way. Offering programs that will help reinvigorate communities through new business opportunities for younger entrepreneurs will both provide these jobseekers with local opportunities and will hugely benefit the local economies in the area. My amendment will do just this.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from Missouri.

Madam Chairman, I ask that my colleagues support this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize PathStone Corporation (formerly known as Rural Opportunities, Inc.) as it celebrates its 40th anniversary. PathStone is a not-for-profit regional community development and human service organization headquartered in Rochester, NY that provides vital services to low-income areas throughout the 29th Congressional District and beyond.

Its principle lines of business include: Farmworker Training and Employment, Housing Development, Homeownership Services and Small Business Lending, Training and Technical Assistance. These services continue to create substantial economic impact on New York's 29th. Critical economic impact metrics for the District include:

Total value of residential real estate developed: $29,994,942.00.

Total value of first-time homebuyer mortgages: $29,111,023.00.

Total value of housing rehabilitation and energy services: $4,932,597.00.

Total value of multifamily preservation: $8,704,000.00.

Total value of commercial properties: $915,000.00.

Total number of businesses receiving financing from the PathStone Enterprise Center: 106 loans for a total of $2,733,255.80

Total number of homeowners with foreclosure concerns helped by PathStone since March of 2008: 33

In these difficult economic times, it is encouraging to know that beneficial organizations such as this have not only survived the downturn, but are continuing to provide their vital services to current and new participants.

On behalf of the United States Congress, I am honored to formally acknowledge PathStone and its commitment to the disenfranchised through economic empowerment.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a landmark in New York's 29th Congressional District and its proprietors, the Sorge Family of Sorge's Restaurant. Renato and his brother Remo Sorge came to the United States from Italy in 1936 and through hard work and determination realized the American Dream.

On June 5, 1951, Renato and Loretta Sorge opened Sorge's Restaurant at 68 W. Market St. in Corning, NY and it quickly became an area favorite. From its humble beginnings with a counter and 11 booths, the restaurant eventually grew, and expanded to the adjacent building and a seating capacity of 225 persons. Offering quality food and a welcoming atmosphere, it is easy to see how the restaurant became a Corning institution.

A true family business, Renato's sons, Joseph and Michael, followed in their parents' footsteps working in the restaurant part-time while growing up. They both eventually pursued restaurant management degrees at Cornell and SUNY Cobleskill, respectfully. Upon graduation, Joseph and Michael returned to Corning to carry on the Sorge Family tradition of providing the finest Italian/American food, and quality service at reasonable prices.

An unfortunate fire in December 2008 burned the original Sorge Restaurant; yet, this setback has not dampened the Sorge's spirits. Instead it serves as a testament to the Sorge Family commitment to the District as they have chosen to stay and rebuild this community institution. The site is now recognized as an historic landmark.

As friends and family gather in Corning today to celebrate a new beginning at 68 W. Market St., it is my honor to recognize the Sorge Family and Sorge's Restaurant on behalf of the United States Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to rise today to discuss something that has become exceptionally important to me and to many in my district. In fact, it has become exceptionally important to individuals all over this country.

I ask the Speaker's indulgence tonight to engage both on a short and technical historical discussion of a technology that not only holds great promise for the United States but, in fact, for the world; and I appreciate the Speaker's indulgence as I do so.

It was a pivotal time in history, just about 100 years ago, when motorized transportation was, in fact, in its infancy, and our country and its transportation industry faced a very important choice: Should the energy for powering the newly developed horseless carriage come from electricity and batteries, or should it come from the internal combustion engine and petroleum fuels?

Remember, please, that both of these technologies--and it's hard for us to imagine--were at that time brand new. Both technologies had been established in the fledgling motorized transport industry from the beginning. There were down sides to both choices.

Batteries were heavy; took up a lot of space and took a long time to reenergize or, as we come to call it today, recharge. Whereas, internal combustion engines were noisy. They scared a lot of horses; required fuel that was both difficult to come by; they were scarce, smelly and volatile. Our other choice, the electric drive, or the internal combustion engine, would require a huge investment in the development of a nationwide infrastructure.

Obviously, the choices taken then heavily favored the internal combustion engine. By a large margin, the internal combustion engine outperformed electric drive; carried more passengers; could carry more cargo; could go farther while taking far less time to refill its on- board energy supply. This was for the fundamental reason that, by both weight and volume, more energy was contained in petroleum fuels, and they could then be packaged in batteries.

Thus, for the last 100 years and continuing today, petroleum- dependent internal combustion engines dominate every common mode of motorized transportation, but some things have not changed in 100 years. Batteries, no matter how improved, are still heavy. They take up a lot of space, and they require an awful long time to recharge.

Internal combustion engines, however improved, still scare a lot of horses, at least back where I am from, are still noisy, and require a fuel that is both smelly, hard to come by and volatile.

Among the things that have changed is our realization of the long- term consequences of our earlier choices. Increasingly in recent decades we have come to realize that there are many compelling flaws in our choices for internal combustion engines: The noise, the smell, the volatility, the scarcity of the fuel. The overriding concern now and the overriding environmental impact and national security considerations dominate today's discussions.

But that is not all. In the complex and dangerous world in which we live, international industrial competitiveness and domestic access to advanced technologies are now paramount. So, as with 100 years ago, much is at stake for our country and for the world in the decisions we make now. And as we are consumed in internal domestic debates over things like health care and other critical issues that we face, Mr. Speaker, I pause tonight to talk about advanced technologies.

Fortunately, the automotive industry and governments around the world have foreseen the present, what we face today, and they have been making preparations. Clearly, solutions to the environmental impact and energy security issues that we are facing have been embraced by the automotive industry, and technologies to move us to a future of clean environment and energy independence are now at hand and at the ready.

The automotive industry has proven its commitment by inventing and investing in these technologies and products, and governments have professed their support through statements such as the following from our President, Barack Obama, just recently on March 19th of this year. Mr. Speaker, please allow me to quote:

``So, we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world's leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy. We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help to stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity.''

National energy and environmental goals have already been set. We must address America's incredibly and increasingly dangerous dependence on petroleum and reduce the approximately 140 billion gallons of gasoline that U.S. drivers use every year--140 billion gallons of gasoline--and every year more and more of it imported from the very countries who would both do us economic and national security harm.

To meet these challenges, we must embrace the ingenuity of our national research community, an ingenuity and national research community that took us to the moon and beyond, and we must take these technologies from their cradle of infancy through commercial deployment and development.

Understand that we are again at a pivotal point in history. We are standing at the threshold of the greatest single paradigm shift in the entire history of motorized transportation. It has only been since the day we decided to shift from the horse and carriage to the horseless carriage that we have the options in front of us today. And only one phenomenon stands in the way of our accomplishing our national goals through the automobile industry, the phenomenon known as, and may I quote the automobile industry, ``the valley of death.''

The valley of death is an automotive industry reference to the treacherous territory between proven feasibility in the research laboratory and the commercially successful products in the marketplace. Every single new technology that we have come to enjoy in automobiles, from power brakes and power steering to factory air, has languished in the valley of death until it became a commercially available product in the mass market.

There are now four or five major technologies for us to choose from, and they are, from the most straightforward to the most technologically challenging, first, improved internal combustion engine technologies; next, internal combustion engine technologies that use alternative fuels, and we have already seen the increased deployment of things like corn and mixed cellulosic ethanol and hopefully future biodiesel. After that comes something we are somewhat familiar with, gasoline engine hybrids that we see deployed in commercial vehicles like the Prius. Next we will see electric hybrids, and, lastly, hydrogen fuel-cell technologies.

The least difficult of these technologies is the refinements to existing conventional engine technology, already discussed, and the most difficult are the advanced technologies that are brand new to the marketplace.

Automakers everywhere recognize that the technologies at the difficult

end are the ones that cannot cross this automotive valley of death alone. Successful movement from research and development successes to market successes require the cooperation and support of national governments.

One of the most promising but highly threatened technologies is the hydrogen fuel cell. This technology has an impressive history and important implications for our Nation's energy portfolio. But we are at a point where we must decide, is it worth saving this technology and promoting a vast domestic hydrogen-fuel capability? I happen to believe it is.

Let me be very clear, speaking as an individual who spent most of my life in military uniform and the final years of my military career as a senior advisor to the commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, where I witnessed firsthand the cooperation between the governments of NATO and their industries, this is a national security imperative.

In order for us to maintain our place in the world, we must maintain our industrial competitiveness, and that means we must have robust supply bases and parts manufacturing. We have let our ingenuity and investments in industry fail before, only to be picked up by foreign competitors, and then we pay the price for reimportation. It is dangerous to rely on their industries and not on ours. We must focus on maintaining a strong advanced-technology domestic industry, and we are in a good position. In fact, we are in the lead with respect to hydrogen fuel cells.

This is an energy issue involving national energy security. It involves sustainability that couples the capabilities of fuel cells with biofuels, hybrids, photovoltaic, wind. This is an entire portfolio. It is not one over the other, but the synergy of all of those technologies, and we cannot rely on foreign countries to power America. We must embrace domestic energy technologies for both their reliability and sustainability in the future.

If we are going to be a world leader with a strong domestic economy and not rely on foreign countries both for technology loans and for foreign loans, as we are today, we have to move forward in partnerships with industry. We risk maintaining and repeating the mistakes of the past.

In the late 1990s and the early 2000s, the United States Advanced Battery Consortium worked on battery research and development. Today, that battery technology has been commercialized and it is a market dominated by both Japanese and Korean manufacturing giants, not American.

From the early 1990s, the Department of Energy and General Motors have developed a U.S. fuel-cell program into what is today a global leadership position. Today, catching up quickly, there are announced programs from Germany and Japan, China and Korea, with huge investments to commercialize hydrogen fuel vehicles by 2015, and this will push the United States to a number three or worse position. I think this sounds all too familiar.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to refer to a series of charts to help us visually understand some of the challenges, the risks, and the benefits that we face today.

Back in 1968, we had the Electrovan. It was completely filled with fuel cells and hydrogen tanks and it was done in a van of that size because this technology at that time could not be miniaturized. It was so large, it required the entire interior volume of a van.

In 1997, the first Department of Energy and General Motors fuel stack, not yet packageable for a vehicle, became an industrial reality.

In 2007, a complete hydrogen fuel-stack system was packaged into a Chevrolet Equinox, and over 100 of these vehicles matched in their capabilities were built and deployed all over the United States. They are now on the road being driven by your neighbors and friends in test and pilot programs and have accumulated over 1 million road miles of research and development.

In the very near future and in the research and development centers today--I have seen them with my own eyes--is a Generation 2 system being readied for 2015, half the size of its predecessor, with increased performance, and it will be both not only lighter and smaller, but it will be progressively even smaller to fit into more styles of vehicles.

This, frankly, in this short of a period of time, is incredible technology progress. From the humble roots of this technology and a van full of equipment to today's Equinox fuel cells and beyond, the U.S. is the country that has advanced automotive hydrogen fuel cell technology, us, Americans, right here in the United States.

The Department of Energy Research and Development program, developed in partnership with domestic automobile manufacturers, was one of the best thought-out, most fully vested, periodically reviewed programs the Department of Energy has ever deployed. And the DOE invested to help advance this technology quickly towards production, and it set difficult technical goals to measure the progress of that program. The auto companies met or exceeded every single technology milestone placed before them. These included the size and weight of hydrogen fuel cell technology as both of those shrank significantly.

The technology was cold weather tested, and I cannot tell you, coming from upstate New York, how critical that is. It proved to be extremely versatile under multiple different environments. It was also done while improving durability, and current hydrogen fuel cell vehicles increased a mileage capability that before was unheard of, right now achieving some 800,000 miles--let me rephrase that, some 80,000 miles of lifetime between hydrogen fuel cell change-out, and the first commercial vehicles available in 2015 will have 125,000-mile durability capability between changing. That was unheard of just 10 years ago.

In the United States, billions and billions of dollars have been invested in government and private partnership to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology a reality. The Department of Energy alone invested $2.3 billion in vehicle-related research and development. And General Motors, from their own coffers, invested $1.5 billion to place this company and this country at the forefront of hydrogen fuel cell research and development. Remember the goal, the billions and billions of gallons of gasoline we burn every year that will some day no longer be needed.

Hundreds of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are currently on the road. Many major automotive companies have fleets. Preeminent among them, General Motors, but catching up quickly, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and Daimler. These are not some laboratory curiosity. Several automobile companies now loan or lease these vehicles to people just like you and me that take them home, park them in their garage, get up and take them to work the next morning. I know, because on my very first day as Member of the United States Congress just some 10 months ago, on a very cold January morning, I fired up a hydrogen fuel cell Equinox and drove it and its companion vehicle to the steps of the United States Capitol to demonstrate that this technology is no longer a laboratory miracle but is on the cusp of commercial development and deployment. So we've come a long way. And the question now is: Should we continue with this technology? Is this technology essential?

Mr. Speaker, let me turn to the next slide if I might. I'd like to talk for a moment about energy and technology options.

Energy security and the ability to reach emission gas reductions is critical. On this slide, we see in green, blue, and yellow, a library of our energy source portfolios: oil in its conventional, oil its nonconventional formats, biomass, natural gas and coal, renewables of many kinds, and nuclear. That's about what we have where we can go shopping for today's energy sources.

In the center is the type of fuel that those energies provide from a liquid fuel, and we know that to be diesel, gasoline, to gaseous fuels, which have special uses in niche markets like agriculture, propane, natural gas compressed, electric vehicles and hydrogen. And then we can talk about propulsion systems. Today, we have conventional internal combustion engines. We have internal combustion hybrids. That would be what we call and have come to be known as the Prius, plug-in hybrids, next generation, range-extended

electric vehicles. We'll see those soon in a product called the Volt. Battery electric vehicles that have been around for quite a while are in use in many different ranges, and fuel cell hydrogen electric vehicles.

This is the menu that we can choose from, and it's absolutely critical that we maintain the broadest menu possible. So how do we avoid potential conflicts, unexpected shortages, foreign countries that will hold us hostage to a particular kind of energy, whether it be oil or nuclear fuel? How do we strive to move forward? We maintain a full menu of choices.

Now, some of these fuels have some limitations. We are very excited about biofuels, and certainly, based on my agricultural-dominated congressional district, I join in that. But they have a limitation. We can't fully meet demand based solely on biofuels, if for no other reason, because of land use requirements. We know and I've discussed briefly and will discuss in more detail that batteries have cost and weight problems. Let me illustrate this in the next slide, if I could.

There are different amounts of energy contained in different kinds of fuel, and, Mr. Speaker, if you will indulge me just a brief discussion of a technical nature. Today, if I want to drive 300 miles, it will take me approximately 72 pounds of diesel fuel. Now, if you take that amount of diesel fuel and you wrap it into the fuel delivery system, the piping, the pump, and the fuel tank, the total weight of that onboard device is about 94 pounds. If I want to do that with compressed hydrogen, the amount of hydrogen that I want to use contains 13.2 pounds. Now, why is that? That's because hydrogen, pound for pound, contains much more energy than does diesel fuel. It's an incredibly more efficient energy delivering fuel. But because it's a gas, it must be compressed and so its tank will weigh more. And the entire energy delivery system for a vehicle will weigh about 275 pounds. Well, that sounds like a lot more than the 94.8 pounds, but it's really only about 180 pounds heavier. That's about one passenger's worth. That's a very manageable technical challenge to engineers in the automotive industry.

But when we talk about batteries, it will take 1,829 pounds of Lithium ion batteries to allow me to drive 300 miles without recharging, and the delivery system, the encasement, the battery, cables, and the harnesses, will weigh about a total of 1,829, with 1,190 of that actually being the battery itself. Now, that has market value. There are urban uses for battery-powered vehicles, but long- range, high torque, high horsepower extended driving is not one of them. It is only through a high density, high energy fuel, in this case today, diesel or gasoline, and in the cars of tomorrow through hydrogen, that you can achieve that. Lithium ion batteries technically, because of the laws of physics, will never get us to where we have to go across a broad spectrum of driving requirements. It is simply not physically possible. In order to do this, I believe, and many experts join me, we have to harness the power of hydrogen through advanced fuel cell technology.

Now, petroleum and hydrogen have two other advantages. These vehicles can be refueled every 300 or so miles, and it takes about 3 to 10 minutes to do it. A battery electric vehicle requires overnight charging and it requires it to be done with a high-capacitance recharging system. That's fine if you have 8 or 9 hours to recharge your car. And there are many uses in urban America where that's possible, but not in long-range, high horsepower transportation requirements.

Let's talk, if I could, on the next slide, about the range, about the requirements of driving as we see them today in the United States. This brings the technology back to the consumer. On this chart, on a four- way arrow, here we talk about high loads. Now, those of us who come from farm country know that there's a lot of driving to be done agriculturally that requires heavy duty pickup trucks.

On the other hand, light-load driving for those in a much more urban environment, like a Los Angeles or Miami or New York City, recognize light-load small vehicles.

Then we go as far as range: continuous highway driving down Interstate 90 and Interstate 5, or short-burst driving as we go on errands from store to store. Battery electric vehicles perform very well in local light-weight driving, and they can do a great deal to lesson our burden on imported petroleum in that market. Extended-range electric vehicles can make that just a little bit better, but it's still about a four-passenger car.

Fuel cell vehicles are the only vehicles that will be able to meet a consumer demand for range; that's long-range highway driving--load requirements--that's heavy pickup truck-type requirements--and quick refilling time.

Diesel fuel for the near foreseeable future is probably going to be the fuel required to move heavy buses and heavy trucks over long-range routes. But imagine that they are a mere fraction of those billions of gallons of gasoline that we burn and import every year from overseas. There is a huge application for hydrogen fuel cells in meeting consumer demand for vehicles that have long-range, high-load requirements, and quick refilling time.

But can hydrogen fuel cell vehicles become a reality? Let's look at the next chart just where we were in the year 2000.

There are four myths that are currently being discussed with respect to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. One of them is fuel cells are too expensive, and they're not durable enough. The reality is the cost benefit of a hydrogen fuel cell is measured in something called dollars per kilowatt. You measure the output in a kilowatt.

Now, just to bring this back to home, your average light bulb at home is 100 watts. So 10 of those turned on at the same time is one kilowatt. An Equinox extended-range hydrogen fuel cell vehicle today produces about 120 kilowatts of electricity, and significant cost reductions of this measurement have already been made just in the past 10 years from a plateau of $275 per kilowatt all the way down to today at 61 kilowatts, well on the way to the commercialized requirement of a 45-kilowatt vehicle. That's $45 per kilowatt.

Just last week the Department of Energy in its hydrogen program released a document confirming a current $61 per kilowatt in 2009 dollars projection. As shown on this chart, this is a reality today. Cost will be, and soon are, comparable to all other advanced technologies at high volumes of production, a high volume of production being 500,000 vehicles per year.

It was an incredibly difficult challenge put forth by the technicians of the Department of Energy, and the goals have been met or exceeded as developed by major automotive manufacturers right here in the United States. In fact, GM is on track to release a commercial model that meets or exceeds all durability and cost guidelines by 2015.

Myth two as shown on the next chart: hydrogen from natural gas is not an ideal source, and we don't have other options.

Let's go back to chemistry class when we were in high school. Hydrogen gas comes from two main sources: either something called reformatting natural gas or fundamental electrolysis. The reality today when you measure the amount of CO2 that's expelled by a vehicle per mile driven as it is today, today's gasoline engines produce 540 grams, quarter of a kilogram, about half a pound, of CO2 per mile. And we will be able to lower that to about 410 grams. If we just use and burn natural gas in a compressed tank, it's about 320. If we go to hybrid electric vehicles, of which there are four major types: gasoline, diesel, corn ethanol, and cellulosic ethanol, we can get it down to about 65 grams.

If we're talking about plug-in hybrids, today we have a gasoline hybrid that gives us a 240-gram-per-mile burn, and cellulosic ethanol can get it down to 150. It is only hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that meet the emissions requirements required for us to move forward.

If we take hydrogen and reformat it directly from natural gas, technology available today, we achieve a 200-gram-per-mile equivalent. That's half of the very best that we can get out of gasoline today. And if we go to hydrogen made from central wind electrolysis, it's almost untraceable. We actually achieve the goal of leaving nothing behind the vehicle but water vapor.

Natural gas is an abundant, domestic resource. We have it in quantity. Eleven billion kilograms of hydrogen already produced from natural gas in North America and 60 percent of this, enough fuel to power 21 million hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, is used to clean up petroleum in refinery operations today.

Natural gas-based hydrogen used to power hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is less than half of the greenhouse gas emissions of a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle. And looking forward, hydrogen, with near zero greenhouse emissions is possible, both from nuclear biomass and renewable electricity. In fact, solar arrays are in operation today that are producing hydrogen at generation efficiency twice of the Department of Energy's 2015 goals. This is not future science. This is science of today.

Myth number three--this is associated with hydrogen fuel cells--is that no good storage mechanism is available for transportation.

Most companies today use a 10,000 PSI compressed hydrogen tank. Vehicles use the storage tank, technology has been able to hook up to 300 miles. It was the technology that was in the vehicle that I drove from my home in Corning, New York, all the way down to Washington, DC. Compressed hydrogen offers all of the capabilities needed to begin commercialization of vehicles today. This, like all continuing research that goes on around the world, will progress. But it is a reality as we know it today.

Let's talk about myth four, which is probably the most daunting issue facing America. And, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence in what is increasingly technological conversation.

Distribution infrastructure isn't there, and there are no plans to establish it. That's myth number four. The reality is that the infrastructure challenge is solvable. Stations are here now, and according to the National Hydrogen Association of the United States, we currently have 75 stations located around the country, most in New York and California, with 44 more planned over the next 2 years.

Like the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System or the international and national railroad systems, or our own aircraft and airport infrastructure, this will require a national involvement, a national government involvement, which will result in jobs and lots of them. It will create entirely new industries, industries that cannot be exported; and it will be a tremendous stimulus to the U.S. economy in and of itself.

To roll out this infrastructure, all we need to do is start with nodes and then connect them, and the work has already started. It doesn't require a miracle. It only requires the will and the national focus to do it.

Here we see to my right several of the stations that are already being designed and implemented for commercial exploitation around the world. In places like the University of California Irvine, in Germany, right here in Washington, DC., where I refilled the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that I drove from Corning, and in Berlin, Germany, where they have taken that design--and I will talk soon about its mass introduction throughout their entire highway system.

Again, it doesn't require a miracle, only the national will to do so.

Let us take a look at the next slide and see how we can actually manage this transformation and manage it quickly.

We start with select high-profile stations; and then we move to the next stage, about 40 stations per large metro area. Here we see both New York City and Los Angeles, just two examples.

Thirty metro stations for the entire metropolitan Los Angeles area will provide a network where no matter where you are, you are only 3.6 miles from a hydrogen filling station. Add 10 stations outside of the metro area, and that's what you need to allow consumers to meet their average weekly and weekend needs. And in Los Angeles, by the way, it's important to view the driving patterns of consumers.

There are consumers who want to be able to drive to Las Vegas, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and Big Bear, but they don't necessarily transit north to that extended range, and so this has a particular viability in southern California. Similarly, New York State, my home State, has the potential for a ``hydrogen highway'' as described in previous work by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. You can build nodes and link them together along roads like Interstate 90.

But NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, recognizes that ``as with any vision, barriers to achieving our goals exist. The support needed must come from collaborative efforts among industry, as well as between industry and local, State, and Federal Government. Communication and cooperation will be required to overcome the technical, market, and policy challenges impeding the implementation of hydrogen energy systems.''

As a proof that this technology is here now, we only have to look at what is happening within the automotive industry, especially abroad where foreign governments and car companies are teaming up to tackle the challenges of commercializing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.

Let's take a look at some of those partnerships in the next slide. As I have said continually, the technology is here and here now, and those in the industry recognize the potential of hydrogen cars in the commercial market. The global automotive industry says that at the current pace, these vehicles will be on the road commercially by 2015. Major world automobile manufacturers have signed a Letter of Understanding as recently as September 9 of this year between Daimler, and they recognize the requirement of the synergy between hydrogen fuel cells and battery technologies. This letter went to energy companies all over the world and government organizations around their host countries.

To quote that letter, allow me to say, over the last decade, governments, original equipment manufacturers and automobile manufacturers and the entire energy sector have given special attention to the introduction of hydrogen as a fuel for road transportation, and they have given it the priority option to reach several goals associated both with emission management and CO2 reduction. Battery and fuel-celled vehicles complement one another and can move us closer to the objective of sustained mobility.

Honda, Toyota, Renault Nissan, Opel and GM, Ford, Daimler, Kia and Hyundai have all made significant investments and are moving ahead aggressively, but it is here in the United States of America, quite frankly with American ingenuity, that we have taken a leadership position that today is being threatened by a lack of partnership and a lack of vision. Let me quote further from the letter that was put out by Daimler, in order to ensure a successful market introduction of fuel-cell vehicles:

``This market introduction has to be aligned with the build-up of the necessary hydrogen infrastructure. Therefore a hydrogen infrastructure network with sufficient density is required by 2015. The network should be built up from metropolitan areas via corridors into area-wide coverage.''

Mr. Speaker, others get it. And many in this country understand it as well. Foreign governments in Germany and Japan are listening to their automotive manufacturers. They are collaborating with those manufacturers to put production vehicles in the market and in the marketplace by 2015 and explore simultaneously the need to overcome infrastructure challenges. Working to blanket their countries with a national hydrogen fuel-station infrastructure that will free their countries from foreign oil. And we will be left side-lined, wondering how this happened.

In our next slide, the flags tell the story. Our competitors are passing us by. They will soon have government-supported fuel-cell fleets on the road for research and development and prototype testing, as well as the infrastructure to support it. China, Korea, Japan and Germany are all in the fight competing with the United States, all moving forward aggressively and, in fact, faster than we are to commercialize technologies that we invented here in the United States. Their industries and their governments are working together. In Japan and Germany, long-term government industrial collaborations have existed, and they are

leveraging those collaborations and those partnerships to leapfrog over the United States and the work that we put in place initializing the very technologies that we may one day be threatened with having to reimport into this country.

China is also learning a lesson and watching us carefully and matching their incredible ability to literally reverse engineer anything and everything that is developed and placing their massive industrial strength behind it. There is no doubt that should they want to and should we surrender the lead, they will overtake us.

The bottom line is if we don't move on hydrogen fuel-cell technologies and the vehicles built from them and we do not move forward, someone else will, and we will end up buying it from them just as we have ended up buying hybrid technology from the very competitors who took it away from us after we invented it and moved that technology forward. We will be reliant on these foreign producers for this clean technology in the same way that we rely on foreign oil right now to power our automobiles.

Let's look at a specific on the next slide. Germany, an ally and an industrial partner, has developed a logical plan with government infrastructure developments and hydrogen fuel-cell automobiles to roll out H2 fueling stations over a very short period of time. To the far right we see in 2013 some 150 fueling stations, and by 2017, 1,000 hydrogen fuel-cell filling stations, allowing the Germans to access hydrogen technology all over their country. In just four short House of Representatives election cycles, they will be done. And we will be wondering how did it happen? How were we left behind? This is because countries all over the world have, or are developing, national hydrogen plans.

Mr. Speaker, allow me to show you in the next slide who some of those players on the global market are. Germany and Japan are leading globally and leapfrogging ahead of the United States. China is coming on strong and in the past has not respected other nations' intellectual property rights. This will allow them to not only catch up quickly but surpass us. And believe you me, they will and they are. Korea is also stepping up with its manufacturing partnership with Hyundai. All over the globe we see other countries realizing the promising future of this technology. We invented it here. We developed it here. We are manufacturing it here. And yet, we are at the cusp of surrendering it here.

In the big picture, manufacturers from Germany, Japan, Korea and China are now accelerating their movement forward, and they are doing so quickly with a massive government research and development program. They will likely soon have large fuel-cell fleets on the roads, even larger than General Motors' current research and development 119-car fleet. They are installing thousands of hydrogen fueling stations that will relieve their countries from the burden of foreign oil and establish a viable energy infrastructure that supports clean, renewable energy production within their own countries independent of importation. And they will be creating the tens of thousands of new green jobs that should be created and kept here in the United States of America.

We have seen this before. Not too long along ago, this country invested in battery electric vehicle technology. And I'm not talking about the investments that came out of the recent stimulus bill, but rather the investments that were made back in the 1980s. The Department of Energy invested to kick-start the technologies and advance them towards production, and a large automobile manufacturer in the United States built a small fleet of battery electric vehicles that were placed on the road with real world drivers, sort of like where GM is today with hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. The United States, in particular one State in the United States, California, then shifted its focus, and the programs became economically unviable and went away quite dramatically.

Today, leaders in this technology, battery automotive technology, are in Korea, China and Japan. And yet, the research and development was done here in the United States of America.

By the way, this is not an anomaly. I could have told you the same story but replaced ``battery'' vehicles with the word ``hybrid'' vehicles. And yet, last year, as the price of gasoline spiked and the United States consumer market focused on hybrid vehicles, there were no commercially available, mass deployable, domestically manufactured hybrid vehicles. Why? Because we embarked on that technology and we allowed foreign manufacturers to capture it, thus forcing us to reimport it at significant capital costs to the United States. If all the other major countries have a very specific program in place, what do they know that we don't know?

Well, here is an aspect of it, Mr. Speaker, that I would like to leave you with tonight. Allow me to conclude with one final slide. This is not necessarily only an issue of commercial capabilities or of industrial capabilities. It is an issue of national security. The United States military sees a need for independent energy capabilities. This was recently outlined in an independent report by the Defense Science Board Task Force on DOD Energy Strategy. In recent letters from senior DOD officials, one individual quoted ``domestic leadership in advanced technologies such as fuel cells is of national importance.''

The task force concluded that the Department of Defense faces two primary energy challenges. Department of Defense energy operations suffer from unnecessarily high growing battle space fuel demand. Let's face it, an M1A2 Abrams tank powered by a gas turbine engine using aviation fuel burns a lot of gas. And we have seen over and over and over again in land, air, and sea warfare that the logistical requirements of moving fuel is one of the most important battlefield criteria.

In fact, in my own life, I learned at advanced war schools, such as the National War College and the Naval War College, that amateurs talk about bullets and guns and professionals talk about logistics. And logistics harbor around the movement of petroleum products for our aircraft, our tanks, and our ships. And we are increasingly and at farther ranges dependent on that. In fact, Mr. Speaker, just recently on the front page of a major Washington political newspaper the headlines read that a gallon of fuel used by the United States military in Afghanistan is costing the United States taxpayer $400.

Likewise, military installations both overseas and, of some significant national security curiosity, right here at home are completely dependent on a civilian electrical infrastructure grid. When the lights go out in New York City, they go out on any military base on the same electrical grid. There is no independent powering sources. This is not a position that we want our military to be in.

Hydrogen fuel cells can help the military address its own petroleum reduction requirements. Nontactical vehicle applications, these are the everyday administrative vehicles used all over the United States by the DOD, are a wonderful place to introduce this technology and move forward. And stationary hydrogen fuel cell storage and requirements are also a significant national security increase for our shoreside installations.

Fuel cells and nontactical vehicles will later enable tactical applications. And while it seems far fetched that we may one day have a fuel cell-powered tank, Mr. Speaker, I offer for consideration that those on the battlefield of the Civil War would have had a hard time imagining a gas turbine power aviation fuel Abrams M1A2 tank. We simply cannot rely on surrendering the promise of this technology and shipping it overseas.

Now, Mr. Speaker, with total transparency, I must confess that one of the reasons that I am so motivated and so passionate about this subject is that for the past 15 years, out of sight and out of mind, in a corner of my congressional district that most people did not even know existed, some 400 engineers, technicians, and support personnel have worked to bring the vision of petroleum-free transportation and independence from imported petroleum to reality.

Tonight and tomorrow, and hopefully into the future, the engineers and the

technicians at the Honeoye Falls advanced fuel cell research and development facility have brought the future today. Their leader, Mr. Matthew Fronk, a man who will soon retire from his position and seek a leadership role in academia, is to be commended for his vision and for his leadership. And it is not he alone, because it is a classic example of the ability of private industry, in this case, General Motors, a company often maligned and much in the press, who has brought to the Nation a unique, forward-looking capability that no other Nation in the world today has, and yet we are at the cusp of losing them. Right when we had the future in our hands, brought to us by hardworking and highly educated, incredibly passionate and dedicated technicians and engineers, we are about to surrender it as we surrendered battery technologies, as we surrendered hybrid technologies.

So, Mr. Speaker, allow me to conclude by reading an article that appeared in CNN Money magazine just last week. It is titled, ``The Hydrogen Car Fights Back.'' President Obama is betting on biofuels and batteries, but that isn't stopping some automakers from investing in hydrogen fuel cars. As it appeared in Fortune magazine, I quote, ``The valley of death is auto industry speak. It is a metaphorical desert where emerging technologies reside while car executives figure out which of the experiments ought to make their way into actual cars. Every automotive leap forward has done time in the valley, turbo chargers, fuel injections, even gasoline electric hybrids like Toyota's Prius. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the alternative energy flavor of the month back in 2003, are the ones languishing today, along with hovercraft and other assorted concept cars, but perhaps not for much longer.

A number of automakers are now renewing their push for hydrogen, and now it is looking as though hydrogen cars will make its way out of this conceptual vehicular valley of death. Last month, Daimler, the German Government, and several industrial companies announced a plan to build 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell stations across Germany. Days later, Daimler's CEO, Dieter Zetsche, showed off Mercedes Benz's latest hydrogen fuel cell effort, the F-Cell hatchback. Toyota, this summer, announced it will put hydrogen fuel cell cars into production by 2015. Honda, GM, and Hyundai all have hydrogen fuel cell programs running, and Honda has actually put vehicles--heavily subsidized by the car maker to be sure-- in the hands of some real customers as opposed to its own engineers. Parenthetically, GM, today, is focusing most of its energy on the plug- in hybrid Chevy Volt, but the company still says it expects to have fuel cell technology ready for commercialization by 2015.

Mr. Speaker, as we debate the great issues of the day, and there are many to debate, we hear them on the floor of this House every afternoon and every evening, be it national foreign policy issues that weigh heavily on our minds in Iraq and Afghanistan, whether it be a contentious debate about health care, allow us not to lose the vision of the future. Allow us not to do what has been done before. Allow us not to forget and give away the decades of advancement and work that have accomplished so much in this very focused area of technological development that holds so much promise not only for the automotive fuel sector, but for energy independence. We speak on the floor of the House in great and grand and umbrella arching metaphors, and yet now it is time to speak of specifics.

And so, Mr. Speaker, I thank you that for this last hour I was given the opportunity to highlight a specific technology that holds so much promise, because back home at the Honeoye Falls research and development facility it can truly be said that not often in history have so few done so much for all of us.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a friend and fellow Naval Officer, CDR Robert S. Clements. Tomorrow, after his 25-year tenure with the United States Navy, Commander Clements will commemorate his retirement with a ceremony aboard the Display Ship Barry in the Washington Navy Yard.

He enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve in May 1984 and graduated from Recruit Basic Training in October 1984. After receiving his commission in the Navy and graduating with a B.S. degree in Business Management in May 1988, Commander Clements subsequently graduated from Navy Supply Corps School, Athens, GA, in December 1988.

In January 1989, Commander Clements reported to USS Savannah (AOR-4) in Norfolk, VA, and served as the Disbursing Officer, Sales Officer, and Food Service Officer. In April 1992, he reported to Naval Air Station, Joint Reserve Base, New Orleans, LA, where he served as Combined Bachelor Quarters Officer, and Aviation Support Division Officer. After receiving his M.S. degree in business management from Troy State University in August 1994, he served as Supply Officer in USS Elliot (DD-967) in San Diego, CA from 1995 to May 1997.

Commander Clements was selected to serve as the Officer in Charge, Chairman's Dining Room, Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon, Washington. DC, where he served on the Joint Staff from June 1997 to July 1999. A millennium graduate of the Marine Corps University, Command and Staff College, he completed the 10-month Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) Phase I curriculum and Military Operations other than War (MOOTW).

Commander Clements served as the Director of Operations, Fleet Hospital Support Office, Williamsburg, VA from August 2000 to September 2003 and as Deputy Director of Operations and Mobilization Officer, Navy Expeditionary Logistics Support Force (NAVELSF), Williamsburg, VA from October 2002 to July 2004 where he mobilized the initial NAVELSF capabilities in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom I. He then served as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics/N4A, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, Commander, U.S. Fifth Fleet, Manama, Bahrain in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom II and additionally, he led the logistics crisis action planning in support of the October 2005 Pakistan earthquake relief effort.

From May 2006 to August 2007, Commander Clements served as the Director of Logistics, Reserve Component Command, Region Mid-Atlantic and was responsible for the integration of Navy Reserve Readiness Command Mid-Atlantic, Wash., D.C. and Navy Reserve Readiness Command, Northeast, Newport, RI. He also served as the Director of Logistics, Naval Air Facility, Washington, D.C. from September 2007 to December 2007. Commander Clements is currently the Deputy Director of Training and Readiness (J-97), Joint Reserves Forces, Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), Fort Belvoir, VA, responsible for the training and readiness of over 750 military reservists assigned throughout the DLA organization supporting worldwide military operations.

His personal decorations include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (four awards), the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Navy and Marine Commendation medal (three awards), and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal (five awards). Commander Clements was the recipient of the Naval Reserve Association's 1994 Junior Officer of the Year Award. He is a life member of the Naval Reserve Association, NRA, and also a member of the National Naval Officers Association. On behalf of the United States Congress, it is my honor to recognize Commander Clements and the essential contributions he has made to our great Nation.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to laud the achievements, acumen, patriotism and long service to our country by RA Wayne E. Meyer, affectionately known as the ``Father of AEGIS.'' His service to our Navy and our Nation has been continuous since his enlistment as a midshipman recruit in 1943. He is best known as the founding project manager of the AEGIS Shipbuilding Project, which began building AEGIS cruisers in 1978. AEGIS destroyers are still being constructed today, and remain the world's most formidable multi-mission warships. The cruisers and destroyers in our fleet today are the direct result of Rear Admiral Meyer's leadership and dedication to his country.

Admiral Meyer's life began far from the sea, in Brunswick, Missouri, in 1926. His family plowed the black earth in the ``gumbo'' region near the Missouri River, and, like so many other American families of that era, survived the Depression only through their determination and their indomitable spirit.

When the Nation went to war in 1941, Wayne Meyer was only 15. He continued his schooling, but only days after his 17th birthday, with his parent's written permission, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve to serve his country. After graduating high school as his class president and valedictorian, the Navy called him to active duty as an apprentice seaman, and sent him to the University of Kansas' engineering school--part of President Roosevelt's ``V-12'' program. After an accelerated and exhausting 32 months, Wayne Meyer earned a B.S. in electrical engineering. Later that month, in February 1946, he was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve, and sent to M.I.T. for further schooling in the nascent fields of radar and sonar. His schooling later included atomic weapons training, a further graduate degree in electrical engineering, a master's in aeronautics and astronautics from M.I.T., the Navy General Line School and certification as a Navy Ordnance Engineer.

His early years in the Navy were marked by extensive sea duty. He was ordered to Destroyer Radar Picket USS Goodrich (DDR 831), where he served as part of the occupation forces in the Mediterranean, service in the Greek civil war, and with part of the force supporting the creation of Israel in 1948. He was accepted for transfer to the regular Navy that year as well.

Meyer was next posted in Chinese waters, where his ship, the light gun cruiser Springfield (CL 66), was in the mouth of the Huangpu River when Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist forces fell to Mao's Red Army in March 1949. He returned home to serve on a number of ships on Fleet Staffs--twice deploying in the destroyer tender USS Sierra (AD 16). He patrolled the Distant Early Warning line (extended) off Newfoundland as Executive Officer in the Radar Picket Strickland (DER 333). After a return to shore for more schooling, he was ordered to the guided missile cruiser Galveston (CLG 3) as Fire Control Officer and subsequently Gunnery Officer for her conversion as the first Talos cruiser, where he fired more Talos missiles than any other person. By the time he finished his sea duty, he'd served on seven ships and sailed the Pacific, Atlantic, and Mediterranean.

The next phase of Admiral Meyer's career was leading critical programs and facilities in the Navy's material establishment. In 1963 Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth chose then Commander Meyer to serve in the special Navy Task Force for the Surface Guided Missile Systems, under command of RADM Eli T. Reich, USN. His work at the Terrier missile system desk led to his appointment to lead the engineering effort to transition the entire Terrier fleet (30 ships) from analog to high speed digital systems. After turning down a destroyer command to continue this prelude to advanced weapons system design, he was appointed an Ordnance Engineering Duty Officer the same year he was selected for captain, 1966. He then served as the Chief Engineer at the Naval Ship Missile Systems Engineering Station, Port Hueneme, California. From this post he led the in-service engineering of the Navy's surface missile systems.

Ordered back to Washington in 1969, he became the AEGIS Weapons System Manager in the Bureau of Ordnance, the most important phase of his career. It was here that Meyer's lifetime operational and engineering experience was put to the test. It would also require him to exercise what many know to be his unparalleled genius--organization and communication.

Meyer's first major challenge was to make AEGIS work. That is-- develop and test a new area air defense system to protect the fleet from aircraft and cruise missile attack. By virtue of his ``double- hat'' as the Director of Surface Missile Systems in NAVSEA, he was also charged with keeping the existing fleet of Terrier and Tartar ships capable against ever more sophisticated Soviet threats. Those who worked for Meyer in those early days knew him as untiring, relentless, and driven towards success. They also knew him to be the consummate engineer--demanding back-ups for risky technologies and redundancy to ensure his system would work under even the most demanding conditions. After a number of land-based tests, the AEGIS Weapon System prototype was installed in the USS Norton Sound in 1974 for at-sea testing. Two more years of development and testing, following Meyer's mantra, ``build-a-little, test-a-little, learn a lot'' led to ``Super Sunday'' in 1977, when AEGIS detected, tracked and engaged two targets simultaneously.

With such a powerful new weapon system in development, the Navy understood that it could be used for more than just air engagements, and in 1976 charged Meyer with developing the AEGIS Combat System. The combat system, which included the AEGIS Weapon System, would allow simultaneous multi-mission engagements against surface, air, and submarine targets, as well as strike capability. With his naval engineer's eye toward cautioned, prudent design, Meyer again demanded a stepwise approach to development, and thorough land-based testing before sending the system to sea.

With these combat and weapon systems under controlled development, Meyer's next major challenge was to ``get AEGIS to Sea.'' Since the project began in 1969, the ship to carry AEGIS had been a hotly debated issue in the Navy, the Department of Defense, and

Congress. Meyer knew that he couldn't have his engineers constantly focus as the targeted ships changed each year, and thus instituted ``Superset.'' The ``Superset'' combat system would be the largest aggregation of capability under consideration for a single ship. If a less capable version were eventually authorized by Congress, ``down- designing'' would be easier than inserting new combat system features. When our democracy finished its great debate on the first ship to carry AEGIS, a highly modified version of the USS Spruance hull was the result. Christened by Nancy Reagan in 1981, and commissioned in 1983, the cruiser USS Ticonderoga was built on time, and slightly under budget. It was on the battle line in Lebanon only 9 months after its commission.

Today, when our country seems to have difficulties building ships, we should remember that we have had great patriots like Admiral Meyer, who could lead the most complex of endeavors--and bring them in on cost and on schedule.

But one ship does not a fleet make. Promoted to rear admiral in 1975, Meyer's third major challenge was to ``rebuild the Surface Navy''-- transitioning from a Terrier and Tartar cruiser and destroyer fleet to an AEGIS cruiser and destroyer fleet. Meyer knew it would be a long process, and would require schoolhouses, shore-based logistics, facilities for computer program maintenance, training, in-service engineering, and a host of other facilities and people to keep the new fleet ready. With his partner in the Chief of Naval Operations' Office, Vice Admiral James H. Doyle, Jr., he set out to build this supporting infrastructure, which keeps the fleet ready today. With 27 cruisers and 62 destroyers built or under construction, and more in planning, Admiral Meyer's vision of rebuilding the surface Navy is now complete.

After retiring in 1985, Admiral Meyer's restless zeal has kept him thoroughly involved in our Nation's defense. He has chaired numerous Navy Advisory Boards, the Ballistic Missile Defense Advisory Committee, and remains a valuable counselor to those in our Navy as the ``Father of AEGIS.''

He has watched with special pride as his AEGIS fleet has been transformed into a critical arm of our Nation's ballistic missile defense system. With his guidance and mentorship, the process has again been, ``build-a-little, test-a-little, learn a lot,'' with a record of success unparalleled among the missile defense programs.

His accomplishments and contributions to the defense of our Nation have been so numerous and far-reaching that the Secretary of the Navy named an AEGIS destroyer, DDG 108, the USS Wayne E. Meyer. She is to commission this October, an event that will no doubt be attended by thousands who have taken part in the ``AEGIS movement.'' In advance of that monumental event, I would like to thank Admiral Meyer for his more than 65 years of service to our Nation. I stand in awe of his achievements, his systems, his fleet, and his commitment to the excellence of our Navy.

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

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

The importance of this bill and the support for critical new vehicle technologies in the United States simply cannot be overstated. The future of the American automobile industry and its accompanying tens of thousands of American jobs rest on the ability of domestic car companies to research, develop and commercialize new, clean, efficient technologies that will be the backbone of a new U.S. vehicle market in the future and for future generations.

We have achieved many breakthroughs in advanced vehicle technologies; and I am certain with the continued support from Congress and the American people, this progress will continue. Taking these breakthroughs from research to reality, however, has been an ongoing challenge for American innovators. Facing many barriers that prevent breaking new technologies getting to the marketplace, automobile companies have always had challenges commercializing advanced vehicles to help reduce our Nation's dangerous, if not critically dangerous, dependence on foreign oil, should I say hostile foreign oil.

Much of the focus of the past efforts by the Federal Government has been on the research side. With this amendment, the equally important commercialization part will now receive attention.

My amendment will help change this emphasizing the importance of those barriers to commercialization and by supporting new ways to help our domestic car companies bring advanced vehicle technologies online. Beyond support for research and development, we must follow through completely on our obligations to the American people to develop real solutions to our growing energy crisis. We cannot be satisfied with abandoning new technologies every time they leave the laboratory. We must help our automobile makers carry these technologies across the finish line or face the alternative as we have in the past and seen time and time again where U.S. innovation and research is picked up and developed by foreign competitors. Thus, we lose our market share and advantage in the marketplace.

To support true, real change and to bring about a serious new change for new generations of advanced technology vehicles in the United States, we must focus on basic research and on public-private partnerships that utilize the expertise of industry to conquer the many impediments to commercializing these promising new technologies.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Would the gentlelady yield?

I think your question cuts to the core of what public- private

partnerships can do to help American industry. First, this is targeted at the domestic American automobile industry. As we have seen over and over again as our competitors around the world do everything they can to lower barriers to business competition and business commercialization, I seek to give that opportunity to our industries as well.

You know, having spent some time in business running a factory line, I understand what it means to get to the finish line, have a great product and then face barrier upon barrier of unnecessary regulation when all I need is an open line of communication to be able to overcome these. This is the spirit in which this amendment is offered, to offer the maximum amount of opportunity to our domestic industry. I think that not only the American people but my colleagues and good friends across the aisle can join me in that spirit.

Would the gentlelady yield?

As a specific opportunity, we all know that State and Federal governments have a tremendous amount of data capability to be able to do market research and understand how the marketplace operates. And yet many times, because a corporation or a company or a private manufacturer is private, they cannot readily access that information. That is a key example of the kinds of barriers to commercialization that we must remove. These are lessons that our good friends and allies across the world, who frankly are our economic competitors, have already realized and moved forward on. I seek to give our domestic manufacturers the exact same advantages.

Would the gentlelady yield?

Certainly the context of this amendment is offered with the specific focus of assisting domestic automobile manufacturers. But as I am sure the gentlelady would agree with me, automobile manufacturing is such a large and encompassing industrial activity, that this will not only go from the factory floor in Detroit but may in fact help the small mom-and-pop manufacturers that support that activity. So this will have a very broad benefit across a wide spectrum of economic activities, ultimately focused on helping advanced vehicle technologies.

Would the gentlelady yield?

I can certainly do that, perhaps with your concurrence, by offering a specific example.

As we face new technologies, be they hybrid, be they new fuel sources like second-generation ethanol or hydrogen, those technologies as they mature across a pilot production line will ultimately produce a vehicle that will be offered to the American people. The business model of going from the laboratory to the actual showroom floor is as complex as the research and development.

This amendment seeks to recognize that and lower those barriers. Visualize, if I might offer this: as the vehicle rolls out of the laboratory, and we have all raised children, I have a teenager. I know how to get that teenager through college. And by golly, that is what this concept does. It helps that vehicle stand on its own so it can be proudly purchased by Americans.

Would the gentlelady yield?

Based on my personal experience of having run production lines in factories, I am certain that this will help in the commercialization of American-made products and thus help the American manufacturing sector.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the Chair and the individual who is responsible for allowing me the honor of presenting this amendment, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon).

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the citizens of Cuba, NY, who tomorrow will dedicate a 150-foot flag pole, which they have dubbed the Liberty Pole, to commemorate the tragedy that befell our great Nation on September 11, 2001. I will have the honor of being at that ceremony, where I will see flown for the first time a large American flag that flew over this storied chamber only days ago.

Cuba, like thousands of small towns across our Nation, experienced the tremendous sadness and loss of that day, and like their fellow Americans they rose to the challenge, sending dozens of people to Ground Zero to assist in the rescue efforts. Volunteers from their fire department, ambulance corps, and local charities all donated their time, efforts, and equipment. These were acts of individual heroism, but more importantly, they were the acts of a selfless, compassionate, and patriotic community who answered the call for help in our Nation's time of need. Tomorrow, that community will come together to fly our Nation's flag atop the Liberty Pole, one of the tallest flag poles in the country.

As a veteran, our country's flag holds special meaning in my heart. Like so many before and after me, I rose in the morning and retired each night honoring our Nation's flag, privileged to have the duty of defending it from those who would cause what it stood for harm. In Cuba tomorrow, as that great flag flies over us, we will be reminded that this sacred duty is not exclusively that of the solider. Men and women from all walks of life, privileged to be citizens of this greatest nation on Earth, share in this duty and in the responsibility of passing this flag and its solemn significance on to future generations of Americans. There have been 26 predecessors to our current fifty-star flag, but the American ideals of freedom, liberty, and of shared sacrifice represented by our flag have remained unchanged since our Nation's inception.

The Liberty Pole in Cuba will now stand for generations as a testament to the enduring patriotism of a community and of the resiliency of the American Spirit. Each day, our Nation's flag will fly atop its mast, reminding both the residents of Cuba, NY, and our Nation not only of the events of September 11, 2001, but of America's ability to overcome adversity, to share in sacrifice, to confront her enemies, and to build a brighter and more prosperous future for her children. These qualities will ensure that our Nation will always overcome tragedy, and it is these qualities that will forever make our Nation great.

Madam Speaker, I rise today not only in support of the rule, in support of the underlying bill, but in opposition to one of the unprecedentedly large numbers of amendments which, in fact, is being allowed to be offered to this bill. And I have sat here this morning listening to a long conversation about the lack of allocation of amendments, and yet I have yet to hear the reality that in this House and in this rule and in this Congress, the majority has offered an unprecedented number of amendments to all forms of legislation heretofore not seen in the 111th or forbearing Congresses.

The amendment today that I would like to discuss is one that reaches far down into this bill to strip out a very small amount of money for a town where I come from. Now, I know that many people don't know where Hornell, New York, is. It's a small town. It's not on the big maps of the geopolitical world, but it's where I'm from. And in fact, in that town, once a center of a bustling train industry, is a small YMCA.

And that YMCA, like many around rural America, is a community center that offers not only its basic functions but, in this case, is actually a functioning gym for a small St. Ann's Catholic school. It's also a cardiovascular rehabilitation center for a local St. James private hospital.

With unprecedented transparency and, frankly, a small amount of pride, I have fought to place not billions, not hundreds of millions, not even tens of millions, but a very small amount of money to service and return a fair value of taxation back to the community.

What I proposed to do and what I am fighting against by stopping an amendment that would strip that out, with an open heart and an open conversation with those on the other side of the aisle that would deny the citizens of this small town a return for their tax investment, is to help that small community in whatever way possible.

I rise in support of this bill and this rule in support of the underlying legislation.