Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Larson's leadership on this.

I wanted to talk about three hard realities in Iraq. It is very easy, tempting when we are in the middle of a struggle, as our Armed Forces are, to forget harsh realities and to become emboldened by the rhetoric that is associated with war. But I think it is very important for us, when our sons and daughters and husbands and wives are there, to just take a very cold, harsh, realistic look at what is really going on in Iraq. This is not a moment for rose-colored glasses. It is a moment for reality. And I want to talk about the three realities in Iraq today, because basically the debate over Iraq is really twofold.

One side says that we should just keep doing what we are doing. We will just trust the President to make the decisions as he has made them in Iraq. We won't question them. We won't ask to accelerate them. We won't question the strategy. Congress will just sit back and let George Bush decide what to do in Iraq.

Others of us take a different approach that says the status quo is inadequate, that we cannot expect to keep doing the same thing in Iraq and expect a different result. So we believe we need some changes in Iraq. And I want to talk about some three realities about why we need a change, why the status quo is unacceptable, unacceptable in Iraq.

Number one, the security situation. The reality in Iraq is that the current strategy proposed by the Bush administration is resulting in things not only not staying the same but getting worse. If you take a look at the Brookings Institution, you can go online and take a look at the Brookings Institution's Web site. Anybody can Google that to find Brookings. You will find the statistics that I want to talk about tonight.

Fatalities in Iraq of Armed Forces are not only going down; they are going up. Compared to May 2003 and May 2005, we are now experiencing greater loss of our sons and daughters in Iraq than we were 2 years ago, 3 years ago. Those are going up, regrettably. The Bush plan is not working when it comes to protecting our men and women in uniform.

When you looked at the wounded in the Brookings Institution report, regrettably, they are not going down; they are going up, compared to 2\1/2\ years ago. When you look at Iraqi fatalities compared to the same time in February, March, May 2005, they are going up. When you look at the number of car bombs in May 2004, to May 2006, they are going up. When you look at Iraqi civilians killed, in fact, the number of Iraqi civilians killed compared to the same period about 3 years ago, they are three times higher per month. And I think we rightfully care about Iraqi civilian fatalities from a sense of humanity and from a sense of the American spirit.

When you look at the number of multiple fatality bombings, they are up by a factor of 50 times higher than they were 3 years ago, a 50 times increase in multiple fatality bombings that the Iraqis are experiencing. When you look at crime-related deaths, they are up 50 times what they were over 2 years ago. When you look at the number of daily attacks, they are up compared to May 2004. When you look at weekly attacks on our service personnel, 2 years ago they went from 185 to 620 now. Up substantially, unfortunately.

So the security situation under the George Bush plan for security in Iraq, all of the indicators are going in the wrong direction. The status quo is not adequate. We cannot just trust the President with making decisions in Iraq.

So I want to turn now to sort of the life-style, if you call it that, in economic conditions in Iraq. We were told, when we were briefed on this war by Paul Wolfowitz and others of the President's men and women, that oil would be quickly restored in Iraq and that, indeed, the Iraqis would pay for this war by themselves. In fact, the production of oil today has still not reached prewar levels under that tyrannical, abysmal dictator Saddam Hussein. We still have not achieved oil and gas production records on one of the largest pools of oil on Earth; they are still at 2.18 million barrels compared to 2.5 in the prewar level. We still are not back up to those levels. And we are paying hundreds of billions of dollars today for Iraq.

In electricity we, at best, are back to prewar levels after 3 years and untold tens of millions of dollars squandered, American taxpayer dollars. And, in fact, in Baghdad today I read they are having a heat wave in Baghdad and they still only have 3 to 4 hours a day of electricity. You can imagine, after 3 years of sitting under a foreign army's occupation, with 3 hours of electricity for your air conditioner. I read these Iraqis said that, We basically sit and look at each other. I read this comment by a middle-class Iraqi who said, We are going crazy doing that. And I can understand that.

The economic condition is not making substantial improvement in Iraq under the harsh realities.

So now we turn to the political situation and ask ourselves if the George Bush plan is adequate on Iraq. And, yes, we have had elections and we were all thrilled by elections. All of us would like to see a democratic Iraq. But there is a very harsh reality that we think demands a change of plans in Iraq.

That is, until the Shiia community and the Sunni community and the Kurd community can strike the hard bargains it takes to make a democracy in Iraq, and particularly over access to the oil resource, which they still have not done after 3 years. It doesn't matter what an outside force will do. The current plan is not a plan for success.

Frankly, our continued presence in Iraq is now acting as a security blanket to allow the politicians in Iraq to refuse to move forward with hard compromises about oil revenues, which is dooming our military to be there for decades. That is why we need to send a message to the Iraqi politicians that we are not going to be there for decades and they must make the compromises necessary about oil revenues, because they are shortly going to have responsibility for their own country.

I am not the only one to think that. There are some people with some skin in this fight besides Americans, and that is the Iraqis. We went there to help the Iraqis. It was based on false information and deceit, but, nonetheless, Americans had I think the right intentions. So I think it pays some heed to see what the Iraqis think about this.

What the Iraqis think about this, when a poll was done January 31, 2006, by the World Public Opinion Poll, and that is not a group that has any particular dog in this fight, they went out and asked the Iraqi people, do you approve the government endorsing a timeline for U.S. withdrawal?

These are the people whose lives are most dependent on obtaining a secure, safe Iraq. They are not sitting thousands of miles away like we are, like the President is. They are sitting in these rooms with no electricity and 120 degrees temperature and bombs going off next door where they can't send their kids out to play. They may be considered perhaps the experts on this issue. What do the Iraqis say about that issue?

What they say is 87 percent of Iraqis would approve of the government endorsing a timeline for U.S. redeployment. That is something we ought to think about. I think there is a reason for that. I think there is a reason that 87 percent of the Iraqis who are living in such squalor and danger today believe that it makes sense for us to tell Iraqis that the time is shortly coming where the country will be theirs. I think the reason is they recognize that their politicians aren't going to get around to disposing of really coming up with an agreement on oil reserves until they know that the day is coming that the United States security blanket will be removed. The Iraqis have figured this out. We should figure it out.

So we are here today saying it is not enough just to trust President Bush with decisions in Iraq. Security is not getting better, the economy is not getting better, the political situation still really has not come to terms with the necessary compromise, and it is time for us to send a message to the Iraqi government that they need to get serious about resolving issues and redeploying our troops.

This is a strategy for success. The Bush plan is a strategy for long- term failure. It is time that we come to terms, take off the rose- colored glasses and make hard decisions.

I want to thank Mr. Larson for allowing me to participate.

Will the gentleman yield for a moment? I want to add an additional mistake, if I can briefly, that I think is very important for us to talk about, and that is the mistake to not send the message that the Iraqis are going to have a country that is free at some point of United States forces.

This poll that I talked about, when they asked Iraqis, do you think the U.S. Government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq, 80 percent of the people answered that they thought we were going to do that.

When asked, do you believe that we will at some point remove our military once Iraq is stabilized, 80 percent of Iraqis believe we will not remove our forces even after Iraq is stabilized.

There is a reason for them to believe that. Because on this floor, when we tried to put a provision in a defense bill that says we won't have any Iraq permanent bases in Iraq, which we actually succeeded in doing on the floor, the first thing that happened, in the dead of night in one of these conference committees, the Republican Party stripped it out.

The message we are sending to Iraq is we are going to stay there as long as we want and perhaps permanently. That is the wrong message. We need to send a different message. That is why we are here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I want to pose this question here about who is driving the bus when it comes to Iraq policy. And this is an important question I know all of us feel. Yesterday, two of our finest from the State of Washington were killed in Iraq, young men.

The day before that, a young man from Port Orchard, Washington, who had been fighting for life for 3 months died in one of our hospitals in Texas. We need somebody to drive the bus of Iraqi policy that is trustworthy, accurate, and has a full understanding of what is going on in Iraq.

And when you ask yourself, does the President meet those criteria for that policy, does his policy meet that criteria; was he right on weapons of mass destruction? No. Was he right on association with 9/11? No. Was he right on the number of troops we needed? No.

Was he right on flac jackets for the troops? No. Was he right on armored Humvees? No. Is he right on the issue of who is actually doing the fighting now? He still wants to make it sound like it is just part of an international conspiracy, not a sectarian conflict that is going on when Shiites and Sunnis are killing themselves in the streets? No.

He still is wrong about the basic nature of the conflict, and yet some people in Congress want to let him just drive the bus after he has crashed it 52 different times, and we have lost over 2,500 of our finest as a result.

It is time for someone else to start driving the bus, and that is Congress; to start asking these hard questions and demand a different strategy

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, there are times where the Constitution needs to be considered, and this is one of those times. Those of us who support this amendment, I hope that both Republicans and Democrats will do so because I think Republicans and Democrats ought to agree on one central proposition, and that is the proposition that our government ought to protect our citizens aggressively, assertively. We need electronic surveillance to be doing it to the full extent of the law, and that intelligence should be done in compliance with the American way.

There is an American way to do intelligence, and there is a Chinese way to do intelligence. There is a Turkish way to do intelligence. There is a Russian way to do intelligence. And there is an American way to do intelligence. And the American way to do intelligence is to do a very simple thing: Comply with the law that has been passed and signed by Congresses and Presidents.

And all this amendment does is say a very simple proposition: You don't spend taxpayers' money to do illegal acts by the Federal Government. That is all it says. And when it passes, we will do assertive, aggressive intelligence of these scoundrels by doing a very simple thing: Get a warrant. And if you do not have time to get a warrant, get it 72 hours after you do the intelligence, because the FISA Court allows that to happen. That is the simple proposition here.

Now, why is that important? It is important because the people who fought the Revolution realized that no American is perfect, and that includes no American President. To the proposition that all men are created equal, you can add the proposition that no

man is created perfectly. And that is why we demand some judicial oversight on this.

And, by the way, the central argument I have heard about this is that a few Congressmen have said it is okay, apparently. Well, calling a few Congressmen is not enough under the law. Why? Because the law is very specific. It says that each application for an order approving electronic surveillance under this subchapter shall be made by a Federal officer in writing, upon oath or affirmation, to a judge. To a judge. And we are great Congressmen. I have eminent respect for all the people who were briefed on this. But not a single one of them wears a black robe, and not a single one of them was given authority by the United States Constitution to make this decision. Calling Ray or Norm or any of my great colleagues and saying, ``Does this sound okay to you,'' is not enough in American democracy.

Now, we have had other occasions in our democracy where we have been challenged by fear, and I do not want to see us succumb to that again. And for those of us who think it shouldn't bother us, the President is not going to bug us, other nations have lost their liberty because of that attitude, because some Supreme Court Justice said loss of liberty does not come like a curtain coming down like a thunderclap. It comes the way the twilight comes, gradually, and you do not notice.

Do not wink at this potential violation. Say that we are going to do intelligence the American way. For those people in Iraq and Afghanistan who are risking their lives for democracy and the liberties we enjoy, don't we have enough gumption to send a simple message to the executive branch of the United States from the U.S. Congress, a very simple message that we expect the law to be fulfilled, that our personal protection to be fulfilled by getting a warrant the way the law requires? That is all that we require.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I want people to understand the sweeping scope of Mr. Lungren's argument. What he argues is that the President of the United States, during a time of fear and war that we are now in, has the unchecked, unfettered, unlimited authority to ignore not just FISA, but any law passed by the Congress of the United States and signed by any President. His argument here means that no law restricts this President or any other President to do anything else. Not just intelligence. Torture, false imprisonment; you go as far as you want.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, that is exactly right. The President can do all of the intelligence he needs to do in a way that complies with FISA. That is what we want him to do. That is what the Constitution requires.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your courtesy, and I do think this is an important debate. I appreciate your perspective.

I want to ask you a forthright question. Do you understand that under the scenario you have posed, that you can go over the executive, 72 hours after the event, 72 hours after the event, you go and get a warrant, you can continue your tap, you can get the intelligence, 72 hours? Do you understand that is allowed?

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I want to make sure you understand. I want to make sure the gentleman understands that under this amendment you do not have to stop listening to anybody ever. We want to continue listening, and we simply require that 72 hours after that, we ask the executive to have another set of eyeballs take a look at it to make sure it is compliant. Does the gentleman understand this amendment does not stop anybody ever, as long as you go and have a warrant 72 hours after the intelligence gathering? Do you understand that is the purpose of our amendment? Because it is.

Mr. Chairman, if you will yield just for a moment, I just want to make sure members understand what we are voting on.

If this amendment passes, the President of the United States and his executive authority will be able to continue

to listen to these conversations unimpeded, unimpeded, as long as they go to a judge 72 hours after.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment brought by myself and my colleagues, Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Jones, seeks to protect very basic job securities for Department of Defense employees by blocking funds for those parts of the National Security Personnel System that have been declared illegal. The workplace environment that would result if this amendment does not pass, that results in destroying basic worker rights; jeopardizes our ability to recruit and maintain qualified, skilled workers to protect our national security. These are hardworking men and women. They deserve our gratitude, they deserve our respect, they deserve a personnel system that respects their work and complies with principles that we hold forth.

I have got to tell you, I just want to note who we are talking about here. These are the men and women who make sure that our equipment works. When I went out and saw the Carl Vinson, one of our great carriers coming back from the Afghanistan campaign, the sailors asked me to thank the people who worked on that carrier to see to it that it could launch 10,000 sortees without losing an airplane.

These people are part of the defense team. They deserve respect. But, unfortunately, the current situation does not give them either respect or fairness in the personnel system.

It is worth noting that the Office of Personnel Management questioned the legitimacy of this new program in March 2004 in a letter to Secretary Rumsfeld and said, ``The current system may be contrary to law insofar as it attempts to replace collective bargaining with consultation and eliminate collective bargaining agreements all together. In addition, other elements of the proposal lack a clear and defensible national security nexus and jeopardize those parts that do.''

Now, this is not just us speaking; it is the Federal courts. At the beginning of this year, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Emmitt Sullivan ruled that the NSPS system failed to ``ensure even minimal collective bargaining rights.'' The court further enjoined the National Security Labor Relations Board on the grounds that it did not satisfy congressional requirement for independent third-party review. It has been declared illegal.

Now, one might assume after such a ruling had come down that the Pentagon would attempt to fix the problem and that the administration would do so, but in fact that has gone on after 3 years. They are essentially snubbing their noses at collective bargaining rights, at civil service rights, at the right to know whether you are discharged or what your discharge would be, basic fundamental rights that we ought to give to the people who are critical members of the defense team.

That is why we bring this amendment, to preserve the right to be free from discrimination based on political opinion, something that our Civil Service rules need to protect; and the right to collective bargaining, to engage in collective bargaining in good faith; the right to due process for advance notice of suspension and some meaningful appeal rights for people who work on the defense team.

So we are offering a commonsense amendment that will recognize that we should not be forcing this broken system that has been ruled illegal for people who are doing such great work for us, keeping our uniformed personnel on the post in Iraq and Afghanistan. We commend this amendment to our colleagues' attention.

Thank you. I am delighted that Ms. Schwartz is leading this energy discussion tonight for two reasons. One, right now outside the Capitol there is a giant lightning storm going on, so talking about energy in the spirit of Ben Franklin is the right time to do it.

But, secondly, and more importantly, many of us here on the Democratic side of the aisle believe that America is ready for a project with the same scope and ambition and vision as we had with John F. Kennedy with the original Apollo project.

I have introduced H.R. 2828, which is called the New Apollo Energy bill, that basically is working on the belief that this Nation has the same gumption, the same technological prowess, the same vision that we had in the 1960s when we decided, as challenged by John F. Kennedy from that rostrum on May 9, 1961, to say we were going to put a man on the moon in 10 years and bring them back safely.

We have now introduced this New Apollo Energy Project because we believe that the times that we now live in this decade are both as challenging and as promising as the 1960s were in space. We believe that the challenge we have to deal with energy is of the same scope as America had and Kennedy had dealing during the Cold War with the space race. We also believe that our ability to invent, to tinker, to innovate is as good or better as it was in the 1960s, and we need to have that same spirit with the New Apollo Project.

In fact, I was just reading before I came over here, one of my staff handed me the quote from Kennedy's speech, and one of the things that he said was, I think it was kind of interesting, he was talking about the need for America to be a leader in space. We believe America needs to be a leader, it is our destiny to be a leader, and what Kennedy said was, ``If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not. It is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.''

We believe, those of us who are propounding the New Apollo Energy Project believe, that we cannot be a leader of the world unless we decide that we are going to lead the world into a new energy future in this country and later in the world. And to do so, we believe that that is a challenge that is much more than nibbling on the edges.

We got to the moon because we had an aspiration of one giant leap for mankind, not just one little baby step for man. Frankly, this Congress and this administration to date, sadly to say, has been just nibbling on the edges. These tiny little inching forward as a baby would take their first little steps.

We both need and deserve more in this country, which is a very bold and visionary technological leap in energy. So we have introduced the New Apollo Energy Project, which will answer that bugle cry that this country has always answered to really leapfrog the existing technologies.

If I can just briefly describe some of the things we want to do. We want to achieve three ends in the New Apollo Energy Project. Number one, we want to lead the world economically. We want to create good, high-paying jobs in the new technologies of new energy that are right now, unfortunately, going overseas.

Unfortunately, we are losing jobs right now to some of the Japanese automakers because of auto efficiency. We are losing jobs to some the German solar energy industries. We are losing jobs to Denmark. And I think Denmark is a great country, but to lose jobs to them to create these wind turbines makes no sense. The country that put a man on the moon, to allow other countries to lead in energy makes no sense. So one of the things we need to do is to bring the job growth right here.

The second thing we have to do is truly break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil. Although we laud the President for the first time suggesting after 6 years of urging him, has now suggested that he wants to join us to help to break the addiction to Middle Eastern oil, and that is great, but, unfortunately, the week the President said that, he laid off 150 or 100 researchers in renewable energy at the Boulder Energy Laboratory. So we would like to have some reality rather than rhetoric.

Third, we have to break this tendency to put more carbon dioxide in the air, to deal with global warming. The debate about global warming is over. It was a vigorous and strenuous debate, and it is done. The science of global warming is in, and we need now to really have technologies that will reduce CO2 emissions.

I met the President of the Marshall Islands the other day, and he told me, he was on Bainbridge Island, I live on an island, Bainbridge Island, Washington, he told me that his entire nation may be environmental refugees because their entire nation is threatened by the rising sea levels together with the collapse of coral reefs.

We had a meeting with Stanford professors last week in the basement of this building, who told us in 100 years there may not be any viable healthy coral reefs in the world because the carbon dioxide we are putting in the air out of our tailpipes and coal-powered plants goes into solution in the ocean, it makes the oceans more acidic, and when they become more acidic, coral reefs cannot survive.

So we got to get these three jobs done. We have got a New Apollo Project to do it, and I would like to discuss it in depth.

I think you have put your finger on a very important principle as we go forward on energy debate. The debate in energy between those of us who believe in the New Apollo Project and those of us who do not is really a debate between the optimists and the pessimists.

The pessimists believe that we are tied to these really now ancient technologies. Fossil fuels is really an ancient technology. It is from the 1800s. It is old. We have been doing it for a long, long time.

Now, pessimists believe that we are stuck burning fossil fuels, and that is about as good as it gets.

Just more oil. You just drill more holes in the ground. The problem with that is, unfortunately, for reasons that are past our understanding, the dinosaurs went to die under somebody else's sand. That seems so unfair to us. We use 25 percent of the world's oil, but we only have 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. We could drill in Yosemite, we could drill outside on the south lawn of the White House. The problem is, the oil is not there.

We use one-quarter of the world's oil, but we only have 3 percent of the reserves. So we can accelerate some exploration, but, unfortunately, the oil, frankly, is not there. So for one reason, it is just not there. But the pessimists believe that we cannot invent our way out of this pickle.

The optimists believe that we can do the same thing in energy as we did in space. Just to harken back in history, when Kennedy said we were going to the moon on May 9, 1961, put that in historical perspective. Our rockets were blowing up on the launch pad. We had launched a softball in suborbital flight. Computers were as big as a room. He didn't know how we were going to get to the moon, but he did know a fundamental lesson of American psychology, which is we are the best inventors in human history, literally. Our culture, our society in America is the best inventive society in human history. So he recognized our ability to innovate.

Now, the New Apollo Energy Project that we have propounded delves on that. Let me just give you an example of just a couple things in my neighborhood.

It was in my paper this morning, in the Seattle Times, about a young man who has built a hybrid vehicle that uses an enhanced battery. It is a plug-in hybrid that has a little larger battery that he adds to the trunk. That car now gets 100 miles per gallon, 100 miles per gallon, and it is driving the streets of Seattle, Washington, today. The reason it does, you plug it in, it gets a little larger boost, it uses electricity now much greater than the gasoline. Now, it does use additional electricity, but it is getting 100 miles per gallon driving on the streets today. This technology exists.

Because of his efforts and some of these other groups that are pushing this, they are now pushing the auto industries to move faster to get to this plug-in hybrid technology. It is there.

We have the largest wind farm in North America being built today, 350-foot-tall towers in southeast Washington, that is generating over $1.5 million over a several-year period for one farmer of a stream of revenue. This is great for farmers as well. It is going to produce enough electricity for 400,000 people.

We have the largest biodiesel plant in North America now is under design in southwestern Washington which will produce environmentally sound fuel for our cars and biodiesel. And biodiesel is great because it reduces the CO2 emissions, because the CO2 goes into the plant, we make oil out of it, and we don't put any net increase in carbon dioxide.

I just mentioned these three technologies out of hundreds that are now coming on.

And I want to dovetail on this point about this is good old American capitalism as work. We believe in the power of capitalism. You look at the space race, and it was not just governmental activity, it was a public-private partnership with private contractors operating in a profit margin or incentives that did help get us to the moon. And we believe the same type of activity can be part of the solution for energy.

And I have to tell you, one of the huge transitions going on in the U.S. economy right now is happening without necessarily government help, which is a huge influx of investment capital. We just had a startup company involving biofuels that was announced last week at one of the largest infusions of capital for some period of time this decade, and we are seeing that.

And we are also seeing an infusion of intellectual capital. I come from a part of the world that is very active in the Internet and software technologies. The Microsoft campus is in my district. And we are seeing a lot of intellectual capital now from software and Internet move over to the energy side. We have seen investments from some of the Microsoft family into biofuels.

I met an interesting fellow a few months ago who was involved in the commercialization of the MRI machine, the magnetic resonance imaging machine, and he made a bundle of cash on that commercialized product that now they put us in the tubes and diagnose our old knees when you get to be 55 and play basketball like I do. So this guy now is involved in perfecting a solar cell panel that is nonsilicone-based; it is based on an organic molecule that you essentially just spray on, and you can reduce the construction cost because silicone-based solar panels are fairly expensive to make. This could be just a spray-on application and potentially reduces the cost 20 to 30 percent.

So here is a fellow that has done well in one electronic business now making the transition to energy, and we are seeing a lot of that. But what we can do is we can help those businesses get a jump start, and one of the important things we can do on that is to offer loan guarantees to guarantee the loan of some of these new plants. We are now trying to hustle along a loan guarantee for a first cellulosic ethanol plant in the world, actually in the State of Idaho, and we are trying to get that loan guarantee perfected so that company can get up and running.

Those are the kinds of things that are an appropriate public-private partnership, along with the tax incentives. I sponsored a bill with Senator Barack Obama called Health Care for Hybrids, and what it would do is to help the auto industry with some of their legacy health care costs in exchange for producing more fuel-efficient cars. So here is a two-for.

It has been very sad to see technology originally developed in the United States, particularly solar cell technology, now being perfected and commercialized in Germany and other countries. To see that hemorrhaging of jobs is really a pathetic statement of our inaction to have a national energy policy. And we effectively don't have a national energy policy right now, except to just sort of allow the status quo to stumble along.

There is one thing that is very clear about energy: Somebody is going to create millions of jobs and millions of dollars, and we want that to be Americans. In the 1960s, they had the missile gap. Remember, during the Nixon-Kennedy debate there was a debate about the missile gap. In a way, we have an energy technology gap right now that, frankly, other countries are getting a leg up on us. And the reason is, is that those countries have developed energy policies that have decided to leapfrog technologies and develop technologies there. We can't allow that gap to continue to widen. And that is why this New Apollo Energy Project, H.R. 2828, if you want to take a look at it, is going to answer this challenge.

When Kennedy set us forth in the original space race, it really was not for economic reasons, it was largely not for a job creation program. But if you look at what it did create, can you imagine had he not challenged America to start the original Apollo Project? We would not have a computer industry in this country, we would not have an Internet-based industry, we would not have a satellite-based industry. We would likely probably not have a nanotechnology-based industry. That has been the mainspring of economic development and job creation in this country.

So I think the important thing to realize about energy is we are not just acting to $3 a gallon gas, we are not acting just to save the planet we live on from the ravages of global warming. We are doing it from a positive economic growth-oriented proposal. And I think you can honestly say that this is probably the best thing the U.S. Congress could do to really grow the U.S. economy right now, because it is the one thing that the world obviously needs. Our market is not just in America. When we develop a clean-coal technology, we want to sell that technology to the Chinese and to India. And assuming we can do that, there is enormous growth potential.

I would like to compliment you for bringing up the idea of efficiency and not wasting energy. Because one of the things when we talk about energy, it is very easy to just launch into how we are going to generate more energy in an environmentally clean way. Obviously, or maybe not so obviously, the best energy you can create is the energy you do not waste. That is, clean energy is saving dirty energy and not wasting it, and those of us who have studied this believe that 30 or 40 percent of this solution ultimately is using energy in a much more efficient way, as much as inventing new ways to generate it.

That starts at home, with weatherizing your home, as you have indicated, a pretty simple thing, and there are some simple, inexpensive things you can do. There are more expensive things one can do with insulation, green building; and the green building, we just had two young men design the greenest building. They won a national award. We are kind of proud of that. It uses passive solar heating.

They can use solar cell technology now. If you want to build a new home, you can buy shingles that have the solar cells incorporated right in the shingle. There is a home about 20 miles from where we are standing in Virginia that is a net zero user of electricity, and they use massive solar heating. It is a two story, looks like a nice little home you find in any suburban place around Virginia. They use an in- ground heat pump, integrated solar panels on the roof, solar sort of passive heating through the use of the windows and tiles that collect the heat. When they generate more electricity than they use, they feed it back into the grid. That home was built for no more money than an average home. They are using zero electricity off the grid on a net basis. So a family that is committed to this can do it today using even existing technology.

But you said something I thought was very interesting, too, and that is about businesses. We are fortunate to have some visionary business leaders who are already accomplishing what we need to do.

British Petroleum, under the leadership of Sir John Brown, they decided they were going to change their energy use, and this is an oil company. This is an oil company that decided to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to actually meet the treaty goals of the Kyoto global warming treaty. They were not pessimists. They were not nay-sayers. They just decided to do it; and within 3 years, they met their Kyoto targets of a reduction in their CO2, and, importantly to their shareholders, saved something like $300 million in the process because when you do not waste energy you save yourself money.

General Electric, under the leadership of their CEO, has decided to make an enormous investment not only in the use in their CO2 emissions but in developing these new high-tech, energy-efficient appliances that all of us are going to use.

So we have some business leadership; and regrettably what we do not have, we do not have leadership here in Congress, at least in the majority, who have not joined us optimists in breaking this addiction to oil and gas. The sad fact is that oil and gas still dominate the situation here in the House of Representatives; and until something changes, we are going to follow the leadership of the business community and people around this country who want to respond to this energy crisis individually that we are seeing.

As Ms. Schwartz indicated, I just happen to have an Innovation Agenda, which is the Democratic suggestion on how we can seize the power of innovation for the country and how the Innovation Agenda is just part of a larger package that one can read if anyone is interested.

We think energy is a very important part, but it is one part of our Innovation Agenda; and page 3 of that basically is our effort to develop a new generation of innovators, and that is what we need to do. That is why we are committed to placing a highly qualified teacher in every math and science classroom, why we are committed to educate 100,000 new scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in the next 4 years, why we want to make college tuition tax deductible for the students studying math, science and engineering so we can have those minds available.

But if you look at page 8 on our Innovation Agenda, you will see our dedication to energy independence in 10 years. I will just mention two of the bullet points in the Democrats' larger agenda. We would commit to substantially reducing the use of petroleum-based fuels by rapidly expanding production and distribution of synthetic and bio-based fuels, such as ethanol derived from cellulosic sources, and by deploying new engine technologies for fuel-flexible, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and biodiesel vehicles. Now, those are different kinds of vehicles.

Coming back to what Ms. Schwartz said, we want to give consumers choices of what kind of vehicles to buy and to use. This is not a command-and-control suggestion we are making. We think we want to develop an economy so that you can decide what kind of vehicle you want to use. That might be a flex-fuel vehicle. That is a vehicle that can burn gasoline or biofuels, and Brazil has done this through great genius. Now, when you pull up to a pump in Brazil, if you have a flex- fuel vehicle, you can burn either gasoline or biofuels or ethanol, which makes you in the driver's seat literally, not the oil and gas companies. So you can compare prices and decide what to burn.

Now, the reason they have done that is Brazil basically told the auto industry to start producing these vehicles, give consumers choice, and that is what we stand for is giving consumers choice so that we are not victims of the oil and gas oligopolies in our country. We talked about fuel-flexible, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and biodiesel.

The second bullet point in our plan will create a DARPA-like initiative within the Department of Energy to provide seed money for fundamental research needed to develop high-risk, high-reward technologies and build markets for the next generation of revolutionary energy.

We do realize that there is some basic research that the government is good at that is very high-risk. It might be hard to get a bank loan on some of these cutting-edge technologies, but we have had very great success in the Defense Department with a group called DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research labs. They have done great work in the Department of Defense. We need to use that same strategy in energy, and that is why Democrats are proposing to have a similar energy advanced research program in the Department of Energy. We are very optimistic about that.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield for a moment, this is a point that is absolutely galling to me, and folks need to understand this. This Congress is pathetic, with a capital P, when it comes to energy policy. We are doing nothing significant to really reduce our dependency on oil and gas. This place is awash in oil. It is a slave to oil. It has not broken its addiction even to the political ties that bind it to the oil and gas industry. As a result, it has done nothing significant to move forward on energy.

When we have all these new technologies coming on, solar cell technology which costs 80 percent less than it did 10 years ago, those prices are coming down spectacularly, wind energy that is coming down, has come down 20 percent so that it is competitive right now today in the State of Washington with other sources, has come down 20 percent. Instead of making investment in those technologies, you know what this Congress did? It stood up and gave another multimillion dollar tax break to the oil and gas industry of your tax money, and that is boneheaded.

They did the same thing they have been doing since the 1800s. The way I described this is this Congress last year passed a great energy policy for 1890. It was visionary for 1890. It is Neanderthal in the year 2006.

When you look at when this country has made great advances, we have done it in two major challenges that our country had in the last several decades, the Manhattan Project which developed nuclear power, and it was a major investment by the United States of America because of a major challenge. The second was the original project in the space race, and we responded and were successful. The third now needs to be an energy revolution in this country.

But the fact of the matter is under this Congress and in this management of Congress, we are investing less than 15 percent of the equivalent of what we would have done in either one of those projects; and as a result, we are getting

teeny, tiny little baby steps that we are encouraging when we should have these great leaps for mankind.

You know, if this Congress was running the space race, the quote would have been, ``Another little step up the cabin of a DC-3,'' because that is about all we would have invented. Kennedy got us to the moon; this energy policy won't get us to Cleveland.

We believe we need a very significant ramp-up both in Federal research and development, basic R&D, tax credits to manufacturers, to help them manufacture fuel-efficient vehicles; tax credits to consumers to allow you to decide how to buy both a fuel-efficient car and build a fuel-efficient home; and use of the procurement policy.

We haven't talked about this tonight at all, but one of the great tools we have in our toolbox in energy policy is the Federal Government procurement power. The Federal Government is kind of the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to buying things in this economy. The Federal Government needs to start buying fuel-efficient cars, fuel-efficient air-conditioning units, and building green buildings. There is much more that we can do.

We are taking little baby steps there. The Pentagon is looking at a fuel-efficient battery. One of the competitors trying to develop this is in my district. It is called Neopower. They are building a fuel- celled battery that will actually power computers and radio devices using fuel cells. So as we ramp that up, hopefully we will have much more efficient batteries that can last much longer and not burn gasoline-generated electricity. But we are just starting.

I don't know how to categorize it other than to say that we need a revolution, and what we are getting is not even an evolution. It is almost a devolution, going back the wrong way.

I just want to point out the history of our own country is that we will succeed on this because we have succeeded.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, because of what Congress did, and President Carter, we increased our fuel efficiency at least 50 percent. And if we had simply continued on that path, we would be free of Persian Gulf oil today. We could have solved this problem if we had simply continued with that success.

But I want to close by thanking you for your leadership on this and by saying that the Democrats are optimistic on energy, Democrats believe in innovation, and Democrats believe in paying for it and not having a deficit. And we are going to do that by closing some of these giveaways to the oil and gas industry.

Thank you for your leadership.

Mr. Speaker, last week, the President of the Marshall Islands visited Bainbridge Island, Washington. In discussions with me he made a specific plea. He asked America and the U.S. Congress to finally do something about global warming. The reason he said that is that rising sea levels literally could drown his entire nation.

He basically told me that his entire nation could become the first nation state to be environmental refugees, and he said, you know, we don't hardly put any carbon dioxide in the air. You put 25 percent of all the carbon dioxide in the world into the air, and your Congress does nothing. I think he had a pretty good point.

While the science of global warming becomes unambiguous and inarguable and clear, this Congress has lined the pockets of the oil and gas companies with giant subsidies and done absolutely nothing about global warming. It is a tragedy.

You know, we have had a lot of Republicans historically to stand up for the environment, such as Teddy Roosevelt; Bill Ruckelshaus, who met with us yesterday, who said do something about global warming. We need some action instead of passivity.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, this would restore $260 million to the Public Housing Capital Fund. As Members know, this is a critical fund that delivers housing services to make sure that our public housing is up to snuff and our citizens can live in safe housing.

This is a fund that makes sure that the roofs don't leak on our citizens, air ventilation doesn't cause asthma, and we don't allow termites to infest our public housing facilities. Despite the criticality of that fund, the current bill as proposed would cut $260 million, an 11 percent slash out of this budget of this very important fund.

Mr. Chairman, we will simply restore that cut to go back to the status quo of the level of funding for the Public Housing Capital Fund.

The reason we suggest this is that our offset for this would be a small cut to the Federal building budget. It would essentially result in about a 3.5 percent cut to the Federal building budget, and what we suggest by this amendment is that in difficult times, if we are going to have to have cuts in these Federal budgets, it should first come out of where we house our Federal agencies and, second, come out of where we house our citizens.

Our citizens ought to have first claim to the money. The kids that we are trying to avoid an epidemic of asthma, some of which we believe is caused by poor housing, they ought not to be suffering right now if we have to slash some budget. If we have to delay some bureaucracy, getting an upgrade in an agency, that is really a delay that kids in public housing cannot take a slash in the health of these budgets.

I just want to point out the one thing that this public housing fund does that is so effective.

One of the problems of our folks in public housing are their energy costs. A lot of these people pay 50 percent and more of their income in housing costs, and their energy costs eats them alive. I looked at St. Paul. Over 26 percent of all the evictions there were essentially caused because of high utility costs, and one of the things this public housing fund can do is help get better weatherization, more efficient heating/cooling systems to reduce energy costs. In fact, if we reduce our energy costs by 10 percent, we will save $20 billion of these folks in public housing.

So our amendment does some things that are very common sense. It will go back to status quo. It will restore a $260 million slashed cut to public housing. It will offset that by a 3.5 percent cut to the Federal budget. Let us give first priority to our citizens and their housing and second priority to a small cut to housing some of our Federal agencies. It is the right thing to do. It is common sense.

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

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

Well, while I respect my friend's argument, it is quite artful, but not every dollar spent by the Federal Government goes to terrorism, as the suggestion would be.

Let us be real here in this discussion. We will leave $7.44 billion in the Federal building fund, and in that fund the vast majority of those dollars are spent for housing Federal office workers, not Border Patrol, and to suggest that somehow that if this cut takes place we are going to be bombarded by immigrants is a great stretch, artful perhaps, but a tremendous stretch.

What we are really talking about, we are talking about delaying perhaps for a year expanded Federal bureaucracies and the square footage they have in their Federal offices and office buildings scattered all across America. We are talking about suggesting that that delay in expanding the square footage for Federal office workers, as hard as they work and I respect them a bunch, is something that we ought to figure is a common-sense thing to do, instead of cutting $260 million when people are living in substandard housing that has an $18 billion backlog.

So, let us look at the real life and not get wrapped around the argument that anything that changes a Republican budget somehow smacks of being soft

on terrorism. That is a great stretch, and I do not think that dog will hunt.

We are talking about a small reduction of 3.5 percent in a $7.7 billion budget for office budgets. Let me just give you an example of what we are talking about.

There is $4.3 billion for rental space, $277 million in current funding in this budget. Maybe a little bit of that could be deferred. There is $2 billion for building operations, $119 million, 6 percent more than cut funding. That is common sense.

Let us give first priority to our housing.

Mr. Chairman, I request a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, the Internet, the World Wide Web truly are the most magnificent intellectual achievements since the invention of the printing press. And tonight the U.S. Congress, if it does not do its job, will severely let down that marvelous achievement of the human intellect because today, at least until last August, engrained in the DNA of the Internet was a principle of nondiscrimination and freedom among all sources of information on the Internet.

Unless we pass the Markey amendment and preserve net neutrality, that basic DNA is going to be subject to mutation, to discrimination.

We have a simple proposition in the Markey amendment, and that is just as all men are created equal, all bits are created equal and we must treat all bits of information fairly, accurately, and without discrimination.

If this amendment does not pass, we will for the first time, for the first time allow the infection of discrimination to discriminate amongst bits of information. I note this because the opponents of this amendment, the Markey amendment, are saying we have to get these entities that use these services to pay. No doubt. And under the marketing ability, you will be able to charge for the distribution of bits. But what we should not allow is to discriminate amongst those who in fact enter the on-ramp of the Internet information superhighway.

We will continue to allow people to charge depending on how many bits you send through the pipe. But what we should never allow, and until last August, we have not allowed, is the discrimination about who is sending those bits across this information super highway.

Preserve the basic DNA of the Internet. Pass the Markey amendment and preserve freedom of access of information.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to bring your attention to a technology that will revolutionize our electricity resources. This Congress has recognized that energy challenges need to be explored through alternative, renewable and clean energy sources to enable a diverse national energy resource plan. However, the rhetoric of supporting alternate fuels hasn't been met with the policies enacted by the House of Representatives. The Energy and Water Appropriations Act of Fiscal Year 2007 fails to recognize an area of energy exploration that other nations are well-ahead of us in tapping--ocean wave energy.

There is an increasing need for reliable, non-polluting sources of economic electrical power throughout the world. The Electrical Power Research Institute, EPRI, has carried out a comprehensive economic study of wave generation and has concluded that the economics of wave generation are at least as favorable as for wind generation, EPRI study

shows that tidal is as favorable as wind and that wave would be as favorable if the same resources for wind had been invested which has now achieved economic competitiveness and is undergoing extensive worldwide growth.

It is estimated that if 0.2 percent of the oceans' untapped energy could be harnessed, it could provide power sufficient for the entire world.

Wave Energy has several advantages over other forms of renewable energy such as wind and solar including higher energy densities, enabling devices to extract more power from a smaller volume at much lower costs (e.g., the density of water is about 1000 times that of air).

The availability of wave energy is in the 80-90 percent range, whereas wind availability is in the 30-45 percent range depending on location. Wave energy is also more predictable, with energy forecast times of greater than 10 hours, thus enabling more straightforward and reliable integration into the electric utility grid to provide reliable power.

Unfortunately, these developments have once again been ignored by Congress. While the FY 07 Energy and Water appropriations bill provides just over $24 billion for the Department of Energy, it fails to provide any funding for the ocean energy program.

Ocean wave energy extraction technology is currently in the preliminary stages of development, at the same stage that wind turbines were approximately 15-20 years ago. Several technologies are being developed, and yet no clear superior engineering solution has been established. I urge my fellow colleagues to understand to recognize any opportunity to support this new endeavor and make the United States a leader in tapping into this alternative, renewable energy source.

I am very pleased that this bill fully funds the American Competitiveness Initiative which would strengthen basic research by increasing funding for the DOE Office of Science, for a total of $4 billion. In addition, the bill supports the Advance Energy initiative by increasing funding for a variety of clean energy technologies, including biomass, hydrogen, solar, wind and clean coal. However, again, it includes no funding or support for ocean wave energy.

The new Energy Policy Act of 2005 adopted into law recognized for the first time the value of wave power to the US economy. Ocean energy research and development was authorized by this Congress. It should be supported and funded by this Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an amendment to the fiscal year Energy and Water appropriations bill which would stop Enron from once again cheating northwest consumers. I have worked with my colleagues and with Snohomish Public Utility District, SnoPUD, to ensure that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission plays fair in the case between Enron Power Marketing Inc. and SnoPUD. For too long, Enron has been harassing utilities for termination fees through the FERC administrative litigation system.

The Enron Corporation has already wronged consumers through its manipulation of the energy market during the energy crisis of 2001. It wasn't bad enough that Enron already collected an astonishing $1.8 billion through their market-manipulation schemes, including millions from SnoPUD. Today, Enron is trying to bilk another $122 million from Washington State consumers.

Enron argues that they deserve a fee for the termination of their contract for electricity that they never delivered to Snohomish Public Utility District, SnoPUD. Snohomish PUD's contention is that because the power was never delivered, and because these contracts with Enron were entered into when the company was illegally manipulating the electricity market to inflate rates, these contracts are invalid.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment to the fiscal year 2007 Energy and Water Appropriations Act would prohibit the FERC from enforcing any decision that deems a termination payment is due to Enron from SnoPUD during fiscal year 2007. It's Congress's responsibility to ensure protection for consumers like those being served by Snohomish PUD from companies like the Enron Corporation. With this amendment, Congress will be deciding to stand with Enron, or stand with ratepayers.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment neither clarifies nor modifies any provision of the Federal Power Act. Nor does it ratify any action previously taken by FERC. The amendment would merely prevent entities that engaged in fraudulent and deceptive trading practices during the western states energy crisis, as determined by FERC, from profiting by their misconduct by collecting termination fees.

Madam Speaker, my oldest son Jack is a carpenter, and one of the reasons I am so proud of him is he is such a hard worker. It doesn't matter how hard it is raining out in Seattle, he is out there swinging the hammer.

That is one reason we should not respect the current pathetic management team of the Republican Party who is on a course to make this Congress the least productive Congress in American history, for one reason, because we don't do any work.

Of the 5 months that we have been here, we are on a track to work about 38 days. If you have an employee that out of 5 months does 38 days of work, what do you think you ought to do? Unemployment. A pink slip for the folks who are not running this Congress.

In Truman's time, we had the do-nothing Congress. This is the do- less-than-nothing Congress. If you want to know why there is no progress on Iraq, why there is no progress on energy, why there is no progress on helping the folks after Katrina, it is because the people here in this management stay home and don't do any work.

It is time to start swinging a hammer, and, to do that, it is time to get new management in this House and get Congress working for the American people again.

Mr. Speaker, is it too much to ask for us to protect the last remaining 5 percent of the Alaskan coast? Is that too much to ask? To give to the Creator his pristine creation?

We do not put oil derricks in Yellowstone National Park. We do not put them in Zion National Park. We do not put them in Mount Rainier National Park, and we should not industrialize this precious Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

There is a pattern here. There is a pattern. Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were just convicted of fraud on what Enron did to us. And this administration and this Congress let Enron take billions of dollars from ratepayers because they were in fact in the pockets of these energy companies.

Now we have a similar situation. I will never forget when Dick Cheney looked at us and we begged for help from him to stop Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling from taking money from ratepayers, and you know what he told us, he said you Democrats just don't understand markets.

Now I guess we just don't understand energy either. We understand that we should protect the national jewels in the crown of this country. Vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, we have a very commonsense amendment that would simply say that we will not be using funds in FERC to allow FERC to rule in favor of Enron against civil utilities and several companies around the country who signed contracts with Enron.

We know what happened in Enron. They were unable to provide electricity. As a result, there was a termination of contract.

We want to make sure that FERC would not issue a ruling while discussions are going on with the parties that would require these utilities and companies to pay Enron. So it is quite a simple amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, we will certainly be pleased to work with the Chair if there is any tinkering necessary.

I would yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen), who has done a great job on this issue for years.

I want to thank the Chair for his accommodation of this issue. I do not want these termination clauses to yield an unjust result. This will give us time to move forward.

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

Offered By: Mr. Inslee

Amendment No. 10: Page 47, after line 2, insert the

following new section:

Sec. 503. None of the funds made available by this Act

shall be used by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to

enforce any claim for a termination payment (as defined in

any jurisdictional contract) asserted by any regulated entity

the Commission has found to have violated the terms of its

market-based rate authority by engaging in manipulation of

market rules or exercise of market power in the Western

Interconnection during the period January 1, 2000, to June

20, 2001.

Mr. Speaker, here we go again. First, we had the clean skies bill, that got more pollution; then we had the deficit reduction bill, and we had more deficit; now we have the forest recovery bill, which assures that we

will be using less science and less common sense by the American people to make decisions of where and how to do forest recovery plans.

This has largely been a red-herring debate to date. This is not a question whether we are going to have forest recovery plans and places to replant and places to harvest deadwood. What it is a debate about is where we do these recovery plans and how we do these recovery plans. This bill, as currently structured, guarantees two things: We will at times do them in the wrong place and we will at times do them in the wrong way.

It does that by a repeated continuation of the terrible habit this Congress has gotten into, which is to repeal our environmental protection laws. And that is why every single environmental group dedicated to the preservation of our forests is very strongly opposed to this bill.

Now, how is it going to be the wrong place and the wrong way? First, it will assure these are sometimes done in the wrong way by gutting the insistence that we use science. Right now, existing rules require bureaucracies to use science when they make decisions; to not go by some cookie-cutter approach that some bureaucrat in Washington sets out and says you can do this, that, and the other all across the Rocky Mountains, without ever stepping foot in the area where they are going to do this harvesting and replanting. Existing law requires that.

This law, through a quite clever shell game, guts that requirement that Americans will use science when these decisions are made. What it does is it essentially says that NEPA requirements, the National Environmental Protection Act requirements, to use science when we make these decisions where to cut, which trees to cut, and how to replant. And it does that on page 24, in a very clever way.

It doesn't say we gut NEPA. It doesn't say we repeal the National Environmental Protection Act. What it says, and I quote, ``Satisfaction of NEPA requirements. The following activities are deemed to satisfy the requirements of section 102 of the National Environmental Policy Act.'' What they say is, what you do here just wipes away the requirements of NEPA because we deem it complied with.

We care about our forests in Washington State. The Kettle roadless area in eastern Washington, the Eagle Cap roadless area in western Washington. We want to insist that our Federal agencies use science. This bill removes one of the fundamental pillars of making these decisions. It removes science. So it does something to make sure that we do something the wrong way.

But it also does something in the wrong place, and I will get to that when my amendment comes to preserve the roadless areas of our forests.

Madam Chairman, the people of the State of Washington deserve decisions about the Eagle Gap Wilderness area to be made based on science and public input, not the whims of President George Bush.

Why do we rush to give this President, the President with the worst environmental record in American history, more discretion, more leeway, less science, less public input? That is a bit like giving Bonnie and Clyde a relaxation of the rules against bank robbery.

There is no reason, given the record of this administration, to trust these administration policies with our national forests. But this bill will give a blank check to the whims of the political decisionmakers in the White House, not the foresters on the ground.

This, in fact, strips, strips us of the requirement that we have a site-specific decision to go out and look at these properties. Now I will tell you how bad it is. I will tell you how George Bush's administration has not respected science. When Mr. Donato, a researcher at Oregon State University, reported his paper in a well-respected journal, Science Magazine, a peer-reviewed journal, do you know what happened? Do you know what his BLM did? They canceled his contract.

That is how the Bush administration treats science. They cancel your contract if you come out with science, with an answer that is not apparently approved by Carl Rove and his political minions.

Madam Chairman, we should not be on this floor giving George Bush more authority to make more bad decisions about the national forests. Reject this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment, simply put, will fix a problem with this legislation that otherwise would allow a giant loophole in our rule that now we have been fighting to maintain for some period of time to protect our roadless areas in our national forests. These roadless areas are the most pristine areas of the national forests. We have made a decision, 96 percent of Americans who have commented on the roadless areas have concluded that they want these areas managed for the clean water they provide, the recreation they provide, the aesthetics they provide rather than timber harvest through log road building.

My amendment would essentially say that we are not going to tax, we are not going to subsidize log road building anymore in these roadless areas. There are three reasons we need to do this, and they are two fiscal and one environmental. I will address first the two fiscal reasons we need to adopt this amendment.

First, this Chamber went on record in an amendment some time ago that said we are going to stop subsidizing roads with taxpayer dollars. And we essentially are going to stop, by this amendment, stop subsidizing logging roads in some of our steeper areas. These roadless areas are commonly found in our steeper, higher elevations. They are at the tops of our mountains, and they are the most expensive places to build logging roads. They are the places where the taxpayers get soaked the most in our subsidization programs.

We would say essentially that you cannot use this legislation, in our amendment, to continue that log road-building program which ends up putting the tab on the American taxpayer. This is a fiscal reason.

The second fiscal reason is it makes no sense now, it makes no sense to make a misprioritization from, instead of doing the $10 billion of backlog we already have to repair and maintain our existing mileage, enough to, I think it is 336,000 miles of existing roads, with a $10 billion backlog already. Uncle Sam already has a $10 billion commitment to get those roads and keep them from washing out. Eighty percent of these roads are not even fit. You cannot even drive your car on them.

Instead of letting people get recreational value, to drive and go up to go hunting and go fishing and take your kids on a picnic by the creek, 80 percent of these roads are falling apart. Instead of taking care of their interests, this bill would subsidize the logging industry to go in and log as a priority. Now, they have tried to fix this problem, saying these will be temporary roads. There is no such thing as

a temporary road. We have 60,000 miles of roads that should have been decommissioned already but aren't.

So there are two sound fiscal reasons to adopt this amendment, but the third is an environmental reason. We depend on these roadless areas, the Kettle River Range in Washington, the Eagle Cap roadless area in Washington, we depend on them for clean water. We depend on them for habitat. And the fact of the matter is when you build a road into a roadless area, you double the chance of fire. And that, as a science, is well proven. You may get some timber out, but you double the chance of fire, and you increase areas of road that can erode and silt our streams.

So two fiscal reasons and one environmental reason that commends this.

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

Mr. Chairman, there are two problems. One, although I respect the drafters of this bill, the bill does not respect the clearly expressed sentiment of the American people, because 96 percent of the American people said don't build roads; temporary, permanent, transitory, big, small, little. Ninety-six percent of the Americans who expressed their opinion on this issue said don't do what this bill does, which allows building roads in these designated roadless areas.

This ignores the clearly expressed intention of the people, and that ought to be enough in itself to endorse this particular amendment.

Now, I come back to when you look at these roadless areas, they have value that is not in this accounting, which is to keep the silt out of our streams. I respect that we might put a line in a book somewhere that will be over in the Library of Congress that says, presto change- o, these are all going to be ``temporary.'' There is also a line in a book over in the Library of Congress that says 60,000 miles that have been out there for decades are ``temporary.'' In real life, this guts roadless area rules. We need this amendment if this bill is going to pass.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, it is difficult to understand how anyone would oppose an amendment that simply says the administration should have what is not too onerous a burden, to certify that under the best available science this is not going to degrade that which we are trying to achieve, which is forest regeneration and suppression of fire. Is that asking too much of the Bush administration, to simply say if you are going to have a program, that you will tell the American people that it won't make things worse? We don't think that is asking too much.

And there is a point during this debate I think needs to be made, and that is that when there is a fire, it is a human instinct to get in there and want to fix things. We are fixers. We believe that we are the smarter species on the planet.

But if you look at the beautiful forests we have, if you look at the Eagle CAP wilderness, the Kettle River range in Washington State, you look at our national forests and you look at those forests, those forests are there without the intervention of President George Bush. They have evolved over decades and centuries and eons, and they are beautiful and they are healthy and they give us picnics for our kids, fishing and hunting for our cousins and our families, and clean water to drink, without the administration of George Bush going in with their chain saws and deciding what they decide to cut.

Now, given that historical fact that these forests have done very, very well without us for tens of thousands of

years, we don't think it is too much to ask that before President Bush gets out his chain saw, that he is required to certify, in the best available science, this won't make things worse.

Now I understand why they object to it, because they object to the science and the Donato study in the Science magazine from Oregon State University, they objected to it. They didn't like it. It didn't fit their political preconceptions so they put it on ice, put it on review, canceled it. Use whatever language you want.

We are saying that the science needs to be asked to be listened to, just like the American people should be. This is a commonsense amendment. I commend Mr. Udall.