Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I am pleased to participate in this discussion.

I think a preliminary question the U.S. Congress needs to ask itself is what role we have in acting as stewards for the taxpayers' money in this regard for $87 billion in expenditures.

It seems to me that we ought to really scrupulously evaluate how effective this administration and their team has been to date in fulfilling its warrants to the American people in regard to the Iraqi situation. It is important to know whether this administration has been so accurate, so complete, so well-planned that, frankly, Congress ought to just give the administration a blank check and let it run. So I want to spend just 2 minutes evaluating the performance in that regard.

Mr. Speaker, the administration allowed the American people to believe Saddam Hussein was behind September 11. As far as we know, according to the commission established for that purpose, that was wrong. The Bush administration led the American people to believe that Iraq was in cahoots with al Qaeda. According to information we now have, that was wrong. The administration told the American people that Iraq had literally hundreds of tons of chemical and biological companies. That may or may not be wrong, but to date appears to be. The administration told the American people that Iraq had sought to get uranium from Africa. That was wrong; in fact, fraudulent on someone's behalf. The Bush administration told the American people that troops would be welcomed with rose petals and open arms when they got to Baghdad. That turned out to be wrong.

The administration told the American people that this would be largely a self-financing operation, as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) indicated. Mr. Wolfowitz said in a short period of time, the oil would flow, the dollars would grow, and the American taxpayers would not be on the hook.

This administration's record on its warrants to the American people is sadly lacking. In that context, it seems to me the U.S. Congress ought to not only ask serious, probing questions of the administration, it ought to set conditions on the expenditure of money that it may appropriate in this regard. Questions are not enough. Conditions are needed because this is a significant sum of money, $87 billion. The entire Marshall Plan was $100 billion. This is not a Marshall Plan, it is a partial plan because it lacks two very crucial elements.

I think it is important to be generous in the spirit of bipartisanship. I will say partial plan because it lacks two important elements.

Number one, it lacks a sincere effort to bring the international community into this effort. This administration, for reasons that are passive understanding, has had a sincere desire to be as unilateral as possible all of the way through this effort, and they have burned bridges every possible way. And now what we see to date when they finally say maybe we have to do something to rationalize this, they offer a fig leaf.

We need full international participation in this effort because Iraq is not a prize to be won, it is a burden to be shared, and both taxpayers and our military should be sharing that burden with the rest of the world rather than exclusively having the United States shoulder it. There ought to be a condition for any money that is appropriated, specifically allocated or authorized by Congress.

Second, another way that it is partial, it does not pay respect to domestic needs. The President has said that his tax cuts are a higher priority than building schools that could be built with $87 billion. He needs to rethink that.

Third, how it is partial, and this is perhaps long term for our children's benefit, the thing it lacks is it simply is not paying for this obligation. It seeks to borrow from our children money to pay for this operation. It borrows from the Social Security to pay for this operation. We have heard about the lockbox, and it is not a lockbox. It is pulling in Social Security to pay for this obligation.

Why does the President not want to pay for this? We should pay for it. Winston Churchill said all I have to offer is blood, sweat, toil and tears. This administration says while we have a war overseas, it will be balloons and fruit and candy back home with tax cuts, and now they want to continue to pass tax cuts, largely going to wealthy members of our society.

If this is so important to American security, the President ought to be bellying up to the bar and asking Americans to recognize this not go forward with the tax cuts. That is an obligation that he ought to take and he ought to ask Americans to share in that, and he ought to be sincere in it and not have this let us be happy and fight a war at the same time. It is not the way the greatest generation did it in World War II or after World War II, and we ought to rise to that same obligation, to the world, and to our prosperity.

Is it a fair statement that under the policies of this administration that they have advocated as far as their budget that the veterans system that was in existence when these soldiers and sailors went to Iraq, when they come back from their extended tours, which are now being extended to the surprise of many, will come back to a veterans system that is less beneficial and less protective than when they left?

It would disturb anyone who has gone to Bethesda Naval Hospital, as I have, and have talked to the Marines who have lost limbs and who have had crushing injuries of lifetime disability, to think that they are going to have less effective and comprehensive medical care than existed before they started this battle. That is not what they ought to be fighting for. It also seems to me to be appropriate for this administration to throw overboard its predilection for unilateralism, this desire to go it alone, this kind of macho policy of not allowing anyone else to be an ally with you, to bring other people involved in this effort, not just American GIs and Marines. Because the success of this mission depends on winning the respect of the Iraqi people, and winning the respect of the Iraqi people for whatever new government is formed is going to be more enhanced if we get more people from around the community internationally to be involved in this effort additionally sharing this burden.

I may add, too, the injuries are truly severe. We cry and we pray over those who have not come home, but we have got a very high proportion of very severe injuries from this, in part because of the magnificent trauma care that we have now developed, at least at the scene of the battle. These kids deserve a veterans plan that is going to treat them as well as their fathers and their grandfathers were treated and better.

That is not happening right now and is a symptom of this administration's addiction to these tax cuts on an altar that is higher than any other human value, including veterans health care, and it is wrong. During this debate about this $87 billion, we should make sure that this issue is addressed, too, and not swept under the rug.

If the gentleman will yield, I think it is very important that the gentleman points out about the difficulty of perhaps having to bring folks home because we are stretched thin beginning in March, and the reason that is important is it points out a fundamental truth that the administration has refused to share with the American people. They have not leveled with the American people on one fundamental truth, and that is the first 60 or $65 billion that was allocated was just a down payment. This second $87 billion is a second of many installments. We have already heard talk about another $30 billion to $60 billion following this one. This could lead to a significant restructuring of the entire U.S. military by increasing the number of troops to deal with this rotational need of our military.

That is the $64,000 question.

The gentleman points out something that I think is important and that is that the President needs to level with the American people about the real cost of this.

Now, right now we have volunteers suffering the real cost of this war with loss of life and limb; but our children have a real cost they are enduring too, a Federal deficit that has gone over $500 billion this year with this additional $87 billion, the highest deficit in American history; and that is a real cost that the President, if he wants to show real leadership, would level with the American people about and say that we need to pay for, rather than hiding the cost and playing a fiscal shell game and putting that on our children.

The only way to level with the American people is for him to throw aside at least some of the tax cuts, at least the additional tax cuts that he wants to give to the wealthiest folks in this country. If he believes the security interests of the United States demands that, then honesty to our children demands that and honesty about the true cost of war.

That is why I believe when this debate starts, it is going to be very important for the U.S. Congress to condition any funds that are appropriated on making sure that it is paid for by us and not shucked off on the backs of our children as further deficit spending, as this administration has been wont to do, as it is necessary to condition this money on something that is going to be a requirement for success, and that is to get the rest of the world involved in this effort. It is the only way to win the Iraqis' respect for our ultimate efforts.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think there is an additional thing we need in addition to the sage comments of the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie); we need to stop the administration from stealing from the Social Security trust fund to pay for this war, and that is what they are telling us they want to do. They want to take $87 billion out of the Social Security trust fund to pay for this war. And the reason they want to do it is that they refuse to let go of their goal of continuing further tax cuts for the wealthiest folks in this country, and that is morally, ethically wrong to our children. And this Congress has an obligation to our kids to stop it right here during this supplemental, and I trust that we are making an effort to do that.

Mr. Speaker, if I may dovetail on your disenchantment with the total irresponsible comments of the Secretary. He said there was al Qaeda in Iraq before our attack on Iraq, and the evidence would suggest that was not the case. But as a result, following his efforts and his strategy, they are in Iraq and Iraq indeed has been turned into a potential breeding ground for terrorism. That is the kind of policy we do not want to see continued. This is the kind of mistake we do not want to see this administration make again.

Offered By: Mr. Inslee

Amendment No. 3: Page 80, after line 5, add the following

new title (and conform the table of contents accordingly):

If the gentleman will yield, these are really hard discussions because we have been saying this now for months in the evenings with this group, that this effort needs to have more international support. We need to give our troops enough support so that they indeed can be secure. Since we last said that and then we went back to our districts for August, 40 more of our proud troops have died in Iraq, with the administration ignoring the obvious need to internationalize this effort. Over 100 people have been seriously injured, over 1,000 in the Iraq war, people coming back without limbs. But this administration cannot pay enough attention to common sense to put down their hubris and their arrogance for 10 minutes to come up with a policy that will keep our troops safe. The thing that is galling about it, and you do not have to be a Rhodes scholar and spend 40 hours a week thinking about foreign policy to know this.

Yesterday I went out, the fellow was working on a cable wire in front of our house, it was a hot day, it has been really hot in August in Seattle. I just went out and gave him a pop and we started talking. He says, ``I'm not an international expert. I can't figure out why George Bush wants just our kids to die in Iraq. I just can't figure that out. That doesn't make any sense to me.''

I think when a cable guy on Holly Street in Bainbridge Island has that recognition, this administration ought to change its attitude to this effort, not want to be a bring-it-on mentality but an attitude of working with the international community. There is another thing I want to report to you about what people out on the street know about this issue. They know that we still have to get to the bottom of why the American people were not told the straight scoop before this war started. That is why we are cosponsors of a bill to have a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of why Americans were deluded about the nature of the security threat in Iraq.

I am not the only one who feels this. Two weeks ago in Shoreline, Washington, we just published a little notice, we were going to have a little meeting about Iraq intelligence. We were going to have it at noon on a Thursday on an 80-degree day in Seattle. We booked a room for 200 people. We had indications more were going to show up. We booked a room for 400, then for 600. We had 1,100 people show up at noon in Shoreline, Washington, who were raving angry about why this administration did not tell America the truth about Iraq before they got us into this war. They had one request and demand of the U.S. Congress: Do a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of what happened here.

Let me tell you why this is important, and we had pretty good people talking about this. Ambassador Joe Wilson, the guy who blew the whistle on the administration's fraudulent use of the claim about uranium from Africa, he flew all the way from D.C.; retired Admiral Bill Center, distinguished Navy career, who talked about the fact that he certainly did not see the threat that the administration was saying existed; Brewster Denny of the University of Washington School of Public Policy. They agreed with everybody in the room who recognized that if we are going to internationalize this effort in Iraq, you cannot do that successfully unless we have a full accounting about who was responsible about selling the American people and the world a bill of goods about what happened in Iraq. And 1,100 people recognized that in Shoreline, Washington.

This measure of accountability that we need is necessary to clear the decks to get the type of alliance we need in the international community that maybe, just maybe, the administration is starting to finally figure out, way, way late. We hope we are going to have some support on the other side of the aisle about going forward to get to the bottom of this in a bipartisan fashion.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am offering this amendment to restore personnel levels at the Environmental Protection Agency's budget for compliance monitoring and civil enforcement to the FY 2003 level. I understand the committee's estimate of the number of positions for inspections and civil enforcement, that the current appropriations bill would reduce that level by about 54 positions.

This amendment would take $5.4 million from the EPA's Environmental Programs and Management Account of nearly $2.2 billion and redirect those funds to the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance for salaries and other expenses to increase the personnel level for civil enforcement by 54 positions on the assumption that this amount is sufficient to cover the salary and expense of these employees.

It is also my understanding that these additional funds would be redirected from within the agency's entire operating budget and not reprogrammed from other enforcement functions such as lab support or travel inspectors.

Mr. Chairman, I recognize we have worked hard in a very difficult funding year to meet the needs of the EPA, and I would be most hopeful if the gentleman could accept this amendment.

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

Offered By: Mr. Inslee

Amendment No. 20: In title III, in the item relating to

``Environmental Protection Agency--environmental programs and

management'', after the aggregate dollar amount, insert the

following: ``(reduced by $5,400,000) (increased by

$5,400,000)''.

Mr. Speaker, as a father, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2210, which will dismantle Head Start, which should be strengthened, not weakened, in any economic time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support for this amendment for the simple reason that a monopoly of ideas is ultimately more destructive to American democracy than even a monopoly of money; and the American people understand this amendment should pass for two reasons, one philosophical and one practical. Let me address the philosophical one first.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, ``Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,'' the overwhelming majority of American people have an understanding in their gut and in their bones and in their heads that if we loosen the rules on media consolidation, we will

get more media consolidation. It is not rocket science.

So let me address the practical issue that I have heard addressed on this floor today and argued on this floor that somehow if we vote for this amendment it actually means we are going to reduce the remedy we get against the FCC. Let me debunk that argument for this reason.

It is based on two faulty assumptions. It is based on the assumption the President will veto this bill if we give Americans what they want, which is less consolidation in the media. The President might have said that today, some of his political advisers may have said that today; but when this bill gets to the White House desk, that e-mail account and Web site of the White House is going to melt down. They are going to have to double the number of e-mails that they can recover, and the FCC, when they did this, they thought this would just go kind of quietly in the night. That is why they had one hearing in Virginia for the whole country about this issue. They thought they would just sneak this by them.

Let me tell my colleagues what happened when the American people found out about this. The U.S. Senate, or the other chamber, very quickly understood that it had to happen, the commerce committee had a good vote moving in this direction, and now it is up to my colleagues and me to keep this ball rolling. We do not know how far this ball is going to go unless we get the message to the American people; and let me suggest to my colleagues, that ball is going to go a lot further, which is total repeal of the FCC going backwards.

I am not alone in this, and I want to make sure the Members in this Chamber know this is just not a good governing issue. It is not just a good government issue. It is not just a consumers federation.

The labor community of the United States of America understands the consolidation of media voices is not good for democracy. That is why the Communication Workers of America are supporting this amendment. The Department of Professional Employees are supporting this amendment. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are supporting this amendment. The Newspaper Guild is supporting this amendment. The people support this amendment.

So it is our job to push the envelope here. It is our job to make sure this does not get swept under the radar screen, and let me tell my colleagues why that is important.

These consolidation rules go much further than repealing the Sherman Antitrust Act. They allow consolidation that will increase the concentration over 20 times the level of local market control of what would trigger a Sherman Antitrust Act investigation. That is in a one- newspaper town. In a two-newspaper town, mergers allowed under this rule, without this amendment, would increase concentration nine times the level of concentration that would trigger antitrust concern.

I am standing here to say that our scrutiny of a monopoly of ideas should be every bit as vigorous as a scrutiny of a monopoly of money; and that is the reason we need to, in fact, pass this amendment.

I have heard it argued today that there is a lot of new channels, there is Internet Web sites, there is new cable channels and that is enough. To me, it is a little bit like saying we will just have sort of 20 hoses, we have got all these new hoses to give you water, but then you screw the hoses all into the same faucet, which is the corporate board of governors who control these markets, and that is the promise you effect, that we have got to guard against by, in fact, passing this amendment.

I will just make one closing comment if I can of those who may be thinking about this or my colleagues. I will say one thing that I think all of us as elected officials understand. This started as a very quiet, little modest regulatory issue; but it has turned into a firestorm of criticism, and there are two tsunamis. One has already washed over Congress, and that is the Do Not Call list. That finally got Congress' attention. The second one is this amendment. My colleagues vote against this amendment, they are going to have people with pitch forks and torches in front of their Chamber arguing that they should not get in bed with those who want consolidation of this industry.

Let us push the envelope and fight back for this amendment.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I am glad to join my colleagues because I feel this message needs to be repeated, that Congress is going to get to the bottom of this intelligence fiasco, and the best way to do that is through a bipartisan public commission to really find out what happened with the American people not getting the straight scoop about Iraq before this war started.

I have heard certain people in the administration think that this is just going to kind of go away; it is going to kind of drift off and Americans will watch reality TV and forget this. I think the administration is very wrong on this; and we need them to embrace this idea of a bipartisan, led by a Republican, perhaps Warren Rudman, some esteemed Republican figure, to lead this bipartisan commission.

I have got four points why this is so important, and the first two come back to the gentleman from Massachusetts' (Mr. Delahunt) question, which is what should be the standard for starting the preemptive war. I would suggest two, at least two.

Number one, that the administration will not start a war unless the truth will convince the American people it is the proper thing to do, not the fudged intelligence, not the exaggerated intelligence, not the selective intelligence, but the whole intelligence. What clearly happened here is that this administration did not have confidence enough in their argument about freeing Iraqis, which might be a legitimate reason for a war, there are people who believe that, but they did not have confidence in that so they had to exaggerate intelligence and use selective intelligence and not tell us the whole thing. That is the first fundamental standard we have to meet before a preemptive war.

The second fundamental standard we ought to insist on on a bipartisan basis is that we do the intelligence first and then we make the decision whether or not to go to war. We do not make the decision to go to war and then ask everybody to give the intelligence that fits that preconceived notion. The neutral evaluation of the scenario that occurred here is that some folks in this administration made an early decision to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and yes, there may be some legitimate reasons to do that; and some Americans believe even with no security threat to the United States, but we cannot start a preemp war on that basis, and that is what this bipartisan commission ought to say.

I will just say two other points.

I think some folks are so hung up on this uranium yellow cake they do not realize this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the smallest tip of the iceberg of this selective intelligence failure.

I heard today a gentleman point out four things that I do not recall the President telling us. The two highest al Qaeda operatives, officers if you will, in our custody in Guantanamo before the war started, told us that they had no relationship with Saddam Hussein. I do not recall the President standing in the State of the Union and telling us that the two highest al Qaeda operatives said they had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. Maybe I missed that, but I do not recall that.

I do not recall him telling us that a retired national security fellow named Beers has said that looking at the intelligence he could not find any evidence of an ongoing relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

I do not recall him telling us that the Central Intelligence Agency told The Washington Post that, although there might have been some communication, there was no outstanding relationship between these entities. I do not recall any of these facts.

What I recall is the administration trying to paint a picture, an implicit assumption of Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11, and all this intelligence was excluded from public information and that was just wrong. This President said, and it is almost a quote, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has some of the most lethal weapons systems devised by man. It is almost a direct quote.

When we peel back these intelligence reports, we know there are lots of doubts about these issues.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, we all recognize the difficulties in dealing with appropriations bills. The committee, under noble leadership, has done an admirable job in dealing with priorities, but I think we ought to support this amendment because it is a statement of intent by the U.S. House of Representatives to, in fact, embrace the type of visionary leadership that came from this podium right behind me on May 9, 1961.

As we all know, on May 9, 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood at this well and challenged America to go to the moon and bring a man safely back within the decade. And that is the type of visionary leadership and over-the-horizon thinking that we now need in our energy policy in the United States.

Many of us have been talking about the need for us to embrace a new Apollo energy project to, in fact, establish very high bar goals for us that, to date, we have not done; that we need to embrace a goal of eliminating our addiction to Middle Eastern oil; that we need to embrace a goal of significantly reducing our global climate change gas emissions; and, most importantly, we need to embrace a goal of building these new technologies here of hybrid cars and solar power and wind power rather than giving those jobs to Denmark, Germany and Japan.

So I think we ought to pass this amendment as a statement of congressional intent to move in that direction. And just to make a suggestion to my colleagues as to why this is not pie in the sky, I just want to share a picture of a home in Virginia. This is a picture of the home of Alden and Carol Hathaway. They live in Hillsboro, Virginia. It is a nice home. I have seen it. They built it for $360,000, just a little more than a conventional home.

This is a comfortable home. It is nice looking, and it has net zero energy usage off the grid. These folks, using existing technologies, have a net zero use of energy that is not produced in their home. This is technology that is on the very cusp of being market-based if we do a little more work on solar, wind, and things like they have, which is an in-ground heat pump. I just point this out because we are at a very exciting moment in time where we can push these technologies over the top because the prices are coming down so radically.

I want to mention the Yucca Mountain situation. I have been a supporter of the effort to move forward in Yucca Mountain, and I understand it is important to continue that funding stream, but I want to confirm my understanding is the amount proposed by the Udall amendment actually moves us a little closer to the number proposed by the administration, which I would give some credence to in this assessment.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado to elaborate on that.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for his explanation, and I appreciate his leadership on that.

Mr. Chairman, I would note that we do have a problem with nuclear waste, but we have a problem in not having a visionary energy policy. I hope we can support the Udall amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I bring this amendment to the House's attention really to deal with a weakness in our existing laws regarding the disposal of low-level nuclear waste. In the State of Washington, the Department of Energy has plans to ship into the Hanford site tons and tons of what is characterized as low-level nuclear waste for disposal in unlined trenches. Unfortunately, because of existing law, they may at the moment under RCRA statutes be allowed to do that. But this is clearly something we need to resolve because current RCRA law would not allow us to dispose of levels of Drano and paint cans, but does allow us to dispose of low-level nuclear waste in unlined trenches.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

I thank the gentleman. I am very appreciative of his interest in this. I do think we need to light a fire under this process. I look forward to working with the gentleman in the conference committee.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, based on the statement of the gentleman, I withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer this amendment to the House to preserve the most significant, probably the most significant, conservation measure for our precious national assets in the last decade, the 2001 roadless rule; and I do so by bringing to this House the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt who said, ``We want the active and zealous help of every man and woman farsighted enough to realize the importance from the standpoint of the Nation's welfare in the future of preserving the forests.'' That spirit of Teddy Roosevelt is one we have a chance to confirm and affirm today by upholding the roadless rule, the largest advance in our conservation history for several years.

I think it is appropriate in talking about this just for a moment to think about the national assets which are now at risk. This picture of the Tongass National Forest, it has beautiful cathedral Sitka spruce and western hemlock, and it is a national treasure. It is a jewel in the crown of our national forests. It does not deserve nor should it be clearcut, and the roadless rule we seek to preserve in this amendment would prevent that depredation.

It is for us to consider the ramifications of not passing this amendment, and those ramifications are clear. The failure to pass this amendment tonight will allow this administration to clear-cut hundreds of thousands of acres of our most precious national forests. This is the picture that we will see on the television screens that Americans repudiate. Because Americans, when we adopted this roadless rule, in the largest, most democratic rule of all time, 2.2 million Americans volunteered to render their opinions. And what did they say? Over 93 percent of them said do not render this clear-cutting to our most pristine national forests.

Now, there are four reasons, substantive reasons, to adopt this amendment. Reason number one: this administration wants to essentially exempt the very largest, the very most pristine, the very most ecologically productive rain forest in the entire Western Hemisphere, the Tongass National Forest, and turn it into 300,000 acres of clear- cut, arboreal rubble. And they intend to do this same thing in the Chugach National Forest. Alaska is a beautiful State. Many of our constituents have been there, and all of our constituents have an interest in not seeing this clear-cutting take place.

Second, this administration has made clear that it intends to infect the lower 49 with the same policy disease. Because this administration has said quite clearly that it intends to do an amendment to the roadless rule that will essentially allow decisionmaking authority to move towards governors, rather than the United States House of Representatives, the Senate, and the executive authority of the United States. I quote Mr. Mark Rey, the Under Secretary of State, who will propose a change ``that would allow States to play a greater role in land use decisions that affect them.'' The roadless rule, which blocks development of 58 million acres of Federal land remains law; and he said, but, we will leave it up to the governors to see where on a limited basis relief may be appropriate.

We know this for a fact. The stewardship responsibility belongs in this Chamber and this Chamber alone. There is already the ability for the governments to participate.

The third reason, if I may. This Nation is already interlaced with roads. There are 377,810 miles of roads in our national forest system, enough to circle the globe 15 times, 15 times. And the unmet needs of maintenance on those roads is $10 billion. If somehow, in the midst of our $450 billion deficits we can scrape up $5, the first $5 we ought to spend ought to be in protecting the roads that our people already enjoy going up to the lakes fishing, taking their kids hiking, which are now falling into disrepair and washing out. This is a fiscally sound measure.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute and 40 seconds to myself.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) has graciously suggested I know nothing about the Tongass National Forest. I do know this about the Tongass National Forest. Every single one of our constituents of every single Member of the House of Representatives is a coowner of the Tongass National Forest. And I know that that phoney settlement they had up there was a scam between people who used to work for the timber industry's lobbyists, not a judicial decision.

And I know another thing, in answer to this fire red herring. We are going to hear a lot about fire during this debate. We have the ability to deal with fire in the existing roadless area rule. We have the regulation right here which allows specifically, if I can read it: ``When a road is needed to protect public health and safety in cases of imminent threat of flood, fire, or other catastrophic event, road- building is permitted.''

In the second regulation, specifically roads built to maintain and restore characteristics of composition and structure such as to reduce the risk of end characteristic wildfire effects.

The truth is, the roadless area rule allows building roads to deal with threat of fire of too much brush.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Chairman, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the highest court in the land to have dealt with the roadless area rule, affirmed the roadless area rule. It is true that a lower court in Wyoming, a State perhaps not known for great environmental policy, ruled contrary. But the highest court in the land affirmed the roadless area rule. It is the law of the United States.

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman New York (Mr. Boehlert), who shares the views of almost 2 million Americans who support the roadless rule.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), former judge, who will explain about the court of appeals upholding the roadless rule.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill).

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

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire of the remaining time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), a person who has been a great champion of this issue for many years.

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

Mr. Chairman, we are all here a very brief period of time, not just in Congress but on Earth; and I would posit to all of my colleagues that we have a better legacy than this in the most pristine national forest we have. But more importantly, that is the sentiment of over 2 million of our citizens who turned out at over 600 meetings to urge the Federal Government to listen to their sentiments.

It is the decision of the Taxpayers for Common Sense, because this rule is fiscally flexible. It is a decision of Trout Unlimited, because it protects water. It is the decision of the League of Conservation Voters. These groups agree with the 2 million people who know that this is a flexible rule, that, yes, allows us to deal with insect infestation. There is an exception in the rule, allows us to deal with fire. There is an exception in the rule, allows us to deal with access to leases. There is an exception in the rule, allows us to get access to our homes for private inholdings. There is an exception in the rule.

This rule was very carefully calibrated and developed. Let us have a legacy for our grandchildren we can be proud of. Pass this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I wholeheartedly concur with the suggestion by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) that we need a bipartisan, independent investigation of this. The reason that I have joined this effort tonight, and I have delayed doing so for a few weeks in the hopes that the administration would be more forthcoming about this intelligence failure, but what inspired me to come here tonight are the comments of Condoleezza Rice and Mr. Rumsfeld who said this is the end of the story; we can forget about these issues.

I am here to say this is not the end of the story; this is maybe the end of the beginning of the story. The type of questions that Americans are asking tonight as to how a fraudulent, forged document got into the address of the leader of the free world to the people of this country and to the world and to the House of Representatives, how that happened is just one of the questions. I know many of us have been hearing a lot of talk and dialogue about how that happened. And it was as predictable as rain in Seattle that George Tenet was going to get thrown overboard by this administration at some point. It is amazing it took so long.

The point I want to make tonight is that I do not think we should get seized on whether this was 16 words or 16,000 words. The fact of the matter is that there is a whole boatload of other questions that this independent Republican and Democratic commission needs answered, and I want to pose just a couple.

The first question this commission needs to answer is why was the President successful in convincing over 50 percent of the Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind the attack on September 11 and was in cahoots with al Qaeda when in fact the intelligence had enormous amounts of information that that was not true?

Why did the President of the United States in urging America to start a preemptive war not level with the American people to tell the American people all of the intelligence, not just the selective intelligence? And let me just mention one fact. As reported in The New York Times on June 9, 2003, two of the highest-ranking leaders of al Qaeda in American custody have told the CIA in separate interrogations that the terrorist organization did not work jointly with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein according to several intelligence officials. Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda planner and recruiter until his capture in March 2002, told questioners last year before the war that the idea of working with Mr. Hussein's government had been discussed among Qaeda leaders, but had been rejected. The same statement came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who insisted that the group did not work with Mr. Hussein.

Do Members recall President Bush telling the American people that the two highest operatives in our custody in Guantanamo Bay had told our intelligence services that they had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein? I do not remember that information being disclosed to the American people, nor do I remember the President quoting Greg Fieldman, a former State Department intelligence official, who said, ``There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operations.'' Intelligence agencies agreed on a ``lack of meaningful connection to al Qaeda'' and said so to the White House and Congress. I do not recall the President sharing that intelligence information with the United States or the world.

Mr. Speaker, I want to answer the gentleman from Pennsylvania's (Mr. Hoeffel) original question about what we should do in Iraq now, with two points.

One, I think it is important for the President to clear the decks to restore our credibility on this issue because our ability to act in Iraq is negatively affected by this credibility issue, and many of us believe and I believe that the best thing the President could do in that regard is to embrace a bipartisan review of the intelligence failure here. Having a respected Republican like Warren Rudman or someone else run a commission to have sort of a referee to figure out what happened here is a lot better than to have the flacks at various agencies throwing grenades at each other in the newspapers.

If we really want to find out here why forgeries ended up at the State of the Union address, why we did not get the straight scoop about the intelligence coming out of Iraq, why the President told us there was no doubt, and that was his word, no doubt that Iraq had some of the most lethal weapons ever devised by man and we cannot find a thimbleful to date of mustard gas, the best way is through an independent commission; and this is good for the administration, not just good for the people. And this is not a debate. We may find some of these weapons to date. That still may occur. This is not a debate even about the propriety of the war. Even if one thinks the war was justified about humanity and civil rights in Iraq, they have still got to join us in a bipartisan belief that truth from the American President is the most precious commodity we have in international affairs. We have all got to be joining that in a bipartisan manner; so I say clearing the decks first.

But the second issue, if I can, it is just imperative that we engage allies in this effort, in this maybe 2-, maybe 3-, maybe 4-, maybe 5- year effort to restore order and some sense of civility in Iraq, and I would encourage the administration to shuck aside its unilateral approach that unfortunately they have adopted for so long in Iraq and welcome our allies to get in there to shoulder some of this burden. Iraq is not a prize. It is not a glorious prize for the American people. It is a burden. We still have people not coming home from Iraq, and that burden ought to be shared with every nation in the civilized world rather than just Americans. And to date, unfortunately, this administration still has not been willing to embrace allies to get them in there taking sniper fire instead of our neighbors' kids, and I hope we will see it that way.

Mr. Speaker, I would advise the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) that there may be time left at the end of my presentation.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. Speaker, I would yield any remaining time to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of history made in this building, and one of the most magnificent things that happened in this building happened right behind me on May 9, 1961, and that decision by young President in 1961 I will talk about a little bit is a model that I think we ought to follow given the challenge our country now faces.

On May 9, 1961, John F. Kennedy came to this Chamber to the rostrum behind me and challenged America in a very bold, visionary challenge to put an American on the Moon within that decade, and it was an extraordinarily ambitious challenge, and he did so because he had the innate understanding of the can-do attitude of Americans, of the tremendous technological creativity of Americans, and the recognition that America is not a country that ever rests on its laurels but always is looking over the horizon.

Indeed, that challenge was met, and when you think about it, it was a relatively historic thing to meet that challenge because, at the time he made it, frankly many pundits thought that the challenge was wildly unrealistic, wildly optimistic and there was no way that America was going to meet the challenge. Kennedy's sense of optimism was fulfilled, and America indeed put a man on the Moon within the close of that decade and brought him and them home safely.

That decision and that challenge and that sense of optimism of John F. Kennedy is something we now need to recreate this year, in the year 2003, in adopting a brand-new bold, visionary energy policy for America because many of us here believe in this Chamber that the moment is ripe for the Congress to create a promise and a challenge of America that is equally bold, equally visionary, and ultimately equally achievable as Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the Moon in the next 10 years.

As a result of that, I am working with a group here in the United States House of Representatives in an attempt to propose and pass into law what we call the New Apollo Energy Project, and we do so because we believe that we need to seize the moment of technological promise and the can-do spirit of America to, in fact, move forward to a new clean energy future for America, an energy future that will not be bound by the chains that are hampering us so much in our foreign policy, by the fact that we are now losing jobs to other countries who are moving ahead of us, regrettably, in new, clean energy futures and in an energy future that will reduce the amount that we are contributing to global climate change gases in our atmosphere.

So what we are doing is working to build a consensus in the House to adopt not an old, previous century policy that is dependent on the technologies of the past, but one that leans forward to the technologies of the future and the industry of the future and the jobs of the future; and we believe this is the year to do that.

Right now, the other Chamber is considering an energy package. The House has passed one which is regrettably very, very short of this goal; but we want to continue to work on that, and I have come to the floor to address the House tonight about what a New Apollo Energy future would look like and why it is necessary.

This New Apollo Energy future we think needs to accomplish three goals, and we think goal-setting is important for a Nation as it is for any other group or team. So we would set three national goals in the New Apollo Energy Project.

Goal number one, we believe we should set a new national goal of creating 3 million new jobs, well-paying jobs in the next 15 years that would, in fact, be dedicated to these new technologies that are on the cusp of coming to become market-based technologies, and we believe it is fundamentally important for America to say those jobs need to be American jobs. They need to be home grown, and the reason they need to be home grown is that we know, looking over the horizon just a bit, that there are going to be new industries built up with these new technologies, wind, solar, a huge number of efficiencies from cars to air conditioners to housing implements, to geothermal, a whole slew of new technologies and new industrial bases that are going to come on line, and we want the jobs to manufacture those goods, to build those transmission lines, to build those wind plants to be right here in America.

Sadly, right now, that is not happening. Sadly, because of our retrograde policies, we are giving away those jobs. We are giving away the jobs for solar cell production to German companies. We are losing the jobs in the auto industry to energy efficient vehicles in Japan. We are even losing good, high-paying manufacturing jobs to the little, though impressive, country of Denmark which is ahead of us in wind turbine technology.

We think it is time to right that ship and say that this Nation is going to seize its manifest destiny of being the technological leader of the world and at the same time grow these 3 million jobs at home.

This is an economic development issue, and we believe that one of the most prudent, highest payoff investments that America can make is to invest $300 billion over the next decade in the research and development, in the incentives, in the incentives for manufacturers to help them retool their industries, incentives to consumers to help them buy energy-efficient products, to the use of the government facilities to help spread this new technology. That is an extremely wise investment to make sure that we grow jobs at home in the new technologies of the future. This is an industrial development program for this millennium, and we need to seize that moment.

Second goal: We need to break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil. We all know that on a bipartisan basis we have been slaves at various moments to the addiction of oil coming from the Persian Gulf, and it has tainted our foreign policy in various ways. It has made America, for its own economic interest, act in ways that is not in its long-term liberty interest or security interest. And it is high time that America become more energy-independent so that we can make decisions about foreign policy free from the chains of this addiction.

So we believe that we need to set a national goal to reduce our oil consumption, and we believe there is some very realistic goals we can set. Again, goal-setting is important, and we need to set a national goal in three parts: Number one, to reduce our oil consumption by 600,000 barrels a day by the year 2010. Now, that is roughly the amount of oil that we previously had gotten from Iraq. It is doable, it is achievable, and it is important to our foreign policy and our economic development.

By the year 2015, we ought to adopt measures to reduce our oil imports by 1.5 million barrels a day, which is roughly the equivalent we have imported from Saudi Arabia historically.

And by the year 2010, we should have an ambitious but achievable goal of reducing our consumption by 2.4 million barrels a day, roughly the equivalent of what we have historically imported from the Persian Gulf.

These are goals that will set us free both in our foreign policy and in our industrial base. As we will talk about a little later, they are achievable goals using the technological creativity that is so important in this country.

Now, let me address the third goal as well. We need to deal with the issue of reducing our emissions of global climate change gases, and we need to do so because it is clear from the science that the concentration of these gases, these pollutants that are now going in the air when we burn oil, when we burn coal, when we burn any fossil fuel are radically increasing the concentrations of carbon dioxides and methane and other global climate change gases, which have the impact of essentially trapping energy in the Earth. And we will talk about that in a few minutes.

So we would basically set a goal to keep our emissions of these pollutants at 1990 levels so they do not increase.

Now, let me address why these are achievable goals. They are achievable goals for a couple of reasons. One, any historical review will show that our country is the most technologically creative and productive and forward-thinking group of human beings ever on Earth. That is quite a mantle, and we want to harness that energy, and we want to harness that genius. We have to have an attitude that recognizes that we are not satisfied with the technologies of today. We want to go forward and have the same type of creativity that we had in the software industry, in the biotech industry, in aerospace, and we now need to unleash that power of thought and intellectual capability by creating a new energy future for America.

It is doable, and it is achievable, and I will show some reasons why we believe that is so today.

I want to refer to a picture of a home in Virginia, the home of Alden and Carol Hathaway. This is a home, it is quite a nice-looking home, and I have been in a similar home, which is very comfortable. It has kind of a classic architecture style. It was built in Virginia, and you will notice there is some snow in this location when this picture was taken. It cost about $365,000 to build, roughly in the neighborhood of what it would cost to build essentially a standard home in the Virginia area.

This home has a feature with today's technology that is pretty extraordinary, and that feature is that this home, using a combination of solar panels that take the sun's energy, that create electricity, and are integrated right into the shingles of the roof. It uses an in- ground heat pump and passive solar heating in the windows, and essentially, at some point, having net metering, where the excess capacity of electricity it generates goes back into the grid, goes back into the utilities, and has a net energy consumption of zero using today's technology.

That means that the Hathaways, to heat and cool their home, do not burn any fossil fuels, do not buy any Mideast oil, do not put any global climate change gas emissions in the air, and, perhaps most importantly, have created jobs for the American industrial base that are now involved in building homes of this type and this type of technology. This is a plus-job home, it is a plus-environment home, and it is a plus-national security home. And it is here today in a kind of standard climate that does include heat in Virginia, it sure is hot here tonight in D.C., and snow as well. This technology is possible.

But if we can, let us look on a larger scale as to why these technologies have tremendous potential if, in fact, we have the wisdom to put them to use. Basically what has happened, because of the combination of intelligent design by American scientists and economies of scale, the renewable energies, some of which we are talking about tonight, have come down in price dramatically over the last couple of decades. What were once sort of dreamy little ideas about new technologies 10, even 6, or 7 years ago, are now very close to being market-based. Let us look at some of those examples.

For wind power, for wind turbine prices, in 1980 it was costing about 30 cents a kilowatt hour. This has come down dramatically over the last two decades. It is now at about the 3\1/2\-cent range and will continue to come down when economies of scale are realized, meaning when we build more wind turbine plants, the per-unit price comes down. We need to be utilizing the fact that wind is becoming more economically competitive, and we need to make the small tax credit that this industry now enjoys permanent and predictable so that this industry can blossom and so that we can build American jobs building those wind turbines and building those transmission lines to get the power where the wind is to the power where the people live. Those are jobs that we ought to have in building those transmission lines. That cost has come down.

If you look at photovoltaic, basically solar energy, in 1980 it started at basically $1 a kilowatt hour. That has come down dramatically now. It is in the range of about 20 cents per kilowatt hour, and will continue to come down fairly significantly as we increase the production capability, and the unit price will continue to come down.

I may note, too, that these prices actually are very conservative, because in distributed energy, that means energy you create at your home or business site, you do not have transmission costs.

So actually, you can pay a little more for the cost of photovoltaics but come out ahead because you do not have to pay the transmission costs.

The same thing has been the case in thermal energy. The price has come down dramatically for thermal and biomass, which we have tremendous potential within our agricultural industry. So the fact is we have an economic model which has demonstrated the ability of these new technologies to become market based, and they just need a little boost and some incentives to get them off where they stand today.

Let me turn to the environmental reason for this. We have talked about security. We have talked about the job reason, but there is another reason that calls on us to adopt these new technologies, and that is the phenomenon of global climate change. Global climate change is a phenomenon that is fairly well understood in science and basically involves a physical fact which essentially every scientist in the world agrees on, and that accepted scientific principle is that we have gases in our atmosphere that essentially trap energy in the Earth. The way this system works is that energy comes in from the sun in essentially ultraviolet wavelengths of light. It strikes the Earth and is reflected back into space except for one fact: we have a blanket of gases in our atmosphere which traps that energy from going back into space. The light comes in the ultraviolet range or spectrum, but it bounces back in the infrared spectrum, and these gases are a one-way door, if you will. It will allow the ultraviolet light in, but it will not allow the infrared light out. So it traps radiant energy in our planetary system. Every scientist who understands anything about meteorological systems understands that phenomenon and accepts it as a fact.

The other uncomfortable fact is that the concentration of these gases that essentially are responsible for this phenomenon are going up dramatically. If I can demonstrate this chart here, this is a chart of carbon dioxide concentrations. Carbon dioxide is an odorless, colorless gas. It is emitted any time we burn fossil fuels. Basically, since the dawn of the industrial revolution, we have had a dramatic increase in concentrations of carbon dioxide. As you see on this chart back in 1860 when we really started burning fossil fuels, the levels were about 285 parts per million in the atmosphere. If we look at the concentrations since 1960, they are beginning to skyrocket. And we are now at levels approaching 370 parts per million, radically increased compared to the preindustrial levels.

The thing that is disturbing about this is what is not on this chart, which is that this line if projected out goes through the ceiling of this roof in the next 100 years or so. This line continues to go up if we continue to do what we have been doing for the last 100 years. As that line continues to go up, it is not too surprising that we are playing Russian roulette with our global climate systems.

If we have a gas that traps energy and we double that gas, it stands to reason and it is an accepted fact that it is going to have an impact on the world's climate. Generally speaking, there will be a warming, but there may also be very untoward results of increased tornadoes, of increased dry spells, the lack of snow melt in the Pacific Northwest, and today the Arctic ice sheet demonstrably is smaller and thinner. The tundra in Alaska is melting, snow packs are being reduced. Alpine meadows in Mount Rainier National Park are disappearing in part because the tree level is rising.

The International Meteorological Society of the United Nations issued a report last week pointing to the dramatic increase in very significant high-energy abnormal meteorological events, including tornadoes and hurricanes. We are experiencing significant changes in our climate and someone, some country, is going to make money off responding to this challenge, and it needs to be America. We need to grow the jobs in this country which will create the technologies that sure as the Creator made little green apples are going to be used by the world in responding to this problem. We in America ought to be the ones fulfilling our destiny to do that.

What we have proposed in our plan is a multi-pronged approach. We realize that there is no silver bullet to this issue. We realize that we are going to have to do several things to jump start this new technological revolution. So what we have done is to look at various ways to approach this problem. We have recognized there is no one magical solution. There is going to be a multitude of technologies. There are going to be a lot of roads to get where we need to go, and we have not been prevented to have the genius to know which are the right ones.

What we have suggested in our plan is to take a very smorgasbord approach. We have essentially in our plan proposed research and development in a whole slew of new technologies, including clean coal technology to try to find out if there is a way to burn coal without putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We think research and development is appropriate to find out if there is a way to do that. We think research and development is important to find out a way to find efficiencies of our heating and cooling systems. We have put in significant research and development dollars to do that. To address the cost of that investment, the number we have proposed of $300 billion, or in that range, is a significant sum. But to put it in context, it is less than each of the last two tax cuts which have passed this Chamber and will be signed into law.

What we are suggesting is that the future of growing jobs in this Nation and the priority, the imperative to grow our economy by capturing these new industries in our country of retooling our industrial base, of making sure these high-paying manufacturing jobs are in our country, we think that priority is at least equal to the priority of passing the very significant tax cuts, two packages which have now passed the House.

If Members believe in technology, if Members believe in America's destiny to lead the world in doing so, surely this investment in our future is every bit and probably more important than the tax cut package that passed, and we are suggesting an investment of that nature and that magnitude because this is not a time for baby steps.

Our challenges to our economy, to our environment, and to our personal security associated with being addicted to Middle East oil does not permit timidity in that regard. We need to act boldly and with visionary thought.

The other thing is we have used many of the tools in the Federal Government's tool belt to try to move this plan forward. We have suggested tax credits. We have suggested tax credits for our industries that need to retool, very generous tax credits for our automobile industry. We want our domestic automobile industry to lead the way in fuel-efficient vehicles, and we have suggested very generous tax credits to our automobile industry to be able to retool their plants so they can be the technological leaders in the world. Those tax credits also need to go to consumers, and so we have suggested generous tax credits to consumers who buy fuel-efficient vehicles, who buy fuel- efficient refrigerating systems, who buy energy-efficient homes. We think there should be a better financing system for energy-efficient homes. We are exploring ways to improve financing of energy-efficient homes and vehicles.

But we have also realized that we need to use all of the tools of the government, which include the abilities to have standardized regulatory systems to require where possible, where technology exists that we move forward.

One of the things that is pretty interesting to me is that if we had simply continued the rate of improvement in efficiency of our automobiles that was occurring in the late 1970s and early 1980s, if we had continued to improve the efficiency of our vehicles at that rate, we would have been free from imports of Saudi Arabian oil by now. Think about that. Unfortunately, we fell off the wagon. We stopped in the mid-1980s making any improvements in the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, and as a result here we are, still stuck in the morass of the Middle East, addicted to oil, losing jobs to the Japanese, the Danish, and the Germans.

And if we had simply continued on the path of efficiency, we would have been in a much better situation today. Now it is time, we believe, to get back on the road to efficiency and use all of these methods that we can to really seize the destiny of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to wrap up here just by a comment. America's history has always been forward and up, and we believe now that this is a pivotal moment to take a bold step in our energy future. Anything less shortchanges both America and the promise of America. And we are going to be working, we hope, on a bipartisan basis to build a consensus around this new Apollo Energy Project. We would like to make this a bipartisan plan. Unfortunately, the President's plan falls woefully short of the promise that we think America deserves, but we are going to try to continue to push this ball because America's future depends on it to grow these jobs in this country to make sure our industry leads the world. That is the American way.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo).

Victims of our Porous Borders

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 56 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, July 10, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, our amendment would ensure that no funds would be used essentially to alter our existing civilian personnel system for the proud men and women who are civilian employees of our defense system.

This basically is a response to the work we are now doing in an attempt to find a reasonable and protective reform package that originally left the House as H.R. 1588. We are concerned that the language of that bill, if in fact it would be implemented, would substantially degrade our protections of our civilian employees who are doing workman-like work.

Basically, we had concerns about that bill because it was overly broad and was really a rushed approach to civilian systems, but we are also troubled by a lack of explicit protections for fundamental worker rights. Currently, the bill has a lack of protection for true collective bargaining, a lack of a real right of fair appeals, a lack of adequate overtime and weekend compensation, preference for veterans and equal pay for equal work.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I appreciate those comments, and will look forward to working with the gentleman, because we do not obviously want to go back to those bad old days of nepotism and poor performance and political selection. I look forward to working with the gentleman to get an honest, reasonable bill.

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