Floor Statements

Mr. President, it is an absolute honor to be able to rise and speak in support of Attorney General Scott Pruitt. For the last 6 years, Scott has been a leader in the State of Oklahoma. He has been strongly committed to enforcing the law in Oklahoma as it is written and as is consistent with the Constitution. He is a statesman. He is a dedicated public servant.

As the Administrator of the EPA, I fully expect Scott to be able to lead the Agency to follow every environmental law and to partner with States, local authorities, and tribes to do what is best for the present and for the future. I have heard some people talk about their opposition to Scott's nomination, saying they don't believe Scott believes in clean air, in clean water.

That is not the issue for Scott. Scott absolutely believes in clean air and clean water, and the accusations that somehow he wants dirty air and dirty water and our children to be poisoned is ludicrous.

The question for Scott is not if we should have clean air and clean water, it is who is the primary steward of our clean air and our clean water. Everyone has a role. We are a nation that is connected to each other. What happens in one State does affect another State. That is why we have a national strategy working with the Environmental Protection Agency, but in the Clean Water Act and in the Clean Air Act, the States are given primary responsibility through what is called a State Implementation Plan to determine what is in their best interests and the best solutions to be able to deal with the issues of air and water.

Scott has fought for the State to be allowed to be in the driver's seat with regard to all of the State resources, arguing for those that work in wind farms, in oilfields, and on cattle ranches, for families who have drinking water and breathe the air and who live there. The people who should have the loudest voices should be the people who actually drink that water and breathe that air and understand the effects of it firsthand.

He has not been alone in this fight. As the attorney general of Oklahoma, he stood shoulder to shoulder with more than half of the States to ensure the Federal Government operates within the bounds of the statutes and the Constitution. He has consistently argued that the EPA, when they promulgate rules that violate that basic principle of the State Implementation Plan, should stop, do what the EPA does best, and have the EPA push the States to do what they should do best.

In an environment where Chevron deference is the precedent set, it is critical that the leader of an Agency that has such wide latitude to extract costs out of the economy, should respect the federalist foundation we have, and the pocketbooks of hard-working families, as well as our air and our water.

In previous congressional testimony, he stressed the importance of laws like the Clean Air Act, stressing that the intention was for States to work together under a model of cooperative federalism that protects the environment while considering economic costs.

Scott pursued cases against the EPA and other Federal agencies in an effort to enable and embolden our State government officials to craft the legislation that needs to be done. His focus has been not to eliminate environmental protections, it is to honor a country with tremendous diversity, from rocky mountains to open deserts, to beautiful woodland areas.

Surprisingly enough, the issues that we face on our environment, in the concrete jungle of Washington, DC, is different than it is in Woodward, OK. Let me give you an example of one of those cases that he engaged in. It is a case where the EPA created a new regulation called waters of the United States. It dramatically changed the definition of what are the areas the EPA can oversee and increased their regulatory authority by millions of acres in just one regulatory sweep.

The courts immediately stepped in and stopped this, and Scott Pruitt and many other States' attorneys general said: The EPA does not have the right to be able to step into almost every inch of our State and say they suddenly have regulatory authority.

In fact, the court said this: ``We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims.''

Furthermore, they said this: ``What is of greater concern to us, in balancing the harms, is the burden--potentially visited nationwide on government bodies, state and federal, as well as private parties.''

The court stepped in and agreed with Scott Pruitt that the EPA was overreaching, and that case is still in the courts right now. That is a reasonable thing to be able to do, for an attorney general who has the responsibility to not only manage the legal issues of the State but also to watch out for the consumers of the State. As funny as it sounds, if you go to the EPA's website today and look at Oklahoma and air quality, here is what it says. The EPA website today reads: ``CAA permitting in Oklahoma. Clean Air Act permitting in Oklahoma is the responsibility of the Air Quality Division Exit of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.''

The EPA's website today says responsibility for this is from the Department of Environmental Quality in Oklahoma.

All our attorney general has done is said to the EPA: You should probably follow the law or at least your own website to be able to handle all of the permitting issues of who has authority to do this. For the past month, I have heard Senator after Senator come to this floor and describe my great State of Oklahoma in a way that makes Scott Pruitt sound like an ogre and my State sound like a toxic waste dump.

Let me give you an example. Attorney General Pruitt has been dismissed by some who say that he has personally been engaged in leading our State to such terrible air quality that the American Lung Association has given the counties in Oklahoma an F rating.

Well, that is an interesting accusation, until you actually go to the American Lung Association website

and see that they give almost every county in America an F rating. In fact, they give every county in Delaware an F rating in air quality. They categorize those under ``high ozone days'' and one of three counties just barely skated by with a D in particle pollution for Delaware, while in Oklahoma the two largest metropolitan areas actually received an A from the American Lung Association. Similarly, in that same study, Rhode Island lacks a single county that doesn't get an F for air quality on high ozone days, while only two counties received passing grades for particulate pollution.

The accusation that somehow the American Lung Association has looked at Scott Pruitt and his record on environmental policy and has given us dirty air quality is not actually true when you see the full study.

What is interesting, as well, is that the EPA publishes data about whether counties meet the national ambient air quality standards, and they have six criteria that the EPA puts out. In fact, recently they dropped their criteria significantly from the previous years. What is interesting, as well, is that for Oklahoma, last week, the EPA released their national ambient air quality standards, trying to determine which counties had attainment of the standard or nonattainment. Guest what. Every single county in Oklahoma--all 77--have attainment. Even as to the new standard that was just released, that we don't even have to operate under, we already meet those standards for ambient air quality.

Meanwhile, Maryland has 12 counties in nonattainment for at least 1 of those criteria. Connecticut has eight counties that don't meet those standards. California has 38 of their 58 counties failing to meet those standards in at least 1 criteria. There are 77 counties in Oklahoma, and every single one of them meets attainment.

I don't hear anyone standing on this floor challenging the attorney general of California or of Maryland or of Connecticut and demonizing them and accusing them of not taking care of the air and the water in their State.

By the way, I have also heard on this floor, as my State is being ripped apart for political gain, over and over that asthma rates for children are catastrophically high in Oklahoma and that Scott Pruitt should have been more engaged, filing lawsuits so that asthma rates would go down--until you look at the CDC website for asthma rates for children. It is 10.1 in Oklahoma. One child is too many. It is 10.1 percent in our State, but you can compare that to Rhode Island, which is 12.4; or Michigan, which is 10.7. Vermont beat us, by the way. They are 9.9--0.2 below us.

Again, I don't hear anyone on this floor calling out the attorneys general of Vermont, Michigan, and Rhode Island and saying they failed to protect their children because children have asthma in their State.

Another thing that is commonly said about Scott Pruitt and the State of Oklahoma is that he is committed to conventional energy sources and that he is stuck in the past, dealing with oil and gas.

I will tell you that Oklahoma is rightfully right proud of its history of oil and gas in our State. We have unlocked resources that have absolutely powered our Nation forward. We also have an incredible group of visionaries in our State that are driving renewable resources as fast as we are driving oil and gas in our State.

For all the folks that are here bashing oil and gas, I would remind you that you traveled to Washington, DC, on a plane, in a car, or on a train that was powered by Oklahoma energy. So you are welcome. And I will assume that, 2 weeks from now, when we return back for session, you are going to ride in on a horse just to be able to spite Oklahoma's energy--probably not. But can I remind you of something?

What is often overlooked about Oklahoma and what has not been stated here is that Oklahoma truly is an all-of-the-above energy State--solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, oil, gas, and coal.

Let me give you an example--just one of the examples from that. Recent data shows that Oklahoma ranks third nationally in total wind power. We just passed California for total wind production. We are just barely behind Iowa and Texas. The installed capacity for Oklahoma alone--just in wind generation--is 1.3 million households powered by wind power out of Oklahoma.

I will admit that I am a little biased about my State. But I am weary of hearing people inaccurately demean the air and water in Oklahoma and try to accuse it of something that is not true for their political benefit.

Here is my invitation to any Member of this body. Why don't you come home to Oklahoma with me? I will buy you some great barbecue and drive you around the State. I will take you through the Green Country in the northeast part of the State, over to Kenton, OK, and Black Mesa to see the majestic area around our panhandle. We will drive four-wheelers in Little Sahara, and maybe we will drive down to Beavers Bend Park, stand under the tall trees, and put our feet in the crystal clear water of that river. I will even take you to my house in Oklahoma City, a community of a million people that exceeds the EPA air quality standards for ambient air quality.

We say in Oklahoma: ``The land we belong to is grand,'' and we mean it. We are passionate about our land, and we are passionate about our air and water. I will tell you that Scott Pruitt is passionate about his State and what we do there.

I will tell you how political this has really become. Mike Turpen is the former attorney general of the State of Oklahoma and, by the way, he is also the former chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party. Mike Turpen, when it was announced that Scott Pruitt was going to be tapped to be head of the EPA, released this statement:

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is a good choice to

head up the Environmental Protection Agency. I am convinced

Scott Pruitt will work to protect our natural habitats,

reserves and resources. His vision for a proper relationship

between protection and prosperity makes him superbly

qualified to serve as our next EPA administrator.

That is from the former head of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.

So far, my colleagues have found a good reason for every Cabinet nominee to delay, delay, delay. This has now been the slowest confirmation process for any President since George Washington. The tradition has always been that the President won an election, and he should be able to hire his own staff and his own Cabinet and get busy going to work. That is what the American people asked him to do.

Scott Pruitt deserves an up-or-down vote, and he deserves our trust to be able to take on and follow the law, doing what the EPA requires him to do.

Scott Pruitt is a friend. I understand that some of the folks who have attacked him have only met him at a hearing or read about him on some blog site. But I have prayed with Scott. I have seen Scott struggle with the hard decisions that affect our State's future. I have seen Scott listen to people from all sides of an issue, and I have seen him take difficult stands. I think he will be an excellent EPA Administrator, and I think he will make some wise choices to not only protect what is happening now but to be able to help protect us for the future.

You see, Scott is a husband and a dad as well, and he cares also about the future of our country. I think he is going to go after it, and he will be able to be an excellent Administrator in the days ahead.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I rise to talk about what is going on in the Senate right now and the work that is done. It is early in the morning right now. It is 8 a.m. In Senate time, we have already done a series of votes that started at 6:30 this morning to be able to work through some of the nominations, and we have a great deal of work to be done.

In the middle of the work that we are taking on right now, there is a lot of conversation about personnel. As you know well, the Senate is in the personnel business as much as we are in the legislative business, especially at the beginning of a Presidential term. One of the biggest decisions that we will make in the Senate will be the Supreme Court.

Americans voted last year, in great measure, about the Supreme Court--in the direction of the Supreme Court. President Trump put out a list of 21 individuals he said he would choose from so the American people would be fully aware that this is the type of individual he would go after, and you can look at any of these to be able to evaluate it.

As I looked through that list of 21, one name stuck out to me. It is the name Neil Gorsuch, who is from Oklahoma, as many people in this Chamber know. Neil Gorsuch represents the Tenth Circuit. He served on that circuit with great distinction, which includes Oklahoma. We have been able to see his work in what has happened on the bench, the opinions he has put out and the consistency, how he has been respected by individuals on both sides of the aisle throughout Oklahoma and across the Tenth Circuit.

Neil Gorsuch went onto the bench in 2006. He was put on the bench by President Bush. What is interesting is this body, when they debated Neil Gorsuch in 2006, unanimously approved him with a voice vote. Not a single Senator opposed Neil Gorsuch when he went onto that Tenth Circuit bench in 2006. That means at that time Senator Barack Obama supported him. Senator Hillary Clinton supported him. Senator Joe Biden supported him. Senator Chuck Schumer supported him in 2006. All these individuals looked at who he was, what he was about, and supported him going on the Tenth Circuit bench.

What has he done since that time? He has been a remarkable judge. He has advocated for something very clearly; that is, the role of each branch of government and each branch of government doing its job and only its job. He

has spoken out on an issue I have spoken out on this floor about several times and oftentimes in committee, an issue called Chevron deference. It is one of those issues that most people don't track, but I hear a lot of people say the Executive orders are out of control and the executive branch is putting all these Executive orders out. I will typically smile at folks and say, actually, if you want to go down into the heart of it, it is not Executive orders, it is Chevron deference.

In the 1980s, the Supreme Court gave the ability to every President to interpret the law as they choose to and to be able to put regulations in if under this term they were reasonable in interpretation. In other words, if a piece of legislation mentioned a topic, then a President could create regulations around it.

It started slow, but I will tell you that has accelerated in the last several years. What has happened in the last several years is, Presidents have reached in, looked at a statute, tried to find a gray area of the statute, and used their deference ability to be able to interpret it.

In his writings, Neil Gorsuch has stepped out and said what that does, to be able to give that kind of deference to any President, is to give the President the ability to literally legislate an issue and then implement the issue and do his own interpretation of the issue. That is all three branches all piled into one. That is the President having the ability to say I am also the Court, I am also the legislative branch, and I am going to execute this out. That is a government out of balance.

What Judge Gorsuch has done is over and over again pushed out this basic judicial philosophy that our Nation was founded on three separate parts of government; that the legislative branch is the only branch that legislates; that the executive branch carries it out; and there is only one branch that interprets the law, and that is the courts.

If we were to move back to that simple model, it gives balance and consistency to all individuals to be able to know what the law says, what is the law, and to be able to actually push that out in such a way that people can trust it stays consistent.

I am proud to be able to sit down and have conversations with Neil Gorsuch in the days ahead. I am looking forward to getting a chance to meet with him in my office and to be able to work through other areas and issues he faces.

When President Trump selected Neil Gorsuch and suggested him for the bench, as I have mentioned before, my first thought was we couldn't have a better judge to be able to come out of the Midwest and to be able to speak out for the issues that real Americans want to be able to speak out for and to be able to have a Court that is consistently speaking, ``What did the law say when it was written? Let's just do that.''

There are a lot of other personnel issues that are in front of the Senate right now. Betsy DeVos is in the process of what is called a cloture vote right now for Secretary of Education. That is final closing of debate and to be able to move to a vote that will happen Monday or Tuesday of next week.

I will tell you, there has been a lot of conversation about Betsy DeVos, and I have heard the debate on this floor and in conversations and things I have read. What is interesting to me is, to be able to hear person after person stand up and say she is not for public education.

Let me tell you where I am on this. Nine out of ten students in our Nation are in public schools. I grew up in public schools. My kids attend public schools. Many of my family members work in public schools or have worked in public schools. I am very passionate about what happens in our public schools because the vast majority of our students will be influenced and will be trained in our public schools. That has to be a primary focus of what we do.

What is interesting to me is, Betsy DeVos was very outspoken during her confirmation process about her support for public schools. Did her children attend public schools? No, they did not, as Barack Obama's children did not attend public schools, as many other wealthy families' children did not attend public schools. Many wealthy families choose to do that because they have that option. Betsy DeVos, though, has been a person to raise her hand and say: Why do only wealthy families get to choose where their kids go to school? Why is that? Why don't other families have the same option that wealthy families have? But Betsy DeVos has been outspoken in saying it is a main responsibility to be able to focus on the improvement of our public schools because, again, that is where the vast majority of our students attend school.

It has also been interesting to me that all of these statements against Betsy DeVos often don't take into account this basic thing: Betsy DeVos for decades has been passionate about trying to help students in the inner city, students who are in poverty--any student-- to be able to have every opportunity in education they can possibly have. I would think that as a nation we would encourage that, and that would be a positive thing rather than a negative thing.

In 2015, this body looked at a public school education law called No Child Left Behind and said that the direction of public school education was going the wrong way. And for 15 years, we have had mandates coming down on our schools from Washington, DC, mandating what type of curriculum they use in their school, what kind of teacher evaluation is done for our public school teachers, what kind of testing requirement will come down on our schools. This body, with 85 of 100 voting for it, said that No Child Left Behind is putting Federal mandates on every school. The place where those decisions should be made is not Washington, DC; it is in local districts--done by parents, done by teachers, done by superintendents, and done by State legislators. That is exactly what Betsy DeVos has said as well.

Betsy DeVos has been very clear. She is not trying to promote every State and every district doing charter schools, allowing vouchers for private schools, allowing other options. That is completely the decision of the school. While I have heard people say that if she is put in place, she will take away all this money from the schools, it is not her role nor her capacity to even do that. She has been very clear in saying that all of those decisions are made by local districts and by State legislators and by parents--where the decisions should be made.

Betsy DeVos has been very clear that No Child Left Behind was the wrong direction. In a very bipartisan way, 85 Members of this body agreed with that 2 years ago. President Obama agreed with that 2 years ago. And we all said that the best place for education decisions to be made is at the local level.

Betsy DeVos was asked very directly: Will you go to these districts and try to impose on them to be able to put charter schools and private school access there? Her answer was: No, it is up to that local district what they choose to do--but nor would she try to stand in the way. If a local district or if a State chose to provide other options, it is not her role in the Federal Government to try to stand in the way of that. Quite frankly, I find it refreshing that someone would say: We are not going to run your school from Washington, DC. What you choose to do in your schools, you are allowed to do.

Again, there has been a lot of conversation about charter schools and other options that are out there. I hear people all the time say that there is a problem with vouchers. How could the Federal Government be involved in any money going to private schools or public schools or whatever that may be? We settled that issue decades and decades ago. It is called the GI Bill. When the GI Bill was passed after World War II, the Federal Government told those veterans coming back from the war: You can choose to go to any school you want to go to--public school, private school, wherever it may be. The GI Bill is still considered one of the most effective tools that our Nation has ever done in higher education. It is a voucher program. And many people have not had the opportunity to think through: What does this mean?

Again, Betsy DeVos has been very clear in saying it is not her desire to be able to impose that on every State, but if a State chooses to do that, why would we stop them when we have already seen clear evidence that the GI Bill was already successful in its time, going back now 60- plus years? It is an

issue that we look at and say: Why would we stand in the way of charter schools when, in the past, they have been very well received by Republicans and Democrats alike?

President Obama was a supporter of charter schools. Both of his Secretaries of Education were outspoken supporters of charter schools. In fact, one of them helped found a charter school. Charter schools are public schools, and they are received well.

In my State of Oklahoma, we just had another school that came online that is a charter school that has been approved by our State board of education in a unanimous vote just a few weeks ago. These are decisions that are made by local districts. These are decisions that don't work in every area, in every location, especially in many rural areas. It doesn't work the same way. So why don't you allow that local district to make those decisions? Why don't you allow that State to make that decision? Why don't you give the authority to Oklahoma to do it? Let's not ask Betsy DeVos; in fact, allow Congress to hold her to account to make sure that our Secretary of Education is not trying to impose on our States what she wants to do but is allowing our State to do what we want to do. What we ask of a Secretary of Education is not to run our schools but to stay out of our schools' business and to allow us to be able to make those decisions.

She is not going to step in and try to take funds away. Those are not her funds to give and to be able to monitor. Our decision is--what do we want to do as a State in education? What options do we want to provide to our kids? What I would ask most of a Secretary of Education is to leave us alone and allow us to do what we can for our kids.

Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with school choice, even as a parent who sent my kids to public schools when I could have sent them to private schools. I thought the school was doing a great job in my area. I was glad for my kids to be able to be involved in it.

But why would we ever tell a parent: If you will give us just 5 more years, we will get this school cleaned up and turned around. Their child doesn't have 5 more years. Their child has one shot. And if they wait 5 more years, they graduate from high school and without the opportunities they needed. It may work for their younger brother, but they couldn't wait.

Why don't we give that ability back to the parent? As an avid supporter of public education, as a person with deep respect for teachers in my school, as a person who--I myself have a secondary education degree from college; I spent 22 years working for students, and I cannot tell teachers enough: Thank you for your thankless service. They spend all day with students who don't want to be there most of the time. They deal with parents at night who are upset that their child got a B-plus rather than an A. And they work tirelessly through a lot of bureaucracy. We are grateful for that. I can assure them that this Congress will make sure that no Secretary of Education, including the next one, reaches into any classroom and tells them how to do their business.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for consideration of the Chao nomination be modified to occur on Tuesday, January 31.

Mr. President, in 2010, when I ran for Congress, all the questions circled around the Affordable Care Act. Every townhall meeting, every conversation, everyone who caught me in the grocery store, everywhere I went there was a conversation about the Affordable Care Act. What is going to happen? Where are things going to go? And there was a lot of concern about it.

The President promised at the time that if you liked your insurance, your doctor, and your hospital, you would keep it, and it would just get better. Prices would go down; options for insurance would go up. There would be marketplaces where more and more companies would rush in, and that would drive the prices down.

Now, 7 years later, the greatest fears of a lot of the Oklahomans I am around all the time have come true. Here is the crisis in Oklahoma dealing with health care: We have the highest rate increase in the entire Nation. Last year, our rates went up in Oklahoma 76 percent; the year before that, they went up 35 percent. That is an 111-percent rate increase in 2 years in my State. Over the course of the last 3 years, insurance companies have left my State. All 77 counties of Oklahoma now have one insurance carrier left. I met with that insurance carrier before, and they are seriously looking at how they stay functional in Oklahoma in the days ahead, which is a concern to me. There is a possibility that we may have zero on our marketplace in some counties and in some locations in Oklahoma.

With a 76-percent increase, I have had some folks who caught me and said: Well, your State didn't expand Medicaid. That is the problem. If you had expanded Medicaid, then it wouldn't have been an issue. Well, I will tell you that a study from HHS has now come back, and they have confirmed that it is true. If our State would have expanded Medicaid, it would have reduced our costs by 7 percent. That means instead of having a 76-percent increase, as we had, we would have had only a 69- percent increase of health care costs in our

State. Zero competition, dramatically higher deductibles, dramatically higher premiums--every hospital in my State, rural and urban, has more charity care now and more bad debt now than they had 7 years ago.

Insure Oklahoma, a program we set up a decade ago to take care of people who did not have access to insurance, continues to falter because my State is playing ``Mother May I?'' every year with the Federal Government on whether we can maintain a program that our State had and was growing. Small risk pools are not allowed. People still don't know the price of their health care. Electronic health records still can't talk to each other. There is still a rise in the cost of prescription drugs. We still have overlapping administrative costs on dual eligibles, Medicare and Medicaid, for senior adults. Compliance costs for our doctors, clinics, and hospitals have skyrocketed. Physician-owned hospitals, which we have quite a few of in Oklahoma, have been cut off and limited since 2010 and are slowly struggling just to be able to stay afloat. Fewer doctors are taking Medicare and Medicaid patients.

On the horizon, it gets even worse because most people don't realize that the Affordable Care Act was backloaded and that the worst of the worst of it wouldn't be for several years out. Well, guess what. It is now several years out.

Union households in my State are about to take a major hit with the Cadillac tax that is coming because union households in my State have insurance that is too good, and those individuals will face a tax increase.

The insurance company tax is coming, which is a massive tax increase on insurance companies. They will pass that cost directly down to consumers, so it will go up again. We continue to fight off the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a board specifically set up to be able to cut options for patients if they cost too much. That is still out there on the horizon, not to mention the tax penalties that go up even more next year.

People ask me: Why are you still focused on repealing ObamaCare? Why is this such a big deal? It is because the people in my State are struggling under the negative effects of this, and it has to be dealt with. Let me just give you a couple of real life stories.

An Oklahoman from Altus, OK, in the southwest part of my State wrote me and he said:

Senator Lankford, I came home tonight . . . having finished

cotton harvest and looking forward to celebrating with my

wife and kids. I was greeted at the supper table with somber

news about our health care premiums from my distraught wife.

Our premium is going from $960 a month to $1,755 per month!

That's with a deductible of $6,000. I can't even process how

to handle this. I think I'm through. Done with any hope of a

bright future for my family.

An Oklahoman from Poteau, OK, wrote me and said:

My husband and I have had Healthcare Marketplace health

insurance for the past 3 years. The first year my monthly

premium was over $1,200.00, this year I pay $1,923.84

monthly. Now I get a letter from [my health insurance

carrier] that my monthly premium will [go up next year to]

$3,540.07. That is an increase of approx. 84%. . . . How is

this possible? Why can't anything be done about this?

When individuals ask me about ObamaCare, they say: You are just arguing about something because of disdain for the President. No, this is what we have disdain for; this is what people are frustrated about: People who work, people who pay for their health care insurance cannot pay their mortgage and their health insurance anymore because they are literally priced out of it. This is what Bill Clinton meant in October of last year when he made this statement:

So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25

million more people have health care and then the people who

are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up

with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.

It's the craziest thing in the world.

I could not agree with Bill Clinton more on that because that is exactly what is happening in Oklahoma.

But now, here is what is happening because for years Americans and Oklahomans have said: We have to do something to stop this. It is choking out my family.

We are finally at a point we are going to do something about it, but I have colleagues who are now spreading fear all over the country that suddenly everyone is going to be thrown off their insurance and we are going to have people living out on the streets without coverage.

I have heard on the floor of this Senate that 30 million people could die if we repeal ObamaCare. I have heard 20 million people will lose their insurance. I have heard there is no replacement plan, and people will get sick because their coverage will be gone.

Well, let me just go through a couple of those because there are people calling my office and writing me who are very concerned. They are cancer patients, they are diabetics, they are people with long-term blood diseases, they are people who have difficulty getting insurance, and they are being told: All those mean Republicans up there don't like you and don't care about you, and all they want to do is throw you out on the street. When people say that, it couldn't be further from the truth. It may make for good politics, but it is using people who are in a very vulnerable spot in a negative way.

First, let me get a couple of facts straight. This ``30 million'' number that is being thrown around--even past President Obama doesn't agree with that. It is not 30 million; in fact, it is not 20 million. It is 14 million people who gained access to health care coverage, if you count the people who have actually gained coverage and paid for their premiums through the course of the year or have been a part of the expansion of Medicaid. Of those 14 million people, 11.8 million gained additional coverage from Medicaid, not from the exchanges, and, of that, almost 12 million people got expanded coverage from Medicaid. Jonathan Gruber, as one of the architects of ObamaCare, made the statement that from their own studies, the vast majority of those people who were added to Medicaid weren't added to Medicaid because of expanded coverage; they were added to Medicaid because of promotions through advertising. They were already eligible for Medicaid.

So we are talking about 6 million people or so that have been added to it. I am not belittling those 6 million people; that is a lot of people. But it is not 20 million, and it is not 30 million.

So now what? As people address this to me, they ask about what just happened on January 6 when the Senate and later when the House voted to start the legislative process to repeal ObamaCare. What happened was we just actually started the process. It wasn't a total repeal. No one has been thrown out. It starts a legislative process.

As we start that legislative process of what is called reconciliation and as we work through that process, it is a very simple process. It starts the opening conversation to work through committees, to work through debate on the floor so that in the days ahead we will bring a full repeal of ObamaCare and a replacement. But that replacement is not going to be a 2,700-page bill to replace the previous 2,700-page bill. It will be a series of solutions, and it will deal with things on a long-term basis.

There was no vote to suddenly end people's health care in one day. This begins a transition point to make sure that we are watching out for those individuals, such as those cancer patients, diabetics, and individuals who are in very vulnerable situations and over the next couple of years will be able to transition to other care. We are watching to make sure this is not some sudden shift for those individuals. There are very vulnerable people who are in health care options right now and need to know that there is still that safety net there for them and that moving forward, we will continue to be able to watch for them.

We want to be able to move a lot of those decisions back to the States. Quite frankly, that is where those decisions were before. And we want to be able to allow those individuals who are in very vulnerable situations to seek out the doctor they want, to get the options for health care coverage they want, and to have greater access to health insurance, not less.

The people in my State who had been added and who received those subsidies are grateful to be able to have health care, but there are also individuals in my State who can now literally no longer afford to have health care because they have been priced out of the

market, and they are stuck. ObamaCare moved the system from one uninsured group of people to now another uninsured group of people.

Let me read a statement coming from a person from Oklahoma who said:

My wife and I will be going without health insurance next

year! I do not resent anyone who is able to afford

healthcare, I just resent a government system that causes

[us] to be priced out of the reach of working people.

Why is it we can argue about ObamaCare and people can say those individuals got coverage and people are not paying attention to a whole new group of Americans who no longer have coverage because they literally have been priced out of the market?

Why is it that for the sake of 6 million people, we have affected the cost of health care for millions and millions of other Americans?

We can do this transition. We will do this transition. It will take a couple of years. It is not going to be rapid, and there will be a large debate that will happen nationally in the process. That is appropriate, but allow us to be able to walk through this process together.

One quick illustration and then I will be done. I have a friend who discovered last year that she had mold in her house. Initially, there were some treatments that were done. She had been very sick for a while and didn't know why. They did treatments to the house and such and thought that would settle it. It didn't. Eventually, she had to move out of her own home.

Now they have had to actually strip out the walls and take out all the sheetrock. They are literally replacing studs and everything in the house. It will be a long-term issue to be able to get it all right.

I tell that simple story to say that anyone who says replacing health care is going to be some simple ``spray everything down and that will fix it'' strategy just doesn't understand the difficulties of the American health care system. This will be much like my friend who is having to do a pretty radical transition that is going to take a long time, but that will actually get her house whole and healthy again.

If we want to have a healthy nation again with people who have access to health care, regardless of what class they are in, it is going to take a while to make this transition, and it will be difficult in the process. But I can assure my colleagues that this Congress is watching out for all people, of all ethnicities, of all neighborhoods, of all diseases, to make sure that we are paying attention to this one simple thing: When ObamaCare was put into place, it punished people. We should encourage people to be able to get health care, and we should be able to walk through it with people in their most vulnerable moments and make sure they are able to make personal decisions, have access to their own doctors, have access to hospitals that can afford to stay afloat, and to provide the ability for people to choose their own health care. Why is that so radical? It used to not be.

There are things that need to be fixed, but it begins with giving the power of the decision back to the patient and back to people, where it needs to be.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to support Congressman Mike Pompeo for the CIA. He isn't somebody I just met in my office to be able to talk with; he isn't just somebody I served with in the House. I know him personally. For 6 years, he served on the House Intelligence Committee. He struggled through the legal issues of what it means to be in the CIA and also have good oversight, understanding those difficulties that keep America safe but also making sure we protect the privacy rights of Americans.

Mike Pompeo was a Harvard law grad at the top of his class. He gets this information. He understands the constitutional implications. He is also a top graduate of West Point, serving in the Army as well. He knows what it means to be able to defend this country. He is one of the most qualified people out there to possibly serve in this role, understanding the legal implications, having 6 years of service on the House Intelligence Committee, understanding the background, what it means to seek real oversight and to be able to struggle through these issues.

He is a person of great integrity, and he is a person who will passionately help protect the Nation. He is a person who holds tremendous respect for the people serving in our intelligence community--people who most of us will never, ever meet but work every single day to be able to keep our Nation secure. These are individuals who are also passionate about not only keeping our Nation secure but also maintaining the constitutional protections we have always had as a nation.

I heard a lot of the debate today, and I have been astounded at some of the conversations coming out. Let me just recap a couple of these things that I have heard because it was surprising to me. On the issue of advice and consent from the Senate, it seems that some people have not actually read the written testimony and the questions for the record that Mike Pompeo has put out there or listened to his actual testimony or maybe seen his voting record when he was in the House of Representatives. For instance, there is this conversation sitting out there about torture--that he is going to somehow promote torture. He has stated over and over again that he would abide by the law and the Army Field Manual. That is what every candidate would say on that. That is the actual law. He has been very clear on that; he doesn't promote torture. I don't know what else he would have to say. Yet it continues to come up that somehow the head of the CIA is going to promote torture.

I have also heard that he wants to keep Gitmo open. Well, I would stand in line with him on that one. For those of us who have actually been to Guantanamo Bay and have seen it, it is a modern prison facility. It is not some dog cage out there that is holding people out in the weather. Neither is it a place that is doing torture. Guantanamo Bay is a place where the worst of the worst terrorists are being detained and held for trial. The issue of the past 8 years wasn't just that the Obama administration was working as hard as they could to release as many terrorists as they could from there; it is that they weren't taking them to trial. That is the right action--not to do indefinite detention but to actually work toward trial for these individuals. But in the meantime, they should be held at Guantanamo Bay, which is a modern prison facility, and it is the appropriate spot to be able to hold terrorists offshore.

Then there are all of these conversations about collecting data, as if Mike Pompeo wants to scan through all of our Facebook pages. May I remind everyone that the Central Intelligence Agency is focused on foreign intelligence gathering--outward facing. The FBI is focused on the United States, on what is happening with U.S. persons. The CIA has strict prohibitions from gathering data on U.S. persons. The comments he made about gathering any kind of information on social networks and about gathering from what is publicly available is something all of us, I think, should support. If anyone outside the United States--whether they be in Pakistan, whether they be in Syria, or wherever they may be--is on social networks talking about the destruction of the United States, I would assume someone is tracking that, and that someone would be the CIA. We would hold the head of the CIA to account, saying: Weren't you tracking this terrorist's Facebook page, at least? Weren't you tracking their Twitter account? So for him to make a public statement that we should gather information on social media, I think all of us would agree, hopefully, that, yes, on foreign terrorists we should gather as much as we can possibly gather from the publicly available information, whatever it may be. Comments about his wanting to expand data collection fly in the face of reality when he voted as a Member of the House of Representatives to limit data collection.

I have no issue supporting Mike Pompeo. He is very experienced, he is very well educated, he is well prepared for the task, and he is passionate about keeping our Nation safe within the bounds of the law. That is what we

want a CIA Director to do: to passionately go to work to honor our civil liberties. We want to make sure he is standing up for us every single day. In the moments when our Nation is asleep, we want to know the great folks of the CIA are awake and watching because the threats that we face internationally are very real.

I am glad Mike Pompeo is going to be at the watch. I look forward to voting for him in a very few minutes.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. Speaker, a week ago, the President asked this House to include very narrow language in the continuing resolution that would allow the United States military to train and equip the Free Syrian Army individuals to defend themselves.

I can understand why any soldier in any country would want training from the United States military. They are the best-trained, best- equipped, best-disciplined, and best moral fighting force in the history of warfare. Many members of this body and of the administration have asked, for months, for greater training of the Free Syrian Army.

If we had not previously trained and equipped the Iraqis and the Kurds, ISIS would have already overrun Iraq and would have already moved against our allies in the region.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to voice the concern though of the people of Oklahoma. We believe this administration has the habit of twisting every bill into what they want it to say rather than what it actually says; so I want to clarify this amendment.

This is not an authorization for the use of military force in Syria. The President has not asked for that authority, and the Congress has not extended it.

Mr. Speaker, in 2001, this body gave specific authorization to President Bush to ``use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organization, or persons he determines''--now get this-- who ``he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.''

The fighters currently on the battlefield with ISIS were about 8 years old on 9/11. The leaders of ISIS were teenagers. Unless this administration is able to show evidence that a group that did not exist on 9/11 or that 8-year-olds in Syria planned, authorized, committed or aided in the terror attacks on 9/11, the AUMF is not in effect from 2001.

This body is willing to deliberate and to engage with the American people in the sobering question of the use of military force, but we are not willing to abdicate our constitutional responsibility.

No one in this administration should understand this vote as a request to negotiate with Iran for their cooperation, offering to turn a blind eye or to turn our head while they advance their nuclear weapons program for their help and their cooperation. The world should not have to choose between ISIS or a nuclear Iran. Both are unacceptable.

Mr. Speaker, this vote is also not an acknowledgement of the President's plan to defend our Nation from ISIS. We have not seen a plan.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, this vote is not an acknowledgement of the President's plan because we have not seen the plan. Bombing some of ISIS' facilities and training 5,000 foreign fighters is not a plan.

If ISIS is a direct threat to the United States, we should treat them that way. Do not make the American people second-guess the threat by saying that the American people will be protected by the Free Syrian Army.

While I stand in support of this amendment today, the conversation must not end here. I look forward to the conversation in how the administration intends to constitutionally seek authorization to accomplish the strategy today for the American people and this body.

Mr. Chairman, if I were to ask most Americans, why do we have the Endangered Species Act?, just about all of them would say, so we can protect endangered species and increase those population numbers. But then you ask the question of each specific species, what is the goal? And very rarely now will you hear the goal being to increase population. You will hear things like protection of habitat, expansion of the species and such, but you are not going to hear population numbers.

What effect does that have? Well, come to Oklahoma some time. In western Oklahoma, we deal with a beautiful little ground chicken called the lesser prairie chicken. The lesser prairie chicken in the past month and a half has been listed as a threatened species now.

So what is the result of that? Well, the first question we ask is: What is the number that we need to have to recover? I don't know. We are just going to try to recover habitat.

What that means is they are now trying to block in 8,000 to 9,000 acres at a time of grassland and say no one can do development on these 8,000 to 9,000-acre blocks of land--that is no building, that is no construction, that is no energy, and that is no wind power, blocking it off and leaving it natural, up to 70 percent of that area. Suddenly, private lands have suddenly become the ownership of public lands.

The simple question is: How many lesser prairie chickens do we need to have before these restrictions go away? We don't know.

The latest survey that just came out showed a 20 percent increase from last year to this year. Is that enough? No. Fish and Wildlife Service is not required to take in that specific study. If it came from a State and from the people that lived there and know it best, shouldn't we take that advice?

For some strange reason--I am not opposed to scientists from New York--but if scientists from New York can pop in on Oklahoma and can say, I am going to give you the best science, and when we ask for the data behind it, they can say, no, it is secret and proprietary, and we can't do a thing about it, that doesn't make common sense.

Mr. Chairman, this bill fixes that. I encourage the House to pass it and support commonsense legislation.

I thank the gentleman from South Carolina, and the invitation still stands. Come to Oklahoma. We have been fracking since 1948, and I would encourage folks to come drink our water, see the beautiful land, breathe our beautiful air, and understand that you can do this.

Oklahoma is one of the places where we do all-of-the-above energy. We have solar. We have wind. We have coal. We have oil and gas. We understand all-of-the-above energy, and we understand all that can work together.

For viewers that are on C-SPAN and the lights in this room, we understand that energy drives our economy. We don't interact with anything in our economy, whether it is food, whether it is transportation, whether it is home heating, whatever it may be and however we operate, it operates because of energy.

If at some point this administration's policies are fully implemented, we will watch the price of energy, the price of food, the price of everything we do in America go up, simply because of preferences, not because of reality.

We can do this in an environmentally friendly way and also build a strong economy. If you want to come to Oklahoma, unemployment right now in

Oklahoma is 4.5 percent. We are one of the top energy producers in the country.

If you want to go to North Dakota, the unemployment rate is 2.7 percent. In fact, technically, they have a negative unemployment rate. They actually have more job listings than they have unemployment there. Why? Because they are finding a way to be able to tap American energy to produce an American economy that can grow and thrive, and in those places where energy is thriving, the economy is also thriving.

Just look at one simple statistic here: from 2007 to 2012, private sector employment increased by 1 percent or about 1 million jobs. In oil and gas, however, they added 162,000 of those jobs and had an increase of 40 percent in employment. Just in that one sector, there was a 40 percent increase in employment.

What affect does that have on us? Obviously, that is Americans that have jobs, those are families that are taken care of, but it is also our trade deficit.

From 2012 to 2013, just in Saudi Arabia, our trade deficit declined 13 percent. That is oil and gas produced here in the United States, offsetting what we are purchasing from the Middle East. The positive effects of that are overwhelming, and we understand it full well.

We understand that, in the 1990s, our economy had a huge boom from the Web. The Internet and the expansion of the Internet created incredible entrepreneurial opportunities and an incredible expansion of our economy.

That boom in the economy right now is solely around energy, and the energy development that is happening and the revolution that is happening and the opportunity for people to be able to get good-paying jobs is happening strongly in one sector in our economy, energy.

Let's not blow it. Let's expand it. In the days ahead, we should be able to export oil and gas. That should be a prime something that we do.

You can send grain all around the world, just like you can send flour, but right now, you can't send oil all around the world. You can only send gasoline or diesel. You have to literally refine the oil before you can send it out.

Well, let's fix that. If you send grain, you should be able to send flour as well. If you can send timber, you should be able to also send lumber. It makes basic sense that you can send oil as well as you can send gasoline out.

This would help our economy. It would also reduce the price of oil globally. That price would drop because of the competition in the United States, estimated to be about 8 cents per gallon for a gallon of gas, if we get on the world market and start pushing back to bring the price down.

The same thing happens in liquefied natural gas, in natural gas. We are talking about the production, just to allow the enhanced production and export of oil and natural gas, around 1 million additional jobs in our economy.

Now, in a Nation that is looking for jobs, we literally have the jobs under our feet, and it is time we stand up and provide the opportunity to be able to explore for additional oil and gas, continue to expand our use of coal, to be able to export that worldwide and allow the United States to be the economic leader and the energy leader that she should be.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is a study in unintended consequences.

This body determined that they wanted to have more oversight over people that are called broker-dealers of investment funds. They would be handled the exact same way as investment advisers that handle high- end, large investments from wealthy individuals across the country. So the two are trying to be merged together. The Department of Labor and SEC are both trying to come up with their own version of a set of rules.

Here is the unintended consequence that is coming at America: those folks on the lower end and the middle end of America are about to lose a lot of people that helped them with investment advisers.

Here is how it works:

Say you have a newlywed couple, just out of school, just getting started, making $26,000 a year combined, as a couple, and determine they are going to do the responsible thing. They are also going to open up a retirement account and get started thinking about decades from now. We encourage that couple to start thinking about their retirement.

Would that couple making $26,000 a year, with what they are going to put into retirement--$15 a month, maybe--are they going to be attractive to an investment dealer? No, they are not going to be attracted to them. It is a very small amount; $15, $20. But one of these broker-dealers, that is what they love to do. They sign up couples just like that.

The rules coming down from Dodd-Frank will put a new set of standards on those individuals that are providing retirement investment opportunities for people at the very beginning of their investment time. This hits exactly the wrong people, and the benevolent thoughts at the beginning are now coming down to unintended consequences across our country that there will actually be a disincentive to provide retirement vehicles for those with lower and middle income.

The middle-income Americans should have every incentive and every opportunity to save. This simply says to the SEC they cannot promulgate that rule. They need to set it aside and keep the same standards that are already in place. This is not an unregulated industry. They are a heavily regulated industry already.

Keep the same standards in place, and do not discourage investments for retirement from going into lower- and middle-income Americans.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw).

Mr. Chairman, I would just close by saying the 2008 financial meltdown was not caused because middle-income Americans didn't have access to retirement funds.

This is a way to be able to protect middle-income Americans, protect their retirement, and to encourage them to save in the future, not decreasing the number of options they have out there. I would like to have lots of folks out there encouraging lots of Americans to be able to save in not just the largest investment dealers in the country, trying to go after the largest, highest-income Americans. So this is something that we should support to maintain the regulations that are already in place and not decrease the options for Americans.

I yield back the balance my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, last year, the FCC published a notice that stated they had greatly reduced their backlog of complaints on indecent and obscene language and images on TV and sought comments on whether they should change their policy on enforcement moving forward. However, they reduced their backlog by 70 percent by closing out roughly 1 million cases that seemed too old to pursue or, as they believed, not within their justification to enforce. The end result was that the FCC unilaterally decided to leave complaints of incidents where TV content was offensive or inappropriate to be aired at times children are likely to be in the audience to be uninvestigated and unenforced.

Moving forward, they asked the public if the FCC should make it the official policy of the Commission that they should only investigate the most serious violations of indecency on television. For instance, they wanted to know if a complaint against repeated expletives in a program warrants enforcement, while maybe an incident of one or two expletives does not. To many parents, this is an unreasonable distinction to make.

As Chief Justice Roberts has mentioned in some of his opinions on this, this is not an incidence of only having a brief instance of nudity, that that shouldn't be warranted, when extensive nudity is not.

While the FCC has not acted to formally finalize this regulation, it is in the public's best interest that they not continue down this road. If they do institute it, it will give the FCC the ability to decide, on behalf of the viewing public, what is indecent and what is not based on the rules that they have now.

This is a significant shift away from the standards that have been set, and the American public wants to be able write in and complain about what their children have access to. Many of us as Americans have real concerns about what is happening in television and the enforcement now of existing law.

Quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, it is difficult to even allow your children to watch commercials nowadays, much less the television during the children's viewing hour. This is simply a statement to say to the FCC that they should retain and continue the current enforcement they already have.

I understand that there are some issues with this amendment. I understand full well there are some issues we need to deal with in the FCC in days ahead.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, in 2010, the administration put together a working group to monetize the cost per ton of carbon emissions for use in cost-benefit analyses for rulemaking undertaken by all agencies in the Federal Government, and then reconvened this group again in 2013 to further increase what they called the ``social cost of carbon.'' They increased that amount by 50 percent in just 3 years.

The process was done behind closed doors and without any public input. The administration refuses to release how much of their deliberations were done in public, how much were done in private, or any of the details of their deliberations. They refuse to release the way they used the scientific modeling or even who actually did the modeling for them, or even something as basic as the list of participants at the meeting--even when it was discussed.

Months after releasing the report--and only after sustained pressure--the administration relented, put the document and the numbers up for public comment, a procedure that is routine for the rulemaking process. But the administration has continued to use the calculations that they said they set aside. They use those calculations for the recent EPA rules decreasing emissions by 30 percent for existing power plants by 2030.

My amendment would prevent the Department of Energy from doing the same thing. This is a rule that has been set aside. It is a number that has not been agreed to and there was no public comment for. They cannot change a regulatory number without any notice and comment and without any public input. This would prevent them from doing that.

The DOE rulemakings using the social cost of carbon have the potential to raise the cost for everyday activities and purchases for all Americans.

I would ask that this group join me in supporting the amendment, which would prohibit the flawed and capricious social cost of carbon rule from being implemented by the Department of Energy.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would be glad for the Members of this body to enroll in a science class. I would also be glad for the Members of this body to enroll in a world history class and possibly look at the history of the Earth.

Do you realize there were glaciers in Ohio centuries ago?

If we are talking about weather today, we are talking about a different topic. We are talking about an administration not following the Administrative Procedure Act.

If this is about an administration saying they can change rules as they choose to, I look forward to seeing that same standard being applied to Republican Presidents in the days ahead.

But when an administration can change a rule without notice and comment and shift the social cost of carbon by 50 percent in a 3-year time period without following the rule, without following the law, so much so that when we addressed it in a hearing, they admitted it, set the rule aside, and then the EPA chose to use it anyway, we are not talking about weather anymore. We are suddenly talking about the rule of law.

Now, this is not an area on which we had disagreement--Republicans and Democrats--in committee because it was clear that the administration did not follow the rule of law. This is a simple statement. It is not a statement

about climate change. It is not a statement about a future ice age or of a future flood. It is a statement about: Do we choose to follow the law or not?

If someone wants to argue that we shouldn't follow the Administrative Procedure Act, I look forward to the day when we just set the entire thing aside and let the administration do whatever it wants to at any point, but I hope that day does not occur and that we do follow the rule of law and require the administration to do the same.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I can assure you I have great care, Mr. Chairman, for future generations, as I do for this generation and as I do for the United States Constitution.

No administration can ignore the Administrative Procedure Act, change it capriciously by 50 percent and say, I have new science, and go into a room and literally not publish who was in the room, not take any public comment, not even disclose what the memos were or all of the models that were even used in the discussion, but just say, I am going to change this by 50 percent because there have been updates, and so everyone's costs just went up dramatically.

That is not the way we work things in America. This is not about science. This is about law, though this is the first time I have ever heard anyone, Mr. Chairman, discuss the loss of piglets as being connected to weather, as has been discussed on the floor today. It was a virus that spread across the entire United States. This is not about piglets. This is not about weather. This is just law.

With that, I would encourage the passage of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, earlier this year, there was a bill that authorized the Corps' projects that was passed in the House and the Senate and signed into law. It also included into that a study that would allow the Corps of Engineers to be able to evaluate their projects.

As simple as this may be, the Corps of Engineers has a tremendous number of things on their inventory that they are doing operation and maintenance for. The study required them to be able to go through all the different projects that they have nationwide and just do a simple evaluation of which projects met the simple focus of the Corps of Engineers and which projects might not meet the central focus. It allowed them to be able to make a simple determination of what, if you will excuse the pun, are the core projects of the Corps.

There are projects that are all over the country. There may be boat ramps, picnic pavilions, or in Oklahoma we have a place called Lake Optima that was a lake built in the 1970s that has never had more than 5 percent water in it. It was a project that did not work effectively as it was originally planned but the Corps still has to maintain because it is on their inventory.

This study would allow them to be able to look at all of their inventory and develop what is the core focus of that. This amendment just ensures that the Corps would have the money necessary to be able to fulfill that study.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am extremely pleased that the appropriators and this chairman have included a requirement that discretionary grants awarded by the Department of Energy must be disclosed to the House and the Senate in a timely manner, and they must include information about where these funds are going.

This is a very positive step forward towards greater transparency and greater ability for this body to have oversight over agencies in the millions of dollars that are being spent on grants.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment that I am offering perfects that information about those grants and their ability to be disclosed. In addition to the money, where it would go, and whom it would go towards, it is critical that we know how many entities actually competed for these awards and how the winner was actually selected, so that we know the full transparency of the process itself.

Agencies have a tremendous amount of discretion, and they provide millions of dollars to grantees. It is incredibly important that Congress fulfills their responsibility of oversight. Shining a light on how these decisions will be made will allow for critical independent assessments of how the DOE spends its money.

Mr. Chairman, these additions I suggest are relatively minor, but it will go a long way to giving Congress greater data on how the Department of Energy functions with their grant process.

I applaud the committee for acknowledging how important disclosure is for this agency and for all accountability, and I hope that this is a positive sign of how we will handle oversight for all agencies and for all grants.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would say this is not about Alaska. Alaska is a tremendous State that I have personally visited. I have not had an opportunity to live there, as my colleague has, obviously. But this is not about Alaska; this is about duplication in government efficiency and how we actually deliver services to these agencies.

In 2004, President Bush's Office of Management and Budget wrote that the Commission's activities were duplicative of other Federal programs that address the same needs and provide the same types of assistance.

In 2009, President Obama's OMB referred to the Denali Commission as duplicative, redundant, unnecessary, and stated there was no evidence that the Denali Commission's job training programs improve employment outcomes for participants.

The GAO found the Denali Commission's activities to be duplicative of other Federal programs.

The Congressional Budget Office examined the Denali Commission and they said that they failed to find any evidence that they have achieved success in these areas in large part due to the overlap of the Commission's activities in other Federal programs.

And in October of 2013, the Office of Inspector General said that the Denali Commission was a middleman, that it was an experiment that had run its course and argued that these funds could be appropriated and be put to better use.

Put the funds towards Alaska. Put them actually in direct grants rather than a program that is a middleman around it. There are ways to be able to determine this, but we as a Nation have to find ways to be able to eliminate duplication, and this is one of those moments.

Are we going to listen to the inspector general, the Congressional Budget Office, the GAO, two different Presidents' Offices of Management and Budget, or will we ignore all of those?

With that, I encourage us to deal with a transition, continue to take care of the needs of rural Alaska but find a more efficient delivery system to do that.

Offered By: Mr. Lankford

Amendment No. 23: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Sec. 508. None of the funds made available by this Act may

be used to prepare, propose, or promulgate any regulation or

guidance that references, relies on, or otherwise considers

the analysis contained in ``Technical Support Document: -

Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis - Under

Executive Order 12866'' issued by the Interagency Working

Group on Social Cost of Carbon, United States Government

(February 2010), ``Technical Support Document: - Technical

Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact

Analysis - Under Executive Order 12866'' issued by the

Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon, United

States Government (May 2013), ``Technical Support Document -

Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory

Impact Analysis - Under Executive Order 12866'' issued by the

Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon, United

States Government (revised November 2013), or ``Technical

Support Document - Technical Update of the Social Cost of

Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis - Under Executive Order

No. 12866'', published at 78 Fed Reg. 228 (November 26,

2013).

Mr. Speaker, today, I just want to come and reflect for just a moment on a lady that I met a few weeks ago on Loyalty Day.

Many Americans don't know about Loyalty Day. It is still recognized by the VFW--still. It is a day of remembrance around May 1, a celebration time. It is a remembrance and a time to recognize the freedom that we have in America.

This lady, Zona Cockrell of Shawnee, Oklahoma, stood and talked with me about not only Loyalty Day, but about her husband and about her husband's passion that people would not forget those that are missing in Korea still.

You see, Zona Cockrell's husband, Charles Cockrell, served in the United States Marine Corps. He served in Korea from 1951-1953. He led a group of people; eight of them did not return. They were never found. They were considered missing in action.

Many Americans still, today, do not realize that we have 7,883 people still officially listed as missing in action from the Korean war.

His passion was that his buddies would never, ever be forgotten. Mr. Cockrell died 2 years ago, and he passed on that legacy to his wife and said: Don't let anyone forget my buddies that never came home from Korea and were never found.

Last year, she had installed, at her own expense, a black granite bench in Shawnee, Oklahoma, at the Woodlands Veterans Park. She spent her own money--$2,500--to be able to put that granite bench there. That bench just reads, ``Let us not forget those left in Korea.''

Mrs. Cockrell is still carrying out her husband's wish. She is still challenging the Nation not to forget, and when I met her that day, that was her one emphasis: do not allow them to be forgotten.

Officially, we still have missing there. They are missing, but not forgotten.

When her husband grew sick and that legacy passed on to her, she turned to me and asked me to pass it on to the Nation, which I will fulfill today.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me just remind us of a statement that she made. She said:

They gave me my freedom. These people gave their heart,

their soul, and their blood, so we could be free.

Today, in Washington, D.C., not far from here, there is a man standing with a rifle in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns. He will pace back and forth in honor and in recognition of people who will not be forgotten.

Memorial Day is not just a single day in America. Memorial Day is every day in America for those who choose not to forget. We do not. We are grateful, as a Nation, for their incredible sacrifice and our ability to live free here because they stood for us.