Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Dr. Stan Rockman who after 35 years has this to say about his choice to practice public healthcare: ``I love providing high quality care to patients with few options.'' He asserts that the patient mix at the San Mateo Medical Center enables him to practice international medicine.

Dr. Rockman is the Chief of Gastroenterology and was appointed to the San Mateo Medical Center in 1971. I have personally known him for 30 years and have witnessed his passion for healing.

A favorite story of Dr. Rockman's involves the day his 16-year-old son paid him a visit at lunchtime. His son waited in the lobby where he observed a man in a hospital gown dragging himself down the hallway, posterior exposed, an IV still attached to his arm and two security guards in close pursuit--another futile attempt to escape from drug rehab.

Dr. Rockman says his son was in awe that his father worked in a place like this on a daily basis.

Madam Speaker, Dr. Stan Rockman is a true hero of healthcare in our county and state. The San Mateo Medical Foundation was right to honor his contributions at a special ceremony on April 30th.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Dr. Harvey Kaplan who proudly states that he has spent his entire career as a pediatrician. I have been friends with Dr. Kaplan for three decades and have witnessed his passion for those entering the world.

Dr. Kaplan was appointed to the San Mateo Medical Center in 1969. He also is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine and a member of the Community Clinical Faculty of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

In the 1970s he took a special interest in treating children who might be victims of abuse. He says he thought of himself as a pioneer in those days as he helped the center develop an interdisciplinary approach to treatment. He eventually assisted in the establishment of the Children's SAFE Center which was on the cutting edge of detecting and treating child sex abuse. He is now a member of the San Mateo County Pediatric Death Review Team.

Although Dr. Kaplan admits to having a few bouts with the lure of private practice, he says those moments passed, replaced by the satisfaction of providing pediatric care to families that normally wouldn't have access to an array of services. Clearly, this Brooklyn native has been California's gain.

Madam Speaker, the San Mateo Medical Foundation is right to honor the contributions of Dr. Kaplan at a special ceremony on April 30. He has truly been a hero of healthcare for our county and State.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Dr. James Meier, a dedicated physician in my district who has devoted his career to providing quality care to a generation of the poor and less fortunate in San Mateo County. I have had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Meier for 30 years and have witnessed his passion and dedication to his work.

Dr. Meier took a three-month temporary assignment at the San Mateo Medical Center and stretched it to more than 40 years and counting.

He has worked through the lean years when the county board of supervisors nearly voted to close the hospital. Those votes spurred an effort to raise community awareness of the Center's services. Dr. Meier played a lead role in forming the San Mateo Medical Center Foundation which has helped garner the needed public support to keep the hospital functioning as a provider of high quality medical care.

Dr. Meier's reason for coming to work each day is captured in his positive attitude. He heaps praise on the other doctors, nurses and support staff who combine to make the center a wonderful place to practice medicine.

Madam Speaker, the San Mateo Medical Foundation is right to honor Dr. Meier's contributions in a special ceremony on April 30th. He is without question a hero of healthcare in the county and State.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Dr. Mark Highman, a cardiologist who willingly chose the career path of public service medicine over the more lucrative road of private practice. I feel very fortunate to have known Dr. Highman for 30 years. Clearly, decades of patients at the center who lacked insurance or the money to pay for it appreciate his decision to practice at the San Mateo Medical Center.

He was appointed Medical Director of the Special Care Unit, Vice Chief of Medicine and Chief of Cardiology to the center in 1977. Dr. Highman also is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

The diversity of patients and their medical challenges prompted Dr. Highman to become certified in critical care. He considers treating the less fortunate to be, in his own words, ``richly rewarding'' and that speaks volumes to what this healer is all about. As a career-long medical musketeer he is the embodiment of the esprit de corps at the center.

Madam Speaker, Dr. Mark Highman is a hero of healthcare to a generation of the less fortunate in our county and State. The San Mateo Medical Foundation is right to honor his contributions at a special ceremony on April 30th.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor the 100th Anniversary of the Town of Hillsborough in my district. In fact, I am a proud resident of this town. My children were raised here and they have benefited from an excellent public education system, particularly in the middle grades where, aside from mastering the basics, they confronted the challenges of malnutrition in Africa, homelessness in our own country and the importance of protecting the environment. The spirit of altruism that was instilled in them is one that permeates the entire community.

We often talk about good citizenship, a sense of neighborhood and civic responsibility as if they were things in our past. I can attest that those values are alive and well in Hillsborough under the able leadership of Mayor Christine Krolik who states that 7,000 of the 11,000 total residents are registered to vote. And that 11,000 number includes children as well as adults, so a truly extraordinary number of voting-age adults are actively participating in our democracy.

The people of Hillsborough have a real connection to their town. The public schools are a source of shining pride to the entire community, and indeed diplomas my children earned at Hillsborough public schools have a place of distinction in our home. The dedicated public servants of the Police, Fire, Public Works and Administration Departments are among the very best in our great state of California. The town cares deeply about their natural resources, and Hillsborough has set a very high standard for preservation of public space and preservation of natural beauty. Indeed, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, the town will dedicate a new Centennial Park, which will be donated by the Hillsborough Beautification Foundation, which privately raised all of the funds for this wonderful community treasure.

The town of Hillsborough has a rich tapestry of history. Hillsborough has hosted Theodore Roosevelt for a Presidential visit, as well as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Residents of Hillsborough have included such notable citizens as Bing Crosby, William Randolph Hearst, William Crocker and Rickey Henderson.

There will be a Memorial Day Parade of the Century planned for May 31. There is much to celebrate in the past 100 years in Hillsborough, and I join my many friends and neighbors there in recognizing the 100th Anniversary of Hillsborough.

Madam Speaker, please join me in celebrating this great occasion for this great town.

Thank you to my very good friend and colleague from California (Mr. Garamendi).

You know, as you were talking about the shenanigans, what we heard last week from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was deeply troubling to all of us, and the chairman, Senator Levin, did an outstanding job in focusing in on what was really going on at Goldman Sachs. So we started last week here on our House floor looking at Goldman Sachs' principles that they have espoused and that are on their Web site. We started ticking off what some of their principles were and then what some of their emails from some of their employees suggested they were really up to.

Tonight, I thought that we would just focus on one principle, at least for my part. One of their principles is: We stress creativity and imagination in everything we do. This is the top one up here.

While recognizing that the old ways may still be the best way, we constantly strive to find a better solution to a client's problems. We pride ourselves on having pioneered many of the practices and techniques that have become standard in the industry.

Now, an email from the vice president of Goldman Sachs, Fabrice Tourre, said: Standing in the middle of all of these complex, highly leveraged exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities, it's like a little Frankenstein turning against his own inventor.

Mr. Tourre called his Frankenstein creation a product of pure intellectual masturbation--the type of thing which you invent telling yourself, Well, what if we created a thing which had no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual

and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?

Well, this is what is kind of interesting about it. These are some of the Frankensteins that they were creating.

Here is a tower, as they refer to it--the Soundview Home Loan Trust. If you look at the bottom there, at that little yellow tranche as they refer to it, there was, you know, some pretty bad stuff. These were mortgages that were poorly rated.

These were the mortgages that were then packaged and then sold to investors because, of course, they were grade A, and they would make them a lot of money. What happened here is they took this one tranche, and then they brought it over here. Now they are B grade.

So how do you take something that is a B grade and make it investment quality?

By being creative.

This is what Goldman Sachs did, and it was really well-described in a book by Michael Lewis, called ``The Big Short,'' in which he writes: In the process, Goldman Sachs created a security so opaque and complex that it would remain forever misunderstood by investors and rating agencies--the synthetic subprime mortgage bond-backed CDOs, or collateralized debt obligations.

He goes on to write: Triple B-rated bonds were harder to sell than triple A--no surprise--but there were huge sums of money to be made if you could somehow get them rerated as triple A, thereby lowering their perceived risk, however dishonestly or artificially.

So what did they do?

Goldman Sachs then went to the rating agency and said, Now, how is it that you rate these particular tranches? They found out. It was really a rating that went on by just looking at FICO scores. So the mortgages were not looked at based on whether they were no-doc loans or whether there was adequate income. They were rated based on a homeowner's mortgage FICO score.

So if you could somehow bump up the FICO score on these mortgages, you could turn a BBB into a AAA. And that's what they did. So then they went out and they sold the Abacus one that we heard about last week where John Paulson said he wanted to short all of them; so he put together the worst of the worst, and then Goldman made $15 million for actually servicing that particular instrument. Then Goldman went out and sold garbage to an unsuspecting American public. Oh, but they were sophisticated buyers, so therefore they knew what they were getting into. And that's the creativity of Goldman Sachs.

And you know who bought a lot of Abacus, who was on the other side of the trade with Paulson who shorted them, so who was buying Abacus? You won't be surprised to hear AIG, will you?

One hundred and eighty billion dollars, yes.

Well, interestingly enough, Goldman had purchased credit default swaps from AIG, and, of course, they were repaid in full by the taxpayers of this country, $12 billion worth, the highest recipient of money from those CDS's.

I just want to show you one last chart.

So this is the creativity of Goldman Sachs, creating these products, knowing they were bad, selling them off. And many of them were what are called synthetic CDOs. So they didn't actually have the mortgages on them. They were like a side bet on that tower we had seen in that earlier chart. But look at what happened to all of them. They were all, at one point or another, a percent of the tower that was, in fact, AAA--71 percent, 77 percent, 72 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent. But look what happened to them in the end. They all turned to junk. So they were rated improperly, so you can ding the rating agencies. They were manipulated by Goldman Sachs. And this is the kind of creativity on Wall Street that makes us proud.

The interesting thing is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which now on the Senate side is being billed as a bureau within the Fed, was really the brainchild of Professor Elizabeth Warren from Harvard Law School. And she likened it to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which we have. I mean you buy a toaster. It's warranted to operate, not to electrocute you. And yet we have nothing of the same nature to protect us as consumers from fraudulent techniques that are being used by credit card companies, by mortgage brokers.

This one chart that showed this CDO, this was $38 million. It was actually sold and resold 30 times, 30 times, and created losses of over $280 million.

Now, derivatives haven't been regulated in this country because Congress passed a law in 2000 prohibiting Congress from regulating derivatives. It was part of the financial services industry wish list, and none of us were there at the time.

No, we won't.

But imagine to allow these kinds of complex instrumentalities to be in the marketplace and not be regulated. That's what will be regulated as we move forward with financial reform. There will be a protection agency for consumers that will help us understand, hopefully--as I understand it, a credit card statement form contract was 1 page and 700 words in 1985. Today it's something like 30 pages. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will provide greater assistance to Main Street.

The interesting element of the subprime market was that those who were selling the product, the originators of the loans, weren't holding on to any of the instrument. They had no skin in the game. It was sold off to Wall Street, where they put them in these tranches and then sold them off again and again.

One of the things that is required in this new bill is that you will have to have some skin in the game, that you will have to have reserves, that you cannot leverage, like we have seen happen over the last couple of years.

But the interesting thing about the subprime market that just came to light, the industry also realized these people weren't equipped. If you were a $14,000 a year gardener in East L.A., you couldn't afford a $700,000 home. But since there was no documentation, since it was going to be sold, and after the teaser rate was no longer available to you, you were going to come back and refinance that loan again, so the fees to the originator, to the bank, would be generated again. So there was this huge churning that was going on in the industry as well.

Tower of shame.

As a side bet. As a side bet. So they stayed in this tower, but

they took them out in a manner that allowed you to just bet for and against them, and as long as there was someone on the sell side and someone on the buy side, it was fine with Wall Street.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor the 20th anniversary of the Daly City Youth Health Center, a health and youth development program linked to the Jefferson Union High School District. Since its inception this facility has served over 37,000 youth and currently provides services to more than 600 teens each month. Clearly, we are a better community because of the dedication, caring and expertise of the center's staff.

The center, a satellite office of the San Mateo Medical Center, offers primary medical care, reproductive health care, mental health counseling, sexuality education, case management of pregnant teens, vocational guidance and life skills training. This center has been highly effective in helping girls and boys from low-income backgrounds where individual needs require a multi-service response.

I would like to point out that over 5,000 teens seek medical services from the clinic during the year and that most of the care revolves around reproductive health. These services are free although staff will work with these young people in terms of helping them apply for health insurance.

The center has been hailed for its development of programs covering mental health counseling, teen pregnancy prevention, peer leadership and the always challenging transition from school to a career. We would all do well to adhere to the center's mission to increase resiliency, encourage responsibility and promote self-determination among youth and young adults.

Madam Speaker, while this body has engaged in long and spirited debate on the issue of health care, it is important that we recognize and honor a 20-year-old program that has enriched thousands of young people in my district.

Mr. Speaker, as I watched yesterday's Senate investigations subcommittee hearing, I was disappointed to discover it was not just the greedy, irresponsible, and likely illegal actions of some of Goldman Sachs' more dubious employees that were the center of attention. In fact, the useless and dangerous financial instruments known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, shared the spotlight as well.

Fabrice Tourre, one of Goldman's hotshot young stars who created and sold these so-called investments to Goldman's clients, testified yesterday that they were, quote, ``things which had no purpose,'' and likened them to Frankenstein's monster. Sadly, he's right. These CDOs did nothing for our economy and spread billions of dollars in toxic assets, heightened speculation, and added dangerous risk to our financial system that ultimately was borne by the U.S. taxpayers.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and others reaped millions of dollars in bonuses even as the economy was crashing. These synthetic CDOs were synthetic garbage.

Unscrupulous individuals on Wall Street worsened the financial crisis by creating garbage, selling it and betting against it. Oh, they drove away with a garbage truck full of cash.

Let's ban the creation and sale of them, and prevent this from ever happening again.

Mr. Speaker, I am joined this evening by a number of colleagues who are going to give us, I think, the reasons why financial reform is a must in this country. And the biggest poster child for why we have to do financial reform really is in Goldman Sachs.

So we thought we would start our discussion tonight by looking at the principles that Goldman Sachs has promoted on its Web site. There are 14 principles that Goldman Sachs has promoted on its Web site. The very first, and one I would like to start out with, is ``Our clients' interests always come first.'' Well, let's talk about their clients' interests coming first.

Let's speak precisely about one deal, the deal called Abacus. And in Abacus their clients were many people. They had a client named John Paulson, the biggest hedge fund individual in this country. He wanted Goldman to sell mortgage-backed securities that were bad. They were subprime. And he precisely wanted them to sell them to many of their clients, and he was going to short them, meaning he was going to bet against them.

But it just doesn't end there. He specifically designed the package. He handpicked the mortgages that were going to be in the package. And then Goldman sold them to unsuspecting buyers. And lo and behold, what happened? What happened was Mr. Paulson made a billion dollars, and the other clients of Goldman Sachs lost a billion dollars, and Goldman Sachs walked away with $50 million of fees that were paid to Goldman Sachs by Mr. Paulson. Now, that is the basis of the SEC complaint filed against Goldman Sachs for civil fraud.

So what is civil fraud, you might ask? Civil fraud is, It shall be unlawful for any person in the offer or sale of any securities to obtain money or property by means of any untrue statements of a material fact or any omission to state a material fact necessary.

So the question is, was it a material fact that Abacus was made up of these mortgage-backed securities, 90 percent of which were what are considered no doc mortgages? That means there was no documentation that the people that got those mortgages could pay for them. There was no documentation of income, no documentation of debt. Those were no doc loans. And there was a history of no doc loans going back. So it was fixed from the very beginning.

They were arranged by John Paulson, a material fact that was not disclosed to the other buyers, and it was not disclosed to the other buyers that John Paulson created this because he wanted to short them, because he wanted to bet against them. So if there ever was a case of fraud, I would argue that that was a case of fraud. Yet Goldman Sachs says, ``Our very first priority is that our clients come first.''

Let's move over here to No. 14: ``Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business. We expect our people to maintain high ethical standards in everything they do, both in their work for the firm and in their personal lives.''

Well, there is one gentleman who has worked for Goldman Sachs that they referred to as the Fabulous Fab. He's a gentleman by the name of Fabrice Tourre out of their office in London. Well, I wouldn't suggest to you that Mr. Tourre is fabulous. I would suggest to you that he is fraudulent.

In some of the e-mails that the Senate Committee on Investigations was able to collect, this is what Mr. Tourre was saying. Now, Mr. Tourre is the individual who was selling these synthetic collateralized debt obligations. He was the one that was doing the work on behalf of Mr. Paulson. So what did he say? He said, ``The whole building is about to collapse anytime now.'' Those were Mr. Tourre's words. He described himself in an e-mail as the only potential survivor, the Fabulous Fab, standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of these monstrosities. He then went on to say in an e- mail in 2007, he described the mortgage business as ``totally dead and the poor little subprime borrowers would not last too long.'' Yet 2 months later, he was boasting that he continued to dump some of the worthless mortgage securities on, and I quote, ``widows and orphans that I run into at the airport.''

This is a man of integrity and honesty. I would suggest that is not the case.

And, finally, in an e-mail to his girlfriend, he called his Frankenstein creation, these synthetic CDOs, a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself, well, what if we created a thing which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price? That's Mr. Tourre, who yesterday when he testified said, and I quote, ``I firmly believe that my conduct was correct.'' That is Mr. Tourre. That is Goldman Sachs.

I would like to now ask my good friend, John Yarmuth from Kentucky, to join me in this colloquy.

Reclaiming my time, you mentioned that they paid a tax rate of less than 1 percent. The average American pays a tax rate of what?

Thank you.

I now yield to my good friend from the State of Oregon, Peter DeFazio.

I thank the gentleman for his great commentary. I now would like to recognize from the State of Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Fraudulent Fab.

Will the gentleman yield?

When you speak to the term ``transparency,'' do you think that Goldman would have sold a dollar's worth of those synthetic collateralized debt obligations if people knew that their other client was shorting them and that 90 percent of them were no-doc loans that were destined to fail?

Very first principle. Our clients' interests always come first.

I thank the gentleman from Maryland, who's been passionate about trying to get to the bottom of AIG. I think it's important to point out--and this may curl the hair on top of your head, my dear friend--but on top of everything else, Goldman Sachs' directors, the CEO, Mr. Blankfein, all have insurance for any omissions or conduct that they may become the subject of any inquiry for. If they commit any civil fraud or criminal fraud, they have insurance for that. You won't be surprised probably to know who their insurance is with.

None other than AIG. And who owns AIG today but the American people.

The U.S. taxpayers.

Correct. What is even more disconcerting, and we will find that out in the upcoming weeks, just like the synthetic CDO known as Abacus, it appears that Mr. Blankfein and Goldman Sachs also sold to AIG more of the CDOs that were rigged.

Clearly.

I thank the gentleman.

I now would like to invite my good friend from the State of New York, Congressman Hinchey, to engage.

Will the gentleman yield?

You make the case for this great poster that shows the cracks in Wall Street. And back in 1996, the Federal Reserve reinterpreted the Glass-Steagall Act several times at the behest of Wall Street, eventually allowing bank holding companies to earn up to 25 percent of their revenues in investment banking.

But you know what? That wasn't enough for them. They then came back in 1999 and repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that worked for over 60 years in this country, brought about, as you pointed out, because of the Great Depression that created those firewalls between investment banking, commercial banks, and insurance companies.

And then in 2000, what was the next thing that happened? The next thing that happened in 2000 when Brooksley Born, who was then the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman, said, We should regulate derivatives, and our friends in the White House and around basically said, Oh, no. We can't. We passed a law that basically prevented Congress from regulating derivatives. Those derivatives are the things we're talking about today, these credit default swaps that brought AIG down; these collateralized debt obligations, synthetic or otherwise, that brought the entire financial services industry down.

And as you can see, the other cracks, the regulation that was created in 2004 that took away the leverage cap of 12 to 1, and as a result, where were they leveraged at but at 30 to 1, the Lehman Brothers, the Goldman Sachs of the world.

And then again in 2005, a very interesting rule that basically exempted stockbrokers from the Investment Advisers Act. Do you know why? Because they didn't want to have a fiduciary duty to their clients. They only wanted to have a duty to themselves.

I thank the gentleman from New York for his well-placed comments and his recommendations to our colleagues in the other House.

I now have the great pleasure of joining in colloquy with my good friend from the State of Ohio, the great and passionate Marcy Kaptur.

I thank the gentlelady.

I thank the gentlelady from Ohio. You referenced the number of people in the Department of Justice that are tasked with doing the investigations. It was very interesting this week when we had the hearing on Lehman Brothers and Mary Schapiro spoke to their ability to do their job when they only had 24 staff members in that specific division to do investigations of all of the Wall Street firms.

If you ill-equip your very agencies to do the job, they won't be able to do the job. Between 2003 and 2007 under the Bush administration with Christopher Cox as the head of the SEC, you will not be surprised to know that there was an 80 percent reduction in enforcement actions at the SEC and 60 percent reduction in disgorgement actions at the SEC.

So no surprise that we had an SEC that was ill-equipped, and also a different perspective. It was not there to protect the American people but to allow business to flourish. And the business that flourished was much like what Goldman Sachs was doing where they actually put AIG in some of these synthetic collateralized debt obligations that they knew were going to fail.

Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs shorted Lehman Brothers and helped make sure it did come down. It was reportedly in many of the e-mails at Goldman Sachs by employees when they were communicating with some of their clients that they said that they were no longer going to support or back up Bear Stearns, and then all of a sudden Bear Stearns went down.

We now have China suing Goldman Sachs over bad derivative deals. We have Germany, France, and the U.K.; and God knows, what did they do with Greece? Much like Enron, Goldman Sachs went to Greece and created a way by which they could take some of their debts off their balance sheet so they could get support from the EU, and in the course of doing so, hid much of the debt. And now we all know what has happened to Greece. We all know what has happened to the stock market just yesterday as a result of the rating agencies taking the steps they did.

This company has no shame. This company is willing to do any deal as long as it makes them money.

The hardest thing to try to explain to the American people is what is a synthetic CDO and liken it to what goes on in our lives. So I have been scratching my head trying to think of what it would be like. This may not be a good analogy, but I offer it up. It would be like a doctor going in and doing open heart surgery knowing that his patient was very close to death anyway, and then taking out a life insurance policy on that patient because he was clearly going to win each way.

I thank the gentlelady from Ohio. It is very important to make the point that Goldman Sachs has never loaned a dime, has never offered a loan to an American trying to buy a house. They have never been a commercial bank as we know them, and yet they have the luxury of being at the discount window getting the money cheap even though they have not been a commercial bank as we know a commercial bank to be. All they have done is bet on how to rig these various mortgage-backed securities and make a truckload of money off them.

I now yield time to my good friend, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

I thank the gentleman and recognize we could have spoken for 2 hours this evening, and we will continue this.

Madam Speaker, the national healthcare reform bill passed by this Congress was an historic achievement that will improve the lives of millions of Americans. This reform would not have been possible without the tireless efforts and advocacy of so many individuals and organizations across the country, including local governments whose own healthcare initiatives improved access to medical care and advanced the cause of nationwide reform.

That is why I commend the County of San Mateo's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Adult Health Coverage Expansion. A broad-based coalition comprised of representatives from healthcare providers, labor, chambers of commerce, local governments, and community advocacy groups, the Task Force achieved meaningful gains in the quality and efficiency of San Mateo County's healthcare delivery system and expanded health coverage to more than 2,000 previously uninsured adults through the Access to Coverage for All program. Originally funded in-part through a federal grant, this program has since become a mainstay of the effort to expand access to healthcare in the county.

The work of this Task Force is an enduring symbol of the compassion, commitment, dedication and talent of the residents of San Mateo County and the 12th Congressional District, whom I am fortunate and honored to represent. Madam Speaker, I commend the County of San Mateo's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Adult Health Coverage Expansion for its leadership in helping to solve one of our nation's most pressing issues, and for its courage to think globally and to act locally.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Kevin Raffaelli, who retired as a Captain with the San Mateo Police Department in December of 2008 after 30 years of dedicated and loyal service.

I must note that last year Kevin continued his law enforcement service on an on-call basis and on August 24, 2009 was credited with preventing a pipe bomb suspect from carrying out a potentially catastrophic event at Hillsdale High School. For this heroic action he was awarded the prestigious Medal of Valor, proving again, that some of us get better with age.

The list of commendations for Kevin is long and meritorious and many involve the apprehension of burglary subjects during the commission of a crime. He is well known throughout San Mateo County for his expertise in tactical deployment and special operations at events. He was, for example, commander of the Countywide Tactical Chemical Assault Team, a model operation replicated by other municipalities after 9/11.

He played key roles in coordinating security for numerous dignitaries visiting the San Francisco Bay Area, including President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, President Jimmy Carter as well as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Kevin grew up in the city of South San Francisco where his brother, Mark, served as the chief of police, so Kevin's thirst for public safety runs deep in his family.

Madam Speaker, Kevin Raffaelli has served his fellow citizens to the utmost of his ability and he has saved lives in the process. I commend him and wish that he and his wife, Elizabeth, enjoy this well-earned retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day to support the millions of people around the world who are dedicating their time and service to protecting our environment. I commend all of our citizens for their efforts to clean up our environment, but most of all, I look forward to seeing what we in Congress will do to support them.

I hope this will include passage of legislation I've recently introduced that will restore and protect the largest estuary on the west coast--the San Francisco Bay and its watersheds, which are a national treasure and a resource of worldwide significance.

I also encourage all of us to stand with our constituents this week who are lending their time and service to activities to clean up our environment. One town in my district expects over 5,000 people to dedicate their day to clean up the local shoreline. Earth Day is truly about service, and it's a great opportunity for friends and neighbors to come together on behalf of our planet.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 255) commemorating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and honoring the founder of Earth Day, the late Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Con. Res. 255. This measure was introduced by my colleague the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) on March 19, 2010. It was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which ordered it reported by unanimous consent on April 14 of this year. The measure has the support of 70 cosponsors.

Madam Speaker, tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. Our planet faces serious environmental

challenges, challenges we must face not just in the coming years but now. Right now.

The effects of the most serious challenge, global climate change, are happening today, and if we do not act deliberately now, right now, the future consequences for our country and our planet will be grave. I encourage everyone working towards this end to continue their efforts, and I hope that we in Congress will stand up and demonstrate further leadership to address this threat.

Of course, Earth Day is also a reminder of the other environmental challenges we face, such as developing sustainable and renewable sources of energy, preserving wildlife and their habitat, protecting our water and our air, cleaning up pollution, and so much more. As Representatives, I encourage all of us to stand with our constituents this week who are lending their time and services to activities to clean up our environment. Across the country thousands of events have been organized in the cities, in the countryside, along our roadways and parks and on our beautiful coast to put words into action.

One town in my district expects over 5,000 people to dedicate their time and effort to clean up the local shoreline, and I will be there, and I know that all of my colleagues will be just as fortunate to witness similar local efforts in their districts.

Earth Day is truly about service and it's a great opportunity for friends and neighbors to come together on behalf of our planet. The relationships we can build with one another as we do this work are lasting, and I am confident that they will foster even greater work in the years to come.

Once again, it is incumbent upon us in Congress to transform the work our constituents do at the local level into solutions for our country. Protecting the environment is the right thing to do, but as we all know, it's also a win-win for our economy and for our national security.

We have made great strides on this front since the first Earth Day. The 1970s saw the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency as well as a series of important environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. But much work still lies ahead, and, unfortunately, some of our most important environmental policies have been watered down in recent years. No pun intended.

However, I know that the efforts of millions of people in the United States and around the world who support the goals and ideals of Earth Day will pay off. I commend them for their work, and I look forward to seeing what we in Congress will further do to support them.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am glad the gentleman from Arizona said that and not me.

I now have the pleasure of yielding 5 minutes to the gentleman who is the author of this legislation, and a great leader from the State of Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Madam Speaker, I would now like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Madam Speaker, I would just like to echo the words of the great leaders from Wisconsin who have spoken already on this. We are indeed stewards. Earth Day should be something we celebrate every day. And this, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, is a great time to start.

I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 855) expressing support for designation of May 1 as ``Silver Star Service Banner Day''.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 855, a bill supporting Silver Star Service Banner Day. H. Res. 855 was introduced by my colleague, the gentleman from Missouri, Representative Roy Blunt, on October 22, 2009. The measure was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government

Reform, which reported it favorably by unanimous consent on April 14 of this year. The measure enjoys the support of over 50 cosponsors.

Madam Speaker, our Nation continues to face two long and difficult wars, and I am very glad that we can take time now to honor the men and women of our Armed Services. They deserve our thoughts, our prayers, and our support.

The Silver Star Families of America understand this well and work hard to help the American people recognize the sacrifices made by the wounded and ill members of the Armed Forces. Tens of thousands of American troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives in service to our country. They also risk their lives in deployments throughout the world. I ask my colleagues to join me in giving thanks to them and to their families for the sacrifices they continue to make and for their service to our country.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the great leader.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I had the privilege, and I call it a privilege, earlier this year to travel to Kuwait, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and then to Germany, where I had the privilege of meeting our troops who are committed, passionate, have an incredible love of country, and then to visit those wounded warriors at our facility in Germany. And I must say that there's nothing like having that interpersonal connection, that opportunity to make us realize the extraordinary sacrifices that are being made every single day.

So it is fitting that we have this resolution before us, and I urge all my colleagues to support this measure.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1262) expressing condolences to the families, friends, and loved ones of the victims of the fire at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

I rise in support of H. Res. 1262. This measure expresses condolences to the families, friends and loved ones of the victims of the fire at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington.

This resolution was introduced by my colleague, the gentleman from Washington, Representative Rick Larsen, on April 15, 2010. The measure was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which worked with leadership to get it to the floor quickly. The measure has the bipartisan support of over 60 Members of the House.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the sponsor of this resolution, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen).

Madam Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the Representative from Wisconsin, Representative Tammy Baldwin.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), as much time as he may consume.

Madam Speaker, I again urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.