Floor Statements

If the gentleman will continue to yield, just for a moment. I would suggest, too, that this is for the administration's own benefit. It is certainly for our citizens' benefit, but it is also for the administration's own benefit. When Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler, found out they were putting rebuilt engines in their Mustangs instead of new ones, he admitted that his organization had made a massive mistake and requested forgiveness of the American people. Frankly, it was granted. But it is difficult for the father of the Marine I had lunch with, whose son is now in harm's way in Baghdad, to grant forgiveness when even yet the President will not shoot straight about, number one, the cost of the Iraq war; or, two, not help us find out why we were given such massively inaccurate information. That just continues to fester a wound in the body public of this democracy. It would be to this administration's benefit to come clean about this information.

And another thing that we want our conservative friends across the aisle to share a belief in is accountability. We hear a lot about accountability and personal responsibility on this floor, but when a war is started based on a false premise, as in this case and only one person has lost his job as a result of that, and that is a radio personality, nobody in this administration has lost their job, nobody has had their hand slapped, nobody has had their pay docked, nobody has had a single word from the President of the United States castigating them for sending our people, many of whom are not coming home from a war based on a falsity, this President needs to demand accountability from this government. As of today, he has given us zero accountability and only marginal help at finding the truth.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I think it is important in this discussion to say we are as hopeful as credibility can allow for the ultimate outcome in Iraq. We are hopeful that this constitution in Iraq will bear benefits, that a stable government will develop in Iraq, that the Kurds will enter a federation and not end up in a civil war. We are hopeful that will happen.

But what we are saying is we need the administration to be honest with us and the American people so we can deal with challenges at home, one of which is this jobs issue. We could be creating thousands of good-paying jobs by creating new infrastructure, but we cannot do that because this administration has not been forthright with us about the true cost of the Iraq war. One of the reasons that we are not growing jobs in this country in transportation infrastructure is because the President has refused to be honest with us about the cost of the Iraq war.

If the gentleman will yield, I would offer a theory perhaps as to why the administration has in numerous ways expressed kind of a tone deafness to the economic outcry to people going on concerned about their jobs.

You saw the administrative report basically saying that outsourcing was not a problem at all, which the White House then tried to disavow, even though the President signed the report which said that, which I saw in the Washington Post today. You saw various efforts by the administration to teach businesses how not to pay overtime to American employees, which I thought was a little bit not what most people would expect of our government to do and use our taxpayer dollars, to teach people not to pay legally-owed overtime. That is distressing.

So there is a lack of understanding, and I am not sure the administration understands the huge black cloud of doubt and worry out there, because the American people understand that even though there might be some good numbers out there in various economic indicators, the fact of the matter is, for the first time since Herbert Hoover was President, this President has not created one single net job in America, not one single net job in America.

We have lost over 2.5 million jobs. We have got to get 2.5 million jobs back before we can even claim that one new job has been created on a net basis in this country. This has created enormous anxiety, as it should, in our Nation, that then affects the people.

Offered By: Mr. Inslee

Amendment No. 3: Section 4(5)(A), insert after ``knowingly

and willfully'' the following: ``or negligently''.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for yielding. I appreciate him bringing this important matter up for discussion because I think it strikes at the very heart of American democracy, which is a fundamental tenet that people have to trust the system, to have confidence in the ultimate results of what has happened here in Washington, DC.

Unfortunately, due to ignoring some basic tenets that people have to trust the cards and who is dealing the cards before they are going to trust the outcome of the game, people have doubts about what is going on in Washington, DC right now; and my colleague has brought up two reasons why those doubts have been fanned, and those reasons have to do with being centered around this secretive energy task force which has been shielded from public attention, that has been cloaked by secrecy all the way now to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now involved in a situation which I believe can diminish people's trust, not only in the executive branch in government but in the judicial branch in government. I would like to address those concerns if I can.

First, I want to talk about the judicial branch of government and why I believe right now it is at risk of undergoing some loss of trust in the American people associated with this energy task force situation. Perhaps my colleague has spoken about this already, but let me address what my understanding of the situation is, and what I know about this comes from the newspapers, so I am going to relay what I have read about this situation.

As we know, the Vice President convened a task force to develop the administration policy, official policy of the executive authority of the United States of America, and he asked people to come in secretly and who came in was secret. When they met was secret. What they talked about was secret. What policies were developed as a result of that input was secret. Who got the tax breaks as a result of those discussions is secret. Who got the public subsidies from American taxpayers was secret. What deals were cut to give American taxpayers' money away to multi-million dollar corporations was

secret. It was secret then, it is secret now, and apparently the executive branch wants to keep that secret to infinity, to eternity.

Now, this has caused extreme angst and concern of my constituents, and I hear about this problem frequently. So what has happened as a result of that abnormal, unusual, unjustified secrecy is some citizens have challenged that, rightfully so, I believe, in court. At least one significant court, a court of appeals, has ruled that this veil of secrecy should be lifted.

Appropriately, that matter is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. The executive branch has appealed. They have the right to appeal that, and we respect their right to appeal that so that the Supreme Court can decide the legal issue, and it is important for the Supreme Court to decide this legal issue, and we have no problem with the executive branch making whatever arguments they believe are appropriate to have this matter dealt with.

However, when it is dealt with, it has to be done in a manner that is consistent with American jurisprudence and consistent with Americans' expectation that the carving in the marble over the Supreme Court is going to be more than a carving because the carving says, ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' and Americans expect equal justice under law; and when they expect equal justice under law, they expect that everyone will be treated equally, that there will not be personal relationships that could possibly influence the decision of the highest court, the bastion of liberty, the single most important court in the world that has been the bastion of preserving our personal individual liberties since the beginning of this country.

Now, I am going to display a little bit of pride in the American judicial system for a minute. I am an old lawyer, a small-town practicing lawyer; and I really, truly believe that the American independent judicial system is one of, if not the principal, the reasons we have personal liberties in America today, because the Supreme Court of the United States historically has been a guardian of personal liberty, has protected the first amendment. It has protected our rights of freedom of speech. It has protected our rights of freedom of religion. It has protected our rights that we enjoy in reality, not just in paper, because you know what? The Soviet Union had the same bill of rights we do. They just did not have the courts to enforce them.

We have a judicial system that is independent, and rightfully, from the political winds that blow, as much as we can make it, so that it will make decisions based on freedom rather than politics. So I believe very strongly in how important a clean, even-handed, fair, independent judiciary is to American democracy; and I believe right now that is at risk, that Americans' trust in that system is at risk.

Now, I will not mention one decision that had a little controversy associated with it at the beginning of this administration. That is history. We do not want to talk about that, but today we have a situation where the Vice President, whose name is attached to this specific litigation, to decide whether or not his secret plan will remain secret, rather his cabal of people he got into the room, who he will not tell us about, will always remain secret and Americans will never know about it. Clearly, he has an interest in the resolution politically and a great sense personally in the resolution of this issue, and I respect the Vice President's right and the executive branch's right to have this matter heard on a fair basis by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But we know that what has happened is in a fairly short time, before this matter will be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court, we are told in press reports that the Vice President of the United States invited one of the nine people, the only nine people in the world that can affect his secret task force or the secrecy of his task force, of only nine people in the world who can help him win his victory to keep this information from the American public, he invited one of them to come down to a duck hunting club in the South, I believe it was Louisiana, invited him, gave him free, I believe, I am told, a flight down on a jet to this duck hunting club where they could hobnob in secrecy for several days, where the American public was not invited into their discussions, where they did whatever people rightfully do in duck blinds across the world, which I respect and admire and am somewhat jealous of, which is great, and we admire collegiality.

We admire people enjoying each other's company, but we cannot allow Americans to doubt the integrity of the United States Supreme Court, and when a Vice President of the United States, whose name is attached to the very litigation that we are associated with, whose political fate is somewhat tied up ultimately in the outcome of this litigation, who has the entire country focusing on the energy policy rightfully of this country, that is going to be decided by his duck hunting buddy, Americans are not wholly confident about that situation.

We have a concept in the law called ``an appearance of fairness,'' and I do not mean any personal disrespect for the particular Justice involved here. I do not mean to demean his stature in any way, but under the circumstances of this case, it is not up to the standards of the American judicial system to have that situation exist while one of the nine people involved, where there is no further appeal, this is not just the district court where you can say well if the one district court makes a mistake later on, some appellate judge is going to clean it up. There is no more cleaning up after the U.S. Supreme Court. This is it.

That is why I believe that it was a mistake of significant order for the Vice President of the United States to invite someone who will be deciding his case on this vacation shortly before this decision is going to be decided, and I can tell you that this has not helped restore the integrity and maintain the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court on the high levels of expectations that we should have, and this is not a personal issue. It is a matter of integrity of the American judicial system.

Now, this is all tied up and it kind of flows from the concept of secrecy. I mean, what we found is that in public life openness and sunshine is the antivirus agent and the best antivirus agent for things that are not healthy in American democracy; and what the Vice President has found is his insistence of not allowing public disclosure of this information has resulted in this controversy, which is most unfortunate.

We have legitimate policy disagreements with this administration, about energy policy. We believe that the administration's energy policy is a tremendous energy policy for 2 centuries ago, in that it was very successful in handing out tremendous special interest breaks to large corporations, many in the fossil fuel business, that are not sufficiently visionary to deal with what we need to really break our addiction to Saudi Arabian oil, to stop global warming, and to grow new jobs in this country.

And we have a better policy, we believe.

But before we get to the policy, this administration needs to come clean with the American people about what type of back-door, closed- room dealing went on to create this proposal by them. And this administration should not infect the judicial system. The executive branch here should not infect the judicial system here by carrying this secret policy all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and thereby reducing not only the respect for the executive branch but for the judicial branch as well.

I think at this point it would be well advised for the Supreme Court to consider this as a court, not as an individual judge or justice to resolve what its policies should be. I have heard the justification by the particular justice involved here. He has suggested that social interaction of one nature or another is to be expected in Washington, D.C. People are going to bump into each other at charity banquets, receptions and galas, and he is entirely correct. Those things will happen and they are expected, and I have never heard that anybody would gripe if this particular justice would have bumped into the Vice President at the former Members of Congress reception I was at the other night. I do not think anybody would have been raising a hue and cry about that issue.

The fact of the matter here is that we are talking about a very visible, important, and national public policy decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the gentleman who is the very person whose conduct is in question in this litigation spent several days, with very few other people, in a duck blind in Louisiana before this major national decision will be made by this sitting justice, based on discussions he has had with this Vice President, with no public disclosure whatsoever. And I am here to say that is wrong.

Republicans believe that is wrong, Independents believe that is wrong, Democrats believe that is wrong, and most importantly those who believe in the integrity of the American judicial system believe that is wrong. And I am one of them. I walk by the U.S. Supreme Court every day on my way to work. It is a beautiful white building. And the reason it is beautiful is it has maintained the trust of the American people that they will get a fair deal ultimately in the U.S. Supreme Court. The minute that they cannot believe that we have got big problems in American democracy.

I am encouraging the executive to rethink this entire secrecy policy and the U.S. Supreme Court to consider it as well, and I appreciate the gentleman bringing this to our attention.

And let me say why I think this is so important. This is not important to Democrats, this is important to all Americans, Republicans, Independents, Green Party, you name it. Again, the reason is this is the people's House, the House of Representatives. We like to believe we do a good, and we do a good job some of the time at least, when we win our battles anyway, but we have to understand that the way people set up this country is that they had a peculiar genius and they understood to protect individual liberty they were going to need a separate entity that could stand alone and could even stand against sometimes very passionate emotional issues for individual liberty. That in our system of justice has been, I believe, a major tenet of the success of American democracy.

Brown vs. Board of Education came from the Supreme Court. It did not come from the House of Representatives. The protection of people's civil liberties and their religious expression came from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has enforced the Bill of Rights in a lot of ways. And unless the Supreme Court remains inviolate and enjoys the popular support of the American people to understand they are going to get a fair shake, then those individual liberties are in danger.

So I think this is much bigger than the energy task force. Although this is important, the issue of secrecy, but what is more important is the basic trust of the American people in that white marble building there that I believe is at risk in this very, very high profile decision. That is why I believe the Supreme Court should make a decision as a group on this, not as individual justices, because they as a group have a stake in this particular controversy.

Again, I do not blame the Supreme Court. I think this was a mistake by the Vice President to initiate this controversy both in the secrecy aspect of it and the effort to have these out of court contacts with the person who will be deciding the case. So we hope that those things are remedied.

Mr. Chairman, this bill is consistent with an idea expressed by a former Member of this Chamber who did pretty well for himself, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln said that the Patent Office adds the flame of interest to the light of creativity. And that is why we need to improve the effectiveness of our Patent Office. We need to do so because what we all recognize in this Chamber is one answer to the $64,000 question of how we are going to grow jobs in this country, is we are going to do this by playing to our American unique strength; and the uniquely American strength is we are the best innovators, we are the best technologists, we are the best creators for new devices the world has ever seen. And we need to play to this unique American strength in our strategy on how to deal with the development of the global economy. And this bill, although it will be little noted, it should be long remembered in our ability to play to that strength because we have people in every district in this country who today are working on inventions who will have the added flame of interest to their light of creativity.

Let me give the Members an example. I have got some folks this afternoon who are working on a potential drug in Bothell, Washington, that could potentially actually cure in a meaningful way one type of diabetes. Those folks who are laboring over their computers and bunsen burners today deserve an American Patent Office that will process patents in a timely fashion, which we simply do not have now. We do not want to see the time period move from a horrendous 2-year delay today up to a 4- or 6-year delay in 5 or 6 years.

So I want to show my appreciation for the chairman and the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), who have worked on this to get this bill to the floor. It is one answer to how we are going to really compete in a global economy. Let us play to the American strength. Let us improve the Patent office. Let us grow jobs in this country.

If the gentleman will yield, there is some additional information he may be interested in that I

have read in press accounts. Again, these are press accounts because our government to date has not shared this information with the public; but not only did this administration allow these people to leave without being fully interrogated by the FBI but the press accounts that we have read stated that while everybody else was grounded from traveling, and we know how many people had to drive across America to get home for a week or so after September 11, that this administration actually cleared a special jet that flew around the country as one of the only few planes flying in America at that time to pick up members of the bin Laden family to shepherd them out of this country as soon as possible. So not only did we not fully question these folks, we actually accommodated them flying around while John Q. Citizen could not fly himself to get from Dubuque back to Seattle.

Let me also indicate that to my knowledge, and again we do not have full information from our administration to date, but to our knowledge these people have never been interrogated by the FBI, even today, about what happened. And now we have a war in Iraq, rather than adequate research and interrogation of Saudi citizens today as to what happened on September 11.

I feel very strongly that these are just some of the questions that our government has a duty to answer. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about that is that this afternoon, I had a very painful discussion with a family in Bremerton, Washington, with whom I have been working for about a week or two now whose son and husband has been missing in Iraq, a soldier in Iraq. I have been working with this family to try to do what we could to assuage their concerns and make sure that we were doing everything we could to bring him home. Today I had to talk with that family, and they found out this morning that their son and husband would never be returning to them.

Unfortunately, all of us probably in every district have had these tough times with families.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, because he is bringing up moral authority, which is very important; and we were talking about the families we have been working with who have lost their sons and daughters in Iraq, and there is a moral obligation by the United States Government to come forward and answer some of these questions that we have been asking tonight. And the gentleman mentioned something about reading and some folks may find some reading material of interest. I want to refer to people about a moral question that our government owes to the American people, and that is the question of how this war was started based on what, according to Mr. Kay, was a false premise.

The people of this country, the families who have servicepeople serving in Iraq, those who have lost members of their families, they deserve a clear, cogent, and complete answer of how a war was started based on a false premise about what the status of weapons was in Iraq. And the gentleman mentioned things he was reading. I read something extremely disturbing to me this weekend. It was printed in the Knight Ridder newspapers. I read it in the Seattle Times February 10, an article entitled ``Doubts and Dissent Removed from Public Report on Iraq. Secret version President Bush received was more cautious about threat.''

We know at this point, according to Mr. Kay, our expert in the field and now even according to the President apparently, that the premise that gave rise to this war was false about the status of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And that is disturbing enough. It is it disturbing for our soldiers and sailors. It is disturbing of our standing in the world, starting a war on a false premise. But this article was more disturbing to me because the conclusion and premise of this article was not only was this premise false but that the Government of the United States of America in a sense distorted in significant ways the nature of intelligence that it had available to it before the war started. For instance, and again this is in the newspaper, and I cannot vouch for its authenticity. It makes reference to some intelligence reports. This is not coming from myself. It is coming from the Seattle Times and the Knight Ridder newspaper. But they made reference to a statement essentially by the President that there is no doubt, and that is a quote from this President, that the President of the United States looked at the American people and said there is no doubt, no doubt, that Iraq had some of the most lethal weapons systems devised by man before this war started.

But this article disclosed that the intelligence reports given to the President of the United States showed there was tremendous doubt about this situation. And I will quote from this article: ``Whereas the President of the United States was essentially saying there is no doubt that Iraq had reconstituted, in the words of the Vice President, a nuclear program.'' Listen to what the intelligence report said, according to this article, that was given to the President of the United States. This was an intelligence report prepared by the State Department's intelligence arm, which is called the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as the INR.

This is a quote. That report said ``the activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.'' The report goes on to say, ``INR is unwilling to project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening.''

So while the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, was telling the world and American soldiers and sailors and citizens that there was no doubt that this country had a meaningful, real, and contemporaneous nuclear program, our own intelligence services, at least one of them, was telling him they did not think so. This was not told to the American people. And even if one believes today that this war was totally justified based on the civil rights of the Iraqi citizens, and I respect people who have that view, even if one believes that, it is a moral wrong not to share this information with the American people and the U.S. Congress when this debate is going on.

I have one more point I want to be sure I make, but I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, let me make a point, because I think it is important. It is not just this nuclear threat. As the gentlemen know, Condoleezza Rice made repeated references to the mushroom cloud, which is a most disturbing image to all of us having suffered through September 11, and a real potential threat from Iran and North Korea. But it is not just the nuclear threat, but the American people were not given the full scoop in this regard.

The gentlemen will recall when the President and others made repeated references to the unmanned aerial vehicles that they told us was a threat to the continental United States, that Iraq could fly over American cities and spray biological material over the United States and none of us can always ever eliminate any threat. Today somebody may be planning to do that today as we speak. I do not want to be Pollyanna-ish about this, but the President told us that our intelligence services were telling us that was going on.

According to this article, let me tell the gentlemen what the United States Air Force was telling the President of the United States. What it said was: ``The Air Force does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare, CBW agents. The small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability.'' We were told that Iraq was developing these weapons that could fly over Philadelphia and spray biological and anthrax over it when the Air Force was telling the President of the United States they did not believe that was the case.

Let me finish one more point. During our national debate, I respected the President of the United States' statement that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and a thug and was massively abusive to his own people, and perhaps he rightfully argued that he believed preemptive action was appropriate. That is an argument we would respect and listen to. But during this national debate, before this President sent our citizens to die in the sands of Iraq, he did not owe us 30 percent of the truth. He did not owe us 75 percent of the truth. He owed us the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Hans Blix, who was defamed mightily by this administration prior to this war, I think said it best when he got this information. He said, ``We deserve more than what a car salesman might give.

We deserve the whole truth.''

If these reports are accurate, again, I have not seen these, but I read about them in the newspaper, if these reports are accurate, we need to get to the bottom of what happened here. That is why this commission that the President has appointed needs to take it upon itself not only to look at the bureaucracy at the Central Intelligence Agency, but they need to know why the President of the United States and his administration was not entirely forthcoming about the intelligence in this regard.

Mr. Speaker, last night while I was enjoying sumptuous airline fare on the red-eye to come out here to vote on this, the lady sitting next to me was reading a book called ``Nickel and Dimed.'' It is a book about people who are struggling; who are employed, but who are struggling to keep their souls and their families together in today's economically challenged times. And nobody, nobody who has read this book would vote for this rule.

The reason is that we can quote all the rosy statistics that we can, but the fact of the matter is if we leave this floor and go out to the food banks in our districts, in every district in America, the food banks are jammed, the lines are long, people are still having problems feeding their children.

As I was talking to a business owner the other day in Seattle, he says, I hear these statistics, but I do not see the customers. The fact of the matter is, we still have people in pain, and this rule keeps them in that economically devastated condition.

There are two reasons it does this: one, it guts the effort we had on a bipartisan basis in the Senate and at least a little bit here on this floor when, in a democratic process, we voted with the majority to stop the President of the United States from stealing people's time with their families by gutting overtime protection.

Over 8 million Americans are going to lose the right to overtime, and, more importantly, lose the right to control their own time with their families if this rule passes. That is wrong. It is a violation of the democratic spirit for us to vote to stop the President from taking family time away from their families, with people going into a dark room and stripping that protection out. It is wrong, and we should fix it right here.

But second is the unemployment. We have heard that we have had some modestly encouraging news, that there has been some jobs created in the recent past, and that is great. But the fact of the matter is, there have been 2.4 million jobs lost during this administration's tenure. And the way I figure it, if we look at the jobs that have been created, we have only got about 2.3 million jobs to go to get our nose above dead even.

Now, the majority's approach to this is we sort of have the U.S. economy with 2.4 million jobs lost kind of down in a deep well. The majority is starting to look at that American worker down in that deep well, and we have winched them up about 6 inches off the floor and said, you are on your own now. We have a long ways to go before we can say that we are out of the woods economically.

This bill does not cut the mustard. This bill gives Scrooge a bad name. At least he had an epiphany.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the majority party is running the Congress the way the Russians run basketball. You remember in 1972 in the Olympic championship in Munich where Americans won the game. We were ahead when the game was over and the clock had run down to zero. But then the Russians prevailed on saying, let's just put a little more time back on the clock. Just like the Republicans when this clock ran down to zero said, let's just put another 3 hours back down on the clock. When they asked the Russian coach how he could justify that outrage, he said, because it was an important game and we wanted to win. That is the explanation we get from the majority party when you corrupted the basic values of this House.

We have been searching for ways to describe this and you can say disappointing, you can say belittling; but the honest thing is it is a corruption of the traditions of this House, and it stinks to high heaven like a mackerel in the moonlight. Your Members need to come to the floor and explain this situation that not only were we violating the rules and the traditions regarding time, but that potentially there was bribery on the floor of this House. We need to get to the bottom of this and end this tyranny and corruption.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, actually the way this final package was developed was a continuation of the sad deterioration of an effort to actually reach consensus in this body. And the reason I say that is the way this package was put together is some folks went into a closed room and excluded other Members of the House from consideration. In fact, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health of the Committee on Resources was excluded from consideration to try to reach a consensus product here, as was virtually anyone who questioned the original bill who left the House.

This is the system, if you can imagine, when they are sitting around a table in Iraq right now and they ask, how do you do democracy in America, I guess you would have to say, in the House we just have this secret group and exclude Members from the minority party who are ranking Members. And that is what happened here, and it is unfortunate because we may have been able to reach a consensus of unanimity here on the House floor.

Now, let me point out a couple significant concerns with this final product. Number one, it does not cut the mustard in saving our houses and our towns from fire. We just witnessed this enormous devastation in California as a result of these fires, hundreds and hundreds of houses that were burned. And we do not have enough money in the Federal Treasury to come close to treating all of the acres that need treatment. At most, under this bill, we will only treat about 2 percent of the acres that need treating a year in our forests. That means we have got to be smart and target our resources where it is going to do the most good, and where it is going to do the most good fastest is around our homes and our towns to prevent the devastation that happened in California.

It ought to be a clear, unanimous consensus in this House that we put the majority of our resources protecting our families and our homes and our towns. And this bill does not do it. Yes, it is better than the House version because it says 50 percent, but what are you going to tell people next time? Sure, you had 200 houses burned, we will save 100 of them this time. Well, 50 percent is not good enough saying we are just going to save half your town; 50 percent is not good enough when we say we are going to save half your subdivision.

We ought to put a clear majority of our resources in protecting these belts, these protective moats, if you will, around our houses, and we are not doing it. Why we are not doing it? Because the timber industry has driven a lot of this debate. Who is for this is the timber industry. And who is against it is the Sierra Club. And it is too bad we did not really reach a consensus when we could have on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I respectfully demand one-third of the time under clause 8 of rule XXII.

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

(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, it is abundantly clear to all of us of all political persuasions and parts of the country that we need a vigorous, well-funded, well-prioritized hazardous fuels reduction program in our national forests.

The Nation needs that because of a ``perfect storm,'' if I may use that term, of enormous changes in our climate which have led to drought, particularly in the western United States, leaving the most explosive conditions due to the lack of moisture in over 100 years and because of our misguided and mutually ignorant policy over the last several decades, if not century, of suppressing all fire, thereby allowing certain additional density to increase. All of us know we need a well-prioritized, well-funded, well-defined hazardous fuels reduction program.

But I, regretfully, cannot support this bill because it fails in several fundamental ways. It fails to prioritize the taxpayers' dollars where they ought to be prioritized which is the protect of human health and property first. It fails to protect our most treasured crown jewels in our Forest Service of our roadless areas, which I have to tell the Members in the part of the world where I come from, we treasure the roadless areas on our weekends and afternoons. It is part of our culture and our families, and they are unprotected in this bill. Third, it fails to adequately solve the problem as to why we cannot get these programs completed, which is money, and I will come back to that. We today change the law, but not the appropriations that we need to get this job done.

Let me start with a failure to prioritize in this bill. If I may, this ought to be job one for the U.S. Congress when it comes to hazardous fuels reduction. Job one for the U.S. Congress ought to be protecting, with a protective buffer, the homes and towns and cabins and barns in our thousands of acres from voracious forest fire, and this bill does not follow a fundamental precept that when we have got job one and when we have got limited dollars, we prioritize. To govern is to choose, and this bill consciously chose not to give the majority of funds in this program to protect these areas with moats, if I may, to protect them from this horrendous fire. And we have seen what happens in California when that occurs. And it ought to be a totally unanimous agreement here that the majority of our funds in our program ought to be directed to the areas around our towns and cities rather than spent up in Timbuktu harvesting commercial lumber.

We have seen that they split the baby 50/50, but spliting the baby 50/50 is not always right nor is it fair, and I will tell my colleagues why. This conference report says 50 percent of this money will go to the Wildland-Urban Interface. It will not do to tell people in this community that we have saved half their houses, and we have sacrificed the other half to the demands of those who want to continue commercial logging in our roadless areas. We failed in our duty to prioritize our precious dollars where they belong, and we have offered a modest amendment to improve that in the conference committee which were rejected out of hand.

And let me tell the Members why this prioritization is so important. Of the dollars we have spent next year, if we double the amount that has been appropriated by the majority party, whom I respect, and I respect their positions on this bill, but if we even double the amount that was spent in the last 3 years, we will still only do 2 to 3, maybe 4 percent of the acreage of the millions of acres that need to be treated. We have to prioritize. This bill did not do it.

The second thing this bill did not do, it did not protect our roadless areas. We have 58 million acres of roadless areas which are the crown jewels of our national forest, which are pristine, and everyone loves the trees in our roadless areas. The problem is some of them love them vertically and some of them like them horizontally. This bill does not protect our roadless areas from the ones who want to do commercial logging so that they will be horizontal. It does not protect them one wit in those roadless areas, and that is most discomforting, and I will tell the Members why. We should have been able to fashion a unanimous way to protect those roadless areas. Let me just suggest one way to do it. I offered an amendment in the conference committee that would simply say that if we have to, if there is some terrible disease- ridden patch in the roadless area that we have to build a road to get to it, to do an emergency program that would be allowed under this bill, okay; but let us at least restore the road after the project is completed to its original topography. How can anyone object to that? How could anyone object to that precept? If we are building a road in a roadless area to do a hazardous fuels reduction program, when we are done with the program, why not put the road back in its natural topography. Who could object to it? I will tell the Members who does object to it. The timber industry who wants to use these roads to punch them into the heart of our most virginal forests and then make them available for commercial harvest, and we do not need to do that to accomplish our ends here, and it is regrettable we did not solve that problem.

The third thing that this bill does not do, it does not cut to the heart of the problem. This bill, its whole fundamental idea is if we just cut off those pesky environmentalists, by gum there will not be any more forest fires. I will give the Members bad news. We can outlaw environmentalists if we want to, and I see some nods. My friend over on this side of the aisle would like to do that. I take a different view. They are my constituents. They are people who like to go up and have clean water out of the roadless areas. They are people who like to go on a picnic in the roadless areas, and they know, as I do, that if all we try to do to fix this program is to cut off citizen participation,

we will not solve the problem of getting these fuels reduction programs in line, and I will tell the Members why we will not. The reason we have we are not getting the job done and giving therapy to our forests is that we have not appropriated one tenth of the money that is necessary to get this job done. It is not appeals. Come on. The GAO, in their last study, after four rounds to make sure they got it right, said that 92 percent of all of these fuels reduction projects go lickity-split right through the process without any problems and only 3 percent of them were litigated. Ninety-seven percent of these projects go through without litigation. So why have we not cut the mustard? Why have we not done enough therapy on these forests? It is because we have not invested the money to do it. We have only invested enough money to do 2 to 3 percent, and that is not going to significantly improve in this bill. Doubling does not even cut it, even if we got the appropriation. So we are united, I think, unanimously on this floor in the belief that we need to have a strong fuels reduction program, but we cannot say that this bill will provide what the American people need to get this job done in a reasonable fashion.

The fourth, if I can, problem with this bill: It is clear that we have got to cut down a whole bunch of trees to solve this problem because they are dense, they have grown up because of our misguided fuels suppression program, and now we have got this cataclysmic fire situation. But the question is what do we cut and where? That is really the issue we need to resolve on the floor of this House. And here is a tree, a mature tree. I wish I could tell the age, marked for cutting in the fuels reduction program. There is no reason to cut that tree except for commercial purposes. We needed to develop a firm definition, so that the Forest Service can use it to determine what trees to cut, and it would have been easier if we provided them adequate money to do it, so they do not have an incentive to log bigger trees to generate money for this program. But we did not do it, because the appropriations process did not cut the mustard. So we have a problem that we have not given adequate definition of what to cut and where.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall).

(Mr. UDALL of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I will be closing, so when the appropriate order comes, I will take my turn.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

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

Mr. Speaker, I commend all of the people who have worked on this bill. There are a lot of technical and difficult issues trying to fashion a hazardous fuels reduction program. And I am unable to support this and I hope my colleagues will join me and the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters and other main-line commonsense groups who have committed their lives to protecting our national forests in defeating this bill and moving on to a better one, and I hope that my colleagues will join me.

Underlying that position is the basic belief that the medicine that we are providing here is both inadequate and misguided. It is misguided because it is based on a myth; and that myth rising to an urban legend is that these fires have consumed thousands of acres because people have questioned what some government officials have done, and that is an abject falsehood.

The GAO report shows that 92 percent of these projects go ahead unimpeded. In California, you know why the California projects did not get done? It was not environmental project appeals. In the last 3 years, there has not been one hazardous fuel reduction program that held up national forests in Southern California the last 3 years. The reason some of this work did not get done is Uncle Sam, us, did not appropriate enough money for California to do the job. The State of California asked for $430 million last April to solve this problem. And what did Uncle Sam do in the Bush administration? They did not give it to them. And the fires occurred.

This is a failure of appropriations, not a failure because certain citizens once in a blue moon have the temerity to stand up on their back legs and question decisions by the Forest Service to do disguised commercial logging which has on occasion happened, thankfully not very often. Maybe 2 percent of the time. We are not doing enough to really solve this problem.

What we have done is in one of the most serious reductions of citizens' ability to question their government is reduce the ability to have their oversight of our Federal officials.

Now, it is kind of a conservative position to be rightfully sometimes distrustful of our Federal officials. Now, I have got to say there have been occasions, thankfully few, where these projects have been disguised timber sales. And the reason is because we are not appropriating enough to the Forest Service to do their job. And when that has happened, less than three pearls of the time there has been a brief appeal of that decision, and most frequently these things get worked out. But until we increase tenfold our appropriations, we are not going to cut the mustard in this program.

Now, let me mention something else, too. We have not talked about what the real debate is about here. The debate is as much about roads as it is about forests, because the real issue here is where we are going to build roads. We have 440,000 miles of Forest Service roads in our forests, 440,000 miles. They are falling apart, and we ought to be putting our money in and fixing those roads before we punch new roads into roadless areas.

Let me put this into real-life perspective. Take a couple in northeast Washington who is not getting adequately protected by this bill. Their house is surrounded by pine trees in the national forest. We have not prioritized those pine forests around their home for treatment like we should have in this bill. We did not do it. Now, when that couple leaves their home to drive over to the Olympic Peninsula to the Jupiter Ridge Roadless Area, if they hike out to a nice little picnic spot, they will find two trees. They are about maybe 6, 7, 8 feet in diameter, cedars, right next to each other. We call them Jefferson and Washington.

In this bill, neither protects that couple in their home surrounded by the pine forest, nor the two trees they go to visit in the roadless area.

Their home is not protected from fire adequately, and those two trees are not protected from chainsaws adequately in this bill.

It is my hope that this bill will be defeated and we will come back and make some very modest but important improvements on it to solve both of those problems.

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

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are bringing a motion today on this most important of issues in an effort to give seniors what they deserve, which is a real guaranteed prescription drug benefit under Medicare. Unfortunately, unless we pass this motion, or some equivalent motion, the generation that fulfilled their duties on Iwo Jima, that is The Greatest Generation, will not get a first class double-A rated guaranteed prescription drug benefit under Medicaid. They will get something approaching the flimflam that they have had for so long from the United States Congress.

Mr. Speaker, we are here to offer a motion which will boldly instruct the conferees to cure both a sin of commission and a sin of omission in their plan. Now, let me address those sins of commission and omissions.

First, there are multiple sins of omission from the proposal of the conferees we have heard to date, one of which is their abject and total failure to do anything for America's senior citizens to restrict the incredible rise in drug prices they have been experiencing. And, Mr. Speaker, certain other motions will address that issue. But it is amazing to me that at the moment in time when our seniors are yelling, and justifiably so, about the incredible rise in their drug prices, that not only does this conference report refuse to do anything affirmative about it, it has actually shackled Uncle Sam from doing anything about it and from negotiating better drug prices. That is a sin of omission that other motions have dealt with.

Mr. Speaker, this motion deals with two other fundamental ones that need to be remedied. One is to prevent this conference report from driving a dagger through the heart of Medicare by privatizing this entire system, which this conference report would result in as sure as God made little green apples. And it would do so slowly but surely by this nefarious plan to force every single senior citizen to either accept a privatized system in the morass of the insurance industry, or to accept essentially higher premiums and less coverage. That is a sin of commission.

But there is a sin of omission as well that our motion would cure, and that is the fact that we are not providing adequate reimbursement to physicians, to providers, to nurses, to physical therapists, to oncologists who treat our senior citizens. And as a result of these low payments, as a result of these low payments now in the State of Washington, over 50 percent of the physicians are no longer taking new Medicare patients. Why not? They cannot afford to under the reimbursement rates. And are we fixing this problem in this bill? No.

Over 50 percent of the people in the State of Washington now go to try to get their physicians and they are not being accepted. And, frankly, a prescription drug benefit that does not solve this problem is not going to be a solution to the problem. It does no good to have a prescription drug benefit if you cannot get into a physician to have a prescription written for you. Half the doctors in the State cannot afford to do it right now, because under the Republican plan, in order to fund the tax cuts for Enron, we are adopting measures to screw down Medicare and to screw down benefits over the long term under the Medicare system.

Now, there is a tricky little effort that slowly but surely will accomplish former Representative Newt Gingrich's great dream, which is to see Medicare wither on the vine. And it will accomplish it by saying a few years out from now, people who want to stay in the Medicare system to get a guaranteed benefit would be forced either to go into a privatized system at the whim of the insurance industry or accept less

effective coverage from Medicare. How do I know that? Well, I know that because the experts in the field have evaluated it.

Let me just quote two fellows. Henry Aarons of The Brookings Institution, and CBO Director Robert Reischauer, two people who essentially were the originators of the idea of premium support, because in the right circumstances perhaps it would have some justification. They said the GOP plan could result in Medicare experiencing a ``death spiral,'' and said that it is too risky to adopt. And the reason they said that is that the authors of this plan, the people who have been trying to shrink Medicare since it started in the 1960s, and who actually tried to prevent it from starting in the first place, know that under their plan what will happen is that private insurance companies will cherry pick the healthiest among Americans. And as they cherry pick the healthiest Americans, they will leave the sick in Medicare, who will have to pay higher premiums under this nefarious proposal.

Mr. Speaker, this motion will instruct the conferees to come back without that provision, without that little thing that is the poison in this little trap for our senior citizens. That is why we have people calling every single office in Congress urging us not to adopt this for our senior citizens, because they are not going to be snookered by this plan.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), who is a great physician from Seattle.

(Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

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

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

I appreciate the gentleman's advice, but we take it with not great credence from a group that have run us up into a $500 billion deficit because of their fiscal irresponsibility. So I appreciate the gentleman's advice, but I do not think it is going to have a lot of sway with the American people from a group that has given us the largest deficits in the universe's history.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown).

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

When this premium support kicks in, no senior in America will have any choice about the matter. You will be subject to a provision that you will have to pay more money out of pocket when the HMOs take the healthy people into the private sector and leave the rest of our senior citizens in the more expensive Medicare pool. The group that said that last July was the AARP which said it will require beneficiaries to pay even more out of pocket. One hundred percent of Medicare recipients will be subject to this provision. You have no choice whatsoever. And everybody in this Chamber knows it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

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

AARP, that is the organization that also endorsed the catastrophic drug plan some time ago, that, when seniors found what was in it, rampaged and forced this Congress to repeal it. And, yes, seniors are concerned about this, and that is why they are calling us by the score in every one of our offices, and no doubt in yours too, because they understand when we tried to do this privatization experiment in the State of Washington for these profit-driven insurances companies that come in, tens of thousands of people without coverage were left without coverage when they left a year and a half later. It did not work. It is an experiment that already failed, and we are doing it again because people want to have Medicare wither on the vine.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall).

(Mr. UDALL of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

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

We have tremendous respect for the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis). But what we are saying is the seniors of the greatest generation simply deserve better than this bill, and we ought to be capable of doing better, so that we do not have a bill that is too little and too late, we believe both.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, we believe the alternative is a real Medicare prescription drug plan which we Democrats have offered and voted for.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time.

I want to express my respect for the leadership of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) on organ donation issues, which is an important matter as well. We appreciate his leadership of trying to improve the access of organs in organ transplant procedures. So we agree on quite a number of issues.

But I think we agree on a goal perhaps and not a direction in that he has indicated that he believes seniors do deserve better. And we believe seniors, in the bottom line of this debate, deserve better than this proposal for a couple of fundamental reasons. Reason number 1: this short-term, extremely modest potential benefit that may potentially help a few seniors includes the seeds of destruction potentially of the very foundation of their health care that this Nation has come to embrace since the early 1960s, and that is Medicare. In the premium support provision, which sounds like innocuous language that is in the bill, it is in the bill, and we all agree on that; it will be in bill. We do not know what page, because nobody has read this. It is going to be hundreds of pages and nobody will have read this probably until we are forced to vote on it less than 24 hours after the bill is passed; but nonetheless, that little innocuous provision carries the potential of the seeds of destruction of the guarantee of the Medicare program.

The reason I say that is it will, ultimately, foist on every senior, whether they want it or not, if it is implemented, under this bill, to face a situation where they will have to pay more and have less coverage than those in the private plans. And since the private insurance companies are extremely adept at marketing, they can have all kinds of bells and whistles to lure the healthiest people into their population, leaving the sickest in Medicare, those most in need of security and peace of mind, leaving their premiums to skyrocket and Medicare to go into a death spiral, as the analysts have predicted.

I am getting to a certain age; I am not as old as my dad and mom who I love dearly, but I think aging is tough enough. American seniors should not have to worry about the loss of the guarantee of Medicare. We should pass a Medicare prescription drug program that we have suggested on this side of the aisle, and work with my Republican colleagues to pass a true bipartisan bill.

Mr. Speaker, I do. And I have come here based on some conversations I have had in the last couple of weeks with the father of a soldier who was killed in Iraq, the wife of a soldier who was killed in Iraq from the State of Washington. I met about a week and a half ago with a soldier with a shattered leg over in Walter Reed, actually two soldiers with shattered legs; and that is one of the great, unfortunately, hidden tragedies of this war the number of terrible injuries that have come out of it. That has been kind of hidden, and I think it is unfortunate that folks do not understand how terrible these young men are being injured. In part because of our tremendous medical care, we have saved people that never would have lived in previous wars, but they come away with some terrible injuries.

But the reason I came here tonight is just to say that the U.S. Congress owes it to these men and women in uniform who are serving proudly tonight to not ignore them and not give up trying to help resolve this mess, and that silence is not an option for the U.S. Congress. We took a vote but that was only the start of our obligation to these people who are serving in Iraq tonight. And I just have two messages that I hope the administration would listen to to try to get out of this mess.

One is to finally develop a meaningful plan, to develop a recognizable, credible Iraqi government so that the Iraqi people could have some credibility in the government, so that hopefully at some point we can bring our men and women home; and they are still on the wrong path failing in that fundamental obligation. Our mission is doomed there until this administration has a workable plan to develop a credible government in Iraq. They have failed in that fundamental mission, in a stumbling, bumbling mechanism.

I will state, we stood in a meeting room about a hundred yards from here very shortly before the war started and said, Where is your plan for postwar Iraq? Where is your plan for establishing a credible government in Iraq so that we can bring our troops home?

Do you know what their answer was? We are starting to think about that. And that is not too much of a paraphrase of what they told us. And now they still are making a fundamental mistake of thinking that we can establish a government by our order as to who will be the governing authority without the involvement of the international community.

We still need to get international folks of other countries involved in there to help develop a credible government. And until we do that, we are not going to win the hearts and minds of the people no matter how many thousand-pound bombs we drop.

If I may inquire, basically what we have is it sounds like the only international support the administration has had to try to help establish a new Iraqi government is a fellow from London, Mr. Chalabi, and that is not what we think we need when it comes to international support to try and establish a government. Because we know that ultimately to bring our men and women home, we are going to have to be in a position where there is a secure government that has some degree of trust to the Iraqi people. And the one thing we know is a decision, a unilateral decision by the United States to decide who that is is not working at the moment.

We believe and have been arguing now since the beginning of hostilities that involving the international community to help establish a definition who is going to be at the table when the constitution is adopted, when the elections are set up, are going to help get the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people which ultimately we need to succeed in this mission.

So we are here again tonight urging the administration to learn from past problems and indeed mistakes. One of those mistakes has been acting with such unilateralism, and unilateralism to date has resulted in folks allegedly running Iraq with no security and no credibility. So we will continue to beat that drum, and we hope at some point the administration will learn from these past errors.

I want to mention another thing, too, that I hope that Congress does not lose sight of its responsibility to the men and women in Iraq tonight. Those men and women deserve to know why Americans did not get the straight scoop before this war started, and we just began just the baby step for Congress to start to get to the root of why Americans were told things that were not true before this war started. We owe this to the people in the field right now in Iraq, and we are going to call on the administration to stop stonewalling on that investigation.

We have been trying to get multiple documents. We are not getting that, and it is interesting to me, when a true patriot, Joe Wilson, who was an ambassador, who was called a hero by the first President Bush for serving as the last counselor in Iraq, who stood up to Saddam Hussein and maybe saved hundreds of Americans before the first Persian Gulf War, when he helped blow the whistle and indicate there had been a mistake in the State of the Union address that came from that podium out to the American people, when he helped demonstrate that there had been a mistake made by the President as to what he said when he said that there was this uranium in Africa, what did the administration do? Instead of thanking Mr. Wilson for helping correct a mistake that the President had made on a pivotal issue and on which they had hung the hat to start this war, instead somebody in the administration, and we better darn well find out who blew the cover on Mr. Wilson's wife as a CIA agent, and that is the type of attitude to date this administration has in getting to the bottom of why we did not get the truth before this war started.

It appears that there could have been a felony committed; but even if there was not a felony committed, this administration, instead of thanking Mr. Wilson for correcting this grievous mistake that the President made in the State of the Union address, I do not recall he has ever thanked Mr. Wilson. Instead, they have hunkered down and they have refused to recognize that this war was started on the basis of false information given to the American people, and we need to know and the people serving in Iraq tonight deserve to know how and why that happened because it should not happen again.

Now, if, in fact, it was a simple failure of intelligence by the CIA, and that the White House, all they did was convey to us the purest, most virginal intelligence given to them by the CIA, we need to know that; but if, in fact, that was not the case, if, in fact, it was the case that they took information and exaggerated it, stretched it, fudged it, told us things were certain when there was doubt, we need to know that, too; and this Congress has an obligation to get to the bottom of it. I hope that we have just started that process.

With that, I need to bid adieu.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of rule XXII, I hereby give notice of my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003.

The form of the motion is as follows:

Mr. Inslee of Washington moves that the managers on the

part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes

of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 1

be instructed as follows:

(1) To reject the provisions of subtitle C of title II of

the House bill.

(2) To reject the provisions of section 231 of the Senate

amendment.

(3) Within the scope of conference, to increase payments by

an amount equal to the amount of savings attributable to the

rejection of the aforementioned provisions to--

(A) raise the average standardized amount for hospitals in

rural and other urban areas to the level of the rate for

those in larger urban areas; and

(B) to raise the physicians' work geographic index for any

locality in which such index is less than 1.0 to a work

geographic index of 1.0.

(4) To insist upon section 601 of the House bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a special young man from my district, Mr. Rohan Singh.

It is my pleasure to announce that Rohan has been named Junior Achievement's 2003 Student Entrepreneur of the Year.

Last year, Rohan used just $60 to establish FuzzelFish.com, which sells software products over the internet. Today, Rohan has a thriving small business and I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate him and wish him luck with his business and his studies.

I recently had the chance to meet Rohan in my Washington, DC office. Let me tell you, he is an intelligent and upstanding young man who, I'm sure, will have a very bright and productive future.

I also rise today to say that I am encouraged to see that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well among teens in the United States. According to a recent poll by Junior Achievement and Harris Interactive, more teens believe that ``owning your own business'' provides greater job security than ``working for a company.'' This, Mr. Speaker, is good news for the future of this great nation.

In closing, I want to say again how proud I am of Rohan Singh and believe that his story should be an example to all young people that everyone can and should play a part in the American Dream.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my deep disappointment at the failure to deal with challenges for one-half of our patriotic team in the war against terrorism. We have done some good things in here for our folks in the Armed Services, but for our civilian employees, who are a crucial part of our defense team, we are removing protections for overtime pay and other matters, and that is just abominable.

When I went out to greet with the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) the Carl Vinson when she came back from the Afghanistan war, I talked to the folks about their incredibly successful safety record of thousands of sorties without a loss, and they told me it is in large part because of the incredibly adept maintenance done on that ship by our civilian employees. This bill is a jab and a mark of disrespect for those civilian employees, who are every bit as patriotic as our folks in the Armed Services today, and there is no reason for this to have happened.

Now, this is just the first step in this effort. We are going to continue to work on this, that this effort of flexibility does not mean disrespect for our civilian employees. We are going to stay on it like a dog with a bone.

Mr. Speaker, we are looking forward to a healthy, open conference. We hope this conference will set a new high standard in openness and bipartisanship in the House. But there are a couple things I think we need to talk about that are challenging us in bringing this bill to completion, and that is, first, a recognition that we have a severe resource limitation that is the real limitation as to what real treatment we can do on our forests, and that no matter what we do in this bill, the amount that has been appropriated to date still will only treat about maybe 2 percent of the acreage of the hundreds of thousands of acres that need treatment in our national forests.

That is an important point, because if we only have enough to do 2 percent of the acreage that really could potentially use thinning or other treatment in our forests, we have to really prioritize where we are going to do this work.

One of the elements we hope to talk about in our conference is how to prioritize this work where it is going to be most effective. That is why many of us have been talking about prioritizing our work to be in the areas where it will have the greatest benefit to save human life and human property, and that is in the wild-line urban interface and the areas closest to our towns, suburbs, and homes.

We will be talking in the conference about a way to focus our energies on those highest priority areas, because, if we do not, we risk really squandering some of it out in sort of the Timbuktu areas while we are losing homes in fires, as we have in California most recently. So that will be an element we hope to discuss in the conference.

Second, we hope to have a product that can be embraced by all points of the ideological compass. One of the things we hope to be able to accomplish is a description of the thinning that will assure that we are really doing thinning, rather than disguised commercial harvest. We think we can accomplish that in some fashion of taking off-limits the old-growth timber that gets us into political battles, rather than really furthering the effort to carve out or to thin out some of the litter brush on the forest floor.

Frankly, one of the problems we have of winning public trust for this program is the fear that this will be used as a guise to cut down 5- foot-in-diameter trees in some of our old-growth forests to finance this program. We hope we will come out with a final conference bill that will not be using old-growth timber to finance this program.

There are a lot of ways, probably 1,000 different ways, to describe old-growth timber. We need to find some. We need to assure the American public we really do have a healthy forest initiative, not a clear-cut initiative, and not a ``let's get the old growth timber because that is where the most commercially valuable trees are.'' That should be doable. I look forward to working on a bipartisan basis to accomplish that.