Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, in regard to the Medicare bill we will be considering this evening, I thought about coming down to the House and asserting that this bill was a Trojan horse, but I think it is worse than a Trojan horse. I do not think it would be fair to the Trojan horse metaphor to call this a Trojan horse. And the reason is, is when the Athenians sent the horse to the Trojans, they did not announce in advance that the horse was full of soldiers that were going to attack the city. They kind of kept that a secret. But the Republicans have not kept any secrets about this horse at all because if we look at what the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) said, ``To those who say that the Medicare bill would end Medicare as we know it, our answer is we certainly hope so.''

If the Athenians had announced that the gift, the alleged gift, they were sending was going to destroy the city they were attacking, no one would have bought that old nag. And it the same situation here. We should not buy this old nag of a bill with the expressed intent of destroying Medicare over the next 10 years. And, yes, it is complicated on how that is going to happen. And, yes, it is a little bit chaotic in explaining it. But the Members can rest assured that America's senior citizens are going to figure this out. They are going to figure out this is worse than a Trojan horse because they see it coming. We should reject this and adopt the Democratic substitute.

Mr. Speaker, as I fly across America, which I do every Monday and Friday from Seattle to Dulles Airport, every time I fly I realize what a beautiful country we have, truly the most beautiful one both for our democracy and in our beautiful lands. And those lands now are still at risk because the current administration, as the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) so well laid out, threatens to violate the roadless area rule and violate the very clear desires of Americans to protect the last remaining pristine areas in our national forests.

Now, we have an opportunity to stop this administration from gutting the roadless area rule. And I hope that my colleagues will join the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) and myself in co-sponsoring the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2003.

This bill will simply incorporate the existing rule that protects the last remaining one-third of our national forests that truly are the crown jewels of our national forest system. And it will protect by preventing future road building, road building that has already covered 360,000 miles of roads in our national forests already, most of which are built for timber harvest, much of which is no longer usable. At least 60,000 of those miles of road are no longer usable by anyone, even though they were used and built with taxpayer money. That is enough road to go around the world 16 times already in our national forests.

Now, in response to that, Americans came out in droves over the last 3 years at over 600 public meetings held by the Federal Government to ask Americans what they wanted to do with their national forests. At those over-600 meetings of 2 million Americans, both in person and by e-mail letter, responded with the very clear and dramatic message, preserve these last remaining virgin pristine areas. Over 96 percent of Americans who addressed this issue had a single message for the President of the United States: keep the clear-cutting and the bulldozers out of these remaining forests. And we got some good news rhetorically from the administration because rhetorically the administration said that they are going to keep the roadless area rule. But, it is one of those big ``buts'' that you hear so much of in life; they were going to slash and burn by exempting Alaska. And they were going to slash and burn by exempting other States, as long as in some process, it remains uncertain, the Governor of that State wanted to exempt that particular State.

In fact, some of the biggest tracts, in fact, the biggest tracts, the most biologically intact tracts of land in the world for temperate forests are in the Tongass and Chugach National Forests which are right now protected by the roadless area rule, which if the President has his way will no longer be protected. These are the most biologically productive rain forests in the world that the administration wants to now open up to clear-cutting and road building, to strip away the protection that over 2 million Americans spoke so loudly to keep, and that is just wrong. It is wrong because Americans do not want it, and it is wrong because it violates the whole spirit of the roadless area rule.

You cannot say you are going to uphold the roadless area rule and then strip out the largest forests in the United States from its protection. It is kind of like the President saying, We will have the No Child Left Behind Act, but we will exempt the children in Alaska because they are some kind of lesser Americans, and then we will also exempt the States where Governors say we do not want to have this protection of No Child Left Behind.

We believe that all American forests, including Alaska, including all 50 States, are entitled to the roadless area rule.

Now, in my State of Washington, we are kind of proud of our forests too. We have three very beautiful roadless area rules that we want to see statutorily protected, protected by a law passed by Congress so that no President of either party in the future can cave in to special interests to allow clear-cutting in these forests. These are in the Colville National Forest, they are in the Dark Divide area in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and my personal favorite, the Olympic National Forest close to where I live in Kitsap County, Washington.

In that forest there are two trees at the end of a trail in this roadless area, two beautiful Douglas firs. They are about maybe 8 feet in diameter. Incredible trees. We call them Theodore and Franklin after the Roosevelts who were so responsible for protecting these areas that are now subject to the roadless area rule.

Our message from Washington State is, Theodore and Franklin deserve protection, and their cousins in Alaska deserve protection, and every tree in these protected roadless areas deserve protection. I hope my colleagues will join me in co-sponsoring this bill and send a message to the administration, we want the roadless area, not just pieces.

Mr. Chairman, Teddy Roosevelt would be spinning in his grave if he knew his party had decided to join ranks with what he referred to as the malefactors of great wealth. And that is exactly what this bill does.

It is incredible to me that some of my colleagues who support this bill come to this well and purport, say that they are on the side of consumers because they have such great sorrow and empathy for consumers. Well, you have to decide what you are on. The Consumers Federation of America knows this is a bad bill for consumers and they are against it. The Consumers Union of America knows this is a bad bill and they are against it. The Consumers for Auto Liability and Safety know this is a bad bill and they are against it. The consumers of America recognize this bill reduces their rights.

And the part that I want to focus on, and I heard one speaker refer to it as mere rhetoric that the consumers are going to get hurt, tell that to the thousands of people that are damaged by Ken Lay and Enron's depredations on them, whose lawsuit will be stayed for at least another year and a half to 2 years if this bill passes. You ought to know what side consumers are on, and in this bill they are against it.

Mr. Speaker, I have come to the House Chamber tonight to talk about a tremendous opportunity for our great country, and it is an opportunity that follows in the historical path that John Kennedy set forth back on May 9, 1961. The path that I would like to talk about tonight is a path towards a new energy future for our country, a future that is befitting of this century and our technological progress and achievements we have made and can make in the next decade or two.

What we are going to be introducing for the House consideration in the next week or two is what we call the New Apollo Energy Project, because many of my colleagues and myself believe that our country deserves a bold, vigorous, aggressive new energy policy that is befitting of the technological wherewithal and talents of our country. So we are calling it the New Apollo Energy Project.

The reason we are calling it the New Apollo Energy Project is because we think that we need to follow in the footsteps of what John F. Kennedy did in challenging America right behind us. He came to this Chamber on May 9, 1961 as a young President, way back before computers, biotechnologies, solar cells, fuel cells; and he stood behind me and looked out to America and challenged America to put a man on the Moon within the decade, which was an extraordinary challenge to America in 1961. Computers were in their infancy, our rocketry was failing repeatedly at that time. At that moment, people

really scratched their heads to ask how a President could be so bold to challenge the country to reach such an ambitious goal. But Kennedy did make that challenge; and the Nation responded and, indeed, America put a man on the Moon within that decade.

I think Kennedy recognized some things about America that were perhaps unique in the world that others did not who were skeptical about that effort. He recognized the basic can-do spirit of the culture and the American economy; and he recognized that when challenged, Americans can deliver technologically much more than people would otherwise think so, and so he set forth a challenge and a promise to Americans that we could do this.

Many of us now believe that we need to do a similar thing in the field of energy, in our energy policy in this country. And we are very optimistic that if we set high bars and high goals for America, we can meet them just as we did in the original Apollo project.

So in the coming weeks, my colleagues and I will be introducing the New Apollo Energy Project, which will basically set three goals for a new energy policy of our Nation. Not one that is sort of captured by the artifacts of old industries, not one that is captured by a feeling that we just have to continue down the same old road, but one that can really lift our eyes and see a higher plane that will solve three challenges that America has now that we need a new policy to address. I will briefly mention what those three are.

Number one, we need to get our economy growing again. And to do that, America needs to seize the moment by the reins and create these new, clean energy technologies that can create high-paying jobs in America. So job creation is job number one for a new energy policy, and we are optimistic that that can be done; and I will talk about that in a moment.

Second, we set a goal in our national energy policy of reducing our contributions to global warming gases that are now polluting our atmosphere and causing a warming and climate change in our planet, and this is something we can do using new technology; and it is required if we want to avoid climactic changes to change the world as we know it.

Three, and perhaps as important, we set a goal to break addiction to Middle Eastern oil, which has enslaved us to certain policies over the last several decades that are now clearly not in our security interests.

It is time for America to become more self-reliant for fuel so that we do not have to make foreign policy decisions in one shape or another that are affected by our now current addiction for over half our fuel from those sources.

So those are the three goals we have set for the New Apollo Energy Project: Job creation, reduction of global climate gas emissions, and reduction of our dependence on foreign oil, particularly Mideast oil sources. And we believe all of them are very achievable.

Let me talk about the first goal which is job creation and getting a new sort of horizon, a new scope of our economy. And that is to adopt measures that will spur the development of these new high-paying jobs in high-tech industries. Let me talk about what some of them are.

Right now we have the capacity in this country which we are not using as much as we should, for instance, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the wind turbine industry, a growing industry, very rapidly growing industry, but one that needs to continue to increase that rate of acceleration. And what we are now proposing as one measure out of many is to continue the tax incentive, the investment tax credit for wind turbine construction in the United States. And we believe and the economics show very clearly that when we do this, when we foster the creation of this industry, we actually create ten times as many jobs as fostering megawatt creation instead of our old industries. For every megawatt of energy, a new renewable energy program develops, we create 10 times more jobs than if we do so in the old 19th century fossil fuel-based economic systems.

So now we believe we should be building wind turbines in the United States. We should have the high-paid jobs to do that and high-sector, high-skilled manufacturing jobs. We should be having construction jobs putting them on line. We should be building transmission facilities, all of which creates jobs in our country.

Now, we have the capability to do this. We are doing this in the State of Washington. Using an existing wind tax credit, we are building the largest wind turbine facility, farm essentially, in North America in the southeast corner of the State of Washington. It will create enough energy for 70,000 homes. And with the tax credit, it will do so on a market-based rate. But without the Apollo energy project or some other way, that tax credit will expire and we will lose the ability to create these jobs. And these jobs come at a very beneficial moment where the cost of wind turbine energy and a variety of other sources, I am just picking wind turbine to start this discussion, is becoming market based.

And, in fact, there is an interesting phenomenon that has occurred with many of our new technologies and that is what gives us such optimism about our new technologies. The fact of the matter is that over the last decade or so, the cost of energy produced by new technologies has come down dramatically. With every increase in the units of production of wind turbine, solar power, fuel cells, you name it, these new technologies, the cost of energy has come down dramatically.

I have a chart here that indicates how significant that reduction cost has been. For wind-powered energy, if you start in 1980, wind power was costing about 35 cents a kilowatt hour. Now, because of efficiencies caused by new production efficiencies, in 2000 that has come down to 2\1/2\, 3 cents; a reduction of a factor of 10 in the last 20 years. And it is projected that that will continue to decline in cost as we get efficiencies in production. And, of course, anyone who thinks about this knows why that happens. The more of these units you produce, we get economies of scale and the price comes down.

The same is the situation in photovoltaics and solar cells. In 1980, just 23 years ago, the price was over $1 a kilowatt hour. That has now come down to about 21, 22 cents, still above markets rates. But the interesting thing about this curve is you see this very significant reduction in cost as the rate of production has gone on up and it is predicted to continue on the downward slope. That is true for geothermal as well. It has had a reduction of more than half the cost in the last 20 years. And biomass, not quite as steep a curve, but still a reduction of cost.

What this shows us is we ought to be optimistic about, if we do engage in the production and incentivize the production of these new technologies, we will reduce cost, we will create jobs, and we will bring those jobs home.

This is a very important issue of bringing these jobs home. It is very clear for anyone who has thought about the future of the world's energy sources, is that the world is going to adopt new technologies. There is no question about that. The question is which countries are going to draw the jobs that are associated with that. And right now, unfortunately, it is not us as much as it should be.

In wind, many of these wind turbines are manufactured in Denmark. In hybrid automobile manufacturing, the cars are being manufactured in Japan. In photovoltaic manufacturing, a German company is leading the way, although much of the production is in the United States. And we are thinking about opening a Denmark-based turbine manufacturer as well. Those jobs need to be in America. Those jobs need to be American jobs. Just as we dominated the aeronautics industry for the last 50 years, as we created the first auto industry at the turn of the century, we need to create an industry that is homegrown and growing those jobs right here in America. And the New Apollo Energy Project is signed to do exactly that. And we do it by using the whole scope of tools that is available to the Federal Government to help to do that.

Number one is to use our tax policy in a way that will actually create jobs in a meaningful way. We have passed a lot of tax cuts in this Chamber recently, but virtually none of them have actually been directed to try to create new technologically driven jobs. And we need to use the Tax Code to create incentives for business people to create

these new industries, to give them a little leg up to a little start, and that is why we have created investment tax credits for a whole slew of these new industries, both to the manufacturers, photovoltaics, wind turbine, fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles, retooling costs to the auto industry. It is clear that our local auto industry is going to have some retooling costs to go to either hybrid vehicles or, in the long term, fuel-cell vehicles.

We believe we ought to give our local domestic auto industry tax breaks to help those retooling costs to build this new generation of vehicles to get this job done. But it should not be just for manufacturers; we need to take care of consumers and, ultimately, buyers as well. And that is why in the New Apollo Energy Project we have created incentives to give tax breaks for people to buy fuel- efficient vehicles. Significant incentives. And not only fueled vehicles, but also other energy producing materials including air- conditioning units, including tax credits in a new mortgage incentivized program to help people who build energy-efficient homes. We have a lot to do to get that done.

Now, let me just also indicate there is optimism in getting this job done in real life today. I would like to show a picture of a home in Virginia, and this is a home that was built about a year and a half ago in Virginia, which is not a tropical climate. We have a picture actually in the snow. And this is a home built for $365,000 which is relatively close, maybe a little bit more than actual building costs of a typical home of Virginia in this area, but this home is special. This home, which is a very comfortable home, I have actually been in it or actually the prototype, it was built on the Mall at one time to show us what it was like, or a very similar home. This home, using existing technologies today, has zero net energy consumption, zero net energy consumption.

It does so by using photovoltaic cells incorporated in the roof in the actual shingles to produce electricity. It has a very high degree of insulation value. It uses an in-ground heat pump, and it has a net energy consumption of zero because it can produce, and we one get a net metering bill which allows homeowners who generate electricity to feed their excess electricity back into the grid and to get a credit for doing that. This is a model for the future that is here today. And we need to utilize our Tax Code in a way that helps homeowners who want to recreate homes like this across America, which can happen today in a variety of climates, in almost every climate, to help reduce energy costs. To do that we need to pass a bill that is similar like that.

So what we are saying is this is not pie-in-the-sky, Buck Rogers, over the horizon, next decade. Some of these technologies may take a decade to, in fact, become cost effective; but some are on the market today with a very modest boost, and America ought to be doing it.

Now, I would like to turn to the second goal of the New Apollo Energy Project and that is the goal to reduce America's contribution to global warming gases. We unfortunately, with every other industrialized country, are contributing an enormous load of pollutants to the atmosphere; and what we are creating, all of us, we are putting out of the tailpipes of our cars and out of our smokestacks of our industry and a whole host of any fossil fuel-based system, we are putting millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the air. And these are invisible gases. They really do not bother our eyesight but they will bother our climate in the long term.

To the extent that now science is irrefutable that the concentration of these gases are going to significantly increase during our lifetime, and I have a chart to indicate that, to indicate how significant this problem is, I have a chart of the levels of concentrations of carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is a global warming gas basically. The levels of carbon dioxide you will see are relatively consistent for 1,000 years, starting at 800,000. Then we get to the Industrial Age of 1800. We started burning coal and other fossil fuels. And when we do that, we create carbon dioxide and it goes out to the atmosphere. We dump it for free. We treat the atmosphere sort of as a big garbage dump. When that happens, those rates of concentration of carbon dioxide started to go up dramatically, and now in the early 2000s start to rise in almost a vertical fashion.

So for thousands of years we had levels in the 240 parts per million range, which are now going to be skyrocketing in the next century, are anticipated to double at least in the next century. This is doubling of an unprecedented occurrence in the history of the world. And the reason that is significant is that carbon dioxide acts, in a manner of speaking, like a pane of glass or a blanket, depending on how you look at it.

The way carbon dioxide works is that carbon dioxide allows the rays of the sun to come in. Because the rays of the sun come in, there is ultraviolet light. But when the energy bounces back, it bounces back at the infrared spectrum. It is a different spectrum of light. And carbon dioxide traps infrared light. So as a pane of glass works, it traps, if you will, the infrared radiation from going back into space and it warms the planet. And it is a really good thing we have some carbon dioxide in our atmosphere because we would have a very cold planet if we did not have it.

But the problem is if we are going to double the rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is going to, as you can imagine, trap enormous amounts of energy. And we are already seeing the ramifications of that. The 5 hottest years in recorded history have been in the last 10 years; 1999, I believe, probably was the hottest year in record in the last 10,000 years. And we saw extraordinary damage associated with the change in our climate already.

We have seen significant changes right here in America. We have seen the glaciers in Glacier National Park disappear. It is predicted in the next 75 years, if we keep going at the rate we are going, there will not be any glaciers in Glacier National Park.

In the Arctic, dead Intuit Indians are popping out of the ground because the tundra is melting and the caskets are popping out of the ground.

In the Arctic ice sheet, it could be reduced by 40 percent in the next couple of decades and in depth reduced 40 percent, almost in half; and it is reduced at least 10 percent already.

We are seeing huge increases in very severe hurricane thunderstorm activity so that the insurance losses in the domestic industry have gone up something like 40 or 50 percent in the last several years.

So we are seeing now just a little taste of very significant changes in our climate that are going to continue to go up if we do not do something about it.

What we have proposed, we have introduced in the new Apollo Energy project, we can do this better than this. We have achieved really dramatic results, improving our environment in the last 2 decades because the Federal Government's got busy and it has done some things to clean our air. We have got a lot cleaner air than we did 25 years ago. In sulfur dioxide and various particulate matter, we have made some real strides because the Federal Government has acted, but in this situation Congress has sort of adopted the pose of an ostrich. We have put our heads in the sand, our tails in the air, rather than the American eagle; and it is time for us to pull our heads out of the sand and do something about the climate, and there are some things happening here in Congress.

We have this proposal we have suggested in the House. In the other Chamber there will be an energy debate in the next week or two. There will be a very important vote on trying to create a cap to try to limit the amount of CO2 that goes into the global atmosphere, and that is something that is in America's long-term interest. We hope that the other Chamber will show some action in that regard.

What we have done is we have used the tools in the Federal tool box to try to reduce the rate of global gas emissions in a way that will preserve the way we live because Americans still want to continue to enjoy easy, accessible transportation, safe transportation. We want to have enjoyable homes. We do not want to change dramatically our lifestyle, and we can do that if we will make some smart investments in new technology.

So what we have done is to try to create incentives to use new technology to reduce global emissions in a

variety of ways. One, we suggested that we, in fact, improve the efficiency, for instance, of our air conditioners which have enormous improvements we can make of the efficiency of air conditioners to reduce the demand of electricity and reduce the fossil fuel we burn to create electricity.

We think people who buy autos that are efficient ought to get a tax break to try to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions we put into the air. We think that we ought to use the regulatory basis to improve the efficiency of our automobiles through the government acting as well as we have to improve the CAFE standards which we stopped in the early 1980s.

It is interesting, we improved the mileage of our cars dramatically in the 1970s, but we stopped in 1983; and we actually have gone backwards in the mileage of our cars. I mean, think about that. At the very time we have created the world's best computers, the world's most vibrant biotech industry, we have gone backwards in what our auto industry has given us for mileage of our cars. That is an abysmal record, and we ought to improve this and get back on this track of improving the fuel efficiency of our vehicles; and that is very possible. That is part of our new Apollo Energy Project.

Now I want to say, too, it is very important to realize there are no silver bullets to any of the challenges we have here tonight, and we recognize that. There is no one technology that is going to solve all of our energy challenges. We believe we have to have a very broad-based approach to do the research and development work that it is going to take to meet our challenges, and that means that we just do not look at wind or solar or geothermal. We think about things outside of the box, if you will, one of those being, for instance, clean coal technology.

There may be a way for us to burn coal and trap, or as the scientists use it, a $24 word, sequester the carbon dioxide as it comes out of the smokestack. If we can sequester the carbon dioxide from coal, we can continue to use coal without, in fact, increasing our CO2 emission, and we have an enormous supply of coal in this country.

There are other environmental challenges we have to address with this mining; but this is something we need to explore, and we need to have sort of an all-comers approach when we are doing research and development to look at all the potential energy efficiencies and new technologies that we can use in this regard. So we have taken an all- comers approach.

The third goal that we have is to break our addiction from Middle Eastern oil, and I do not think anyone has to be a foreign policy genius to understand that we have to act. Not just Republicans or Democrats, multiple administrations have skewed our foreign policy by necessity because of our addiction to oil. We certainly have not been as aggressive in insisting on Saudi Arabia's ending the terrorist threat to this country as we should have been, and one of the reasons is because of our addiction to Saudi oil. It has made us lethargic in multiple administrations in dealing with this terrorist threat which now we are starting to actually make some improvements on. I heard today that Saudi Arabia is going to start to take some steps finally, way too late, to cut off financing for terrorism; but we need to get rid of this anchor on our foreign policy.

We need to make foreign policy decisions based on the security of Americans, rather than the security of the oil industry. To do that we have got to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil; and what we have suggested is to set a goal, set a goal of saving or eliminating 600,000 barrels of oil a day, oil we otherwise would buy from the Mideast, by the year 2010; and that is an achievable goal using these new technologies. We set the goal of eliminating 2.4 million barrels of oil a day by the year 2015; and assessments by the Department of Energy have indicated that if we use our smarts and use these new technologies, we can, in fact, break that addiction to Middle Eastern oil if, in fact, we will use our heads.

Certainly, jobs are a good reason to do this. Our environment is a good reason to do this, but our personal security is an excellent reason to do this; and we ought to do that for all three reasons. Therefore, we set those effective goals that we would like to achieve.

Now we realize that we do not have all the answers starting out in this effort. So we have also essentially given future administrations flexibility to act; and in our bill, we have basically said that if these goals are not being met in a timely fashion, if we are not reducing our CO2 emissions down to 1990 levels, as is our goal, if we are not reducing our oil by 600,000 barrels a day, as is our goal, if we are not on a path to create those millions of jobs that we want to create, we would give the administration further flexibility to, in fact, act in ways that it sees fit and certain efficiency measures to improve our productive capability to continue on the path of jobs and improve our efficiency because it is going to be a flexible standard in that regard.

In conclusion this evening, Mr. Speaker, we are very optimistic about our country's energy future. We are only optimistic if the U.S. Congress starts to act in a progressive way that really is in keeping with the can-do spirit of America. There are some naysayers who would say that we are just not smart enough, bright enough, creative enough, we are just going to have to sort of stick with the technologies that were invented in 1899, which much of our industrial energy policy we are still using; but we are the folks who believe that America is brilliant because we keep changing. America is successful because we are not sort of shackled by the ideas of the past or the technologies of the past. So we believe that we ought to adopt this new approach.

I will be working with my colleagues to pass the new Apollo Energy Project. I do not know if it will be this year; but we believe it is going to happen, and it must happen because this is the destiny of the United States of America, the greatest country on Earth.

Mr. Speaker, this bill may be fine, but we need to defeat this question on the rule to get to the business at hand, because the business at hand is we want to free the goodly number of Republicans who want to vote for a child care tax credit, but who are under the tyranny of a Republican leadership who will not let them do it. We need to free those 228 Republicans to exercise some of their conscience because I believe there is a goodly number of them who realize why we are right; and we are right because it is indefensible to have decided to give these tax breaks to the wealthy and deny it to families as a child tax credit.

It is indefensible, and if my colleagues want to know why there has been such silence from this side of the aisle defending this, it is because they do not want to defend the indefensible. It is not because of massive laryngitis on this side of the aisle. If my colleagues want to know why there have been so few coming to this Chamber to try to excuse this, it is because they do not want to try to excuse the inexcusable.

I believe we should defeat this rule and go to the business at hand, and we should have a goodly number of Republicans join us to do it; and here is why I think this is possible. It is possible because there are a fair number of Republicans who share two basic values with the Democrats on this side of the aisle. Those values are work, number one, and two, responsibility.

We believe that work should be honored; and when we have heard the few Republicans that have come to defend this indefensible position, they have not honored work because what they have tried to say is that these people that are owed this child care tax credit, they have said, well, they are not working or they are not working for enough money. Hogwash. All work ought to be respected in this country whether one gets paid a million bucks a year or $12,500 a year, and there are a goodly number of Republicans who share that view.

I am here to call on my friends on the Republican side of the aisle who share that view to come defeat this rule and bring up the Senate bill so that we can pass a responsible bill that does not bust the budget and create another $80 billion of debt for the very kids subject to this child care tax credit.

Mr. Chairman, unequal treatment of American Indians and American Indian tribes is not an American value. I have great respect for those who resist this amendment because I believe they are acting in sincere good faith and trying to establish American values. But we need to pass this amendment to assure that the American value of fair treatment of American Indians, which has been denied them in certain times in our history, to our great shame, is not repeated in this bill.

This amendment, when passed, will assure that we do not have special interest legislation just for non-Indian Americans. Indian and non- Indian Americans ought to be treated the same. That will not happen unless we pass this amendment.

I will tell Members why I feel so strongly about this. About a year ago, I was driving through the Tulalip Indian reservation by Marysville, Washington. I spent a lot of time in my youth there. I noticed a new building that had just gone up. It was the first Boys and Girls Club on an Indian reservation in America. Today as we speak, there are kids there who are learning teamwork and new skills and getting new job training at that Boys and Girls Club. The reason that club is there is because of this industry, this legal industry.

Let us not hearken back to the dark days of treating Indian tribes with less respect of law than other industries in America. Let us pass this amendment. Let us do what is right for a lot of folks, including the Boys and Girls Club and the Tulalip Indian reservation.

Mr. Speaker, I come tonight to address an emerging issue that Congress is going to need to deal with, and that is the challenges to one of our most important industries in America, and that is the aeronautics industry.

Right now this portion of our economy from an export standpoint is probably the most successful in our economy, and a large percentage of our export surplus, to the extent it exists, arises from our exports of airplanes. The company, largely located in my neck of the woods in Washington State, Boeing, is the largest net exporter of products in our country and is the largest contributor to a potential surplus that we have; and it has over 150,000 employees and 26,000 suppliers that are located in all 50 States. This is an industry of enormous importance to our trade balance and to job creation in this Nation.

But unfortunately, because of the untoward practices of some European nations associated with Airbus, that industry is threatened; and it is threatened because contrary to well-accepted trading rules in a rules- based trading relationship, Airbus is taking advantage of a significant number of national subsidies for their program.

Among those are a state-sponsored loan program which has significantly reduced the cost of financing for Airbus development, and that can lead to up to as much as $26 billion in additional benefits to Airbus. In addition, they have received subsidies for their research and development costs; and of course, in the development of airliners, R&D is of tremendous importance to the ultimate cost of a product.

It appears clear that these subsidies, in fact, have continued, despite our efforts, our assiduous efforts to try and, in fact, maintain a rules-based trading system. And that now has to stop. The competition, the unlawful, the illegal competition that we have been facing due to these subsidies can no longer stand. And the United States Government needs to take a more aggressive policy to, in some sense, restore balance and fairness to this trading relationship.

In the next several weeks, my colleagues and me will be discussing the appropriate way to do that. Various means are at our disposal. We can consider trade efforts in an attempt to convince our partners in Europe to, in fact, respect a rules-based trading system and end these unlawful subsidies to this sector of the economy, with whom we are happy to compete under a rules-based system. We also may consider, in fact, assisting in the research and development in the technology to benefit America, and certainly in our energy policy. Many of us think that while we are assisting the development of an energy policy, we should assist the development of the most energy-efficient jet the world has ever seen, which we hope to be the 77 manufactured by Boeing.

So there are a variety of measures; but in some fashion, it is now time for America to get serious to insist on a rules-based trading system, one that can allow the best technologically efficient product to emerge so that the marketplace can choose, rather than having governments interfere with that process. And unfortunately, our European partners have muddied about in that system and governments have interfered in the functioning of this marketplace. That is something we have tolerated now for quite a number of years. It is no longer subject to toleration.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for America to become serious and engage in resolving this problem, and I will be working with my colleagues in the upcoming weeks to make sure that the rules are fair and applicable and assist the United States aeronautics industry.

Mr. Speaker, Mark Twain said that humans were the only species that would feel embarrassment, or needed to. That is an appropriate quote today when many of my Republican colleagues are terribly embarrassed because they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar giving over $90,000 tax relief to millionaires, and to children of families who earn less than $26,000, gave them zero tax relief for the child deduction.

This is scandalous, and many of my good Republican friends are terribly embarrassed that they have been caught in this fashion. But now I call on my Republican colleagues to admit that they made a mistake and fix the problem. I am told that the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), said that people who earn $26,000 do not pay taxes. Excuse me, they pay property taxes, they pay withholding taxes, they pay sales taxes, and they are entitled to fair treatment.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot excuse the inexcusable. I am calling for my Republican friends to call the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) to fix this problem today.

Mr. Speaker, I believe it was Mark Twain who said that humans were the only species that had the capability of feeling embarrassment or needed to, and I think that we are going to see many of my friends across the aisle in the Republican Caucus who have sincere and legitimate embarrassment about what they did at about 1 a.m. awhile back when they passed the tax cut that is so grievously unfair to 12 million children and 8 million families in this country.

You have heard, Mr. Speaker, previous Members here address the fact that this child care tax credit was left out for these families earning $10,000 to $26,000 a year. I think in doing so, the Republican Caucus has given a new meaning, a new definition to the term women and children first. The ``women and children first'' principle used to mean that you take care of those who are least capable of caring for themselves first. But the Republican Caucus has given a new definition of that term. It means that you cut out and you give tax cuts to everyone else first and children last.

Because what happened here is pretty obvious. It is pretty clear that the Republicans had a choice to make. They decided that they were only going to do a tax cut with a total cost to the Treasury of $350 billion, and they had to make a decision at the last instant who to deprive of the tax cut. They had a clear choice to make. They could cut .1 percent, or 1/1000th of the amount of the tax cuts given to millionaires, or they could decide to deprive it and not give children the benefit and those families earning $10,000 to $26,000 a year. They decided to deprive the children of that benefit rather than the millionaires who were paying these taxes.

They now are rightfully, sincerely, and I think greatly, embarrassed by this disclosure that has now come out from this middle-of-the-night tax cut that was passed. And why did that happen? Why did that happen? It is not because the Republicans are not good folks. It happened because this tax cut and its bottom line, its basic theory, was not an economic principle or an economic plan; but rather it was a knee-jerk fixation, an ideological predisposition to starve the government and to do a disproportionate tax cut that is not in keeping with the needs of working families.

What I mean by that is if you were going to do a tax cut that had an economic theory behind it, you would give tax benefits to these working families that are going to turn that money around and get it right back into the U.S. economy. These are the first families that ought to get a tax cut, not the last. The reason they are the first families is that these are the folks that are going to get the money right back into circulation.

But in the Republican plan it is the last group that gets tax relief. The reason is because this plan was based on an ideological fixation that they want to starve government rather than the economic theory of getting money back into the U.S. economy. That is why it is doomed to failure. That is why their last tax cut produced nothing. That is why we have had 2\1/2\ million new lost jobs after their last tax cut, and that is why this one is not going to be any better for the U.S. economy.

Mr. Speaker, we need an economic plan to grow jobs, not an ideological fixation; and we need to help children first, not last.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman organizing this special order on a dark day for American democracy, because today the FCC, in almost a little hidden cabinet without taking adequate input from the American public, struck a low blow for information going to Americans.

I have come to the floor because I am hopeful that the U.S. House will listen to the thousands of Democrats and Republicans who have barraged the FCC with e-mails and letters that were ignored, and will come to the rescue and change this rule in a way that is good for democracy.

Since the FCC proposed this rule, they wanted to keep this as quiet as possible. They wanted to sweep it under the rug. They wanted as few Americans as possible to know what they were doing to America's broadcast rights. What they did was they decided to have the statutorily minimum number of hearings in a minimally accessible place, so they had one hearing in Virginia.

Now to put this in context, when the Forest Service thought about changing a rule regarding the forest, they had 600 hearings around America so Americans could let Congress know what was going on.

And 350 people turned out, essentially spontaneously, with about 48 hours' notice to tar and feather the FCC commissioners who were going to ram this down their throats, and these folks were very, very angry. And the reason they were angry was, they understood the game being played by the FCC here. People are sophisticated enough to get this.

The argument has been made if the anticonsolidation rules are removed, we would have a plethora of new stations to listen to, and radio is frequently used as an example. They say, There are still a lot of radio stations out there, which is true, but what Americans understand and what people in Seattle were so upset about, they realize there might be a lot of stations, but they are owned by the same people. One company owns 1,200 radio stations. Before these rules were relaxed, the most radio stations owned by one company was 65.

It does not matter if we have 20 hoses all coming from the same spigot, and that is the situation that the FCC is allowing to take place.

Mr. Speaker, in response to this, and we have heard the response of the FCC who pushed through this rule, their response is we do not know that is going to happen. We do not know that consolidation is going to take place.

I do not think that it is rocket science to realize, if we remove rules against consolidation, there is going to be consolidation. This is not rocket science, either, because we have had an experiment with this in radio. The largest number of stations owned was 65 before the anticonsolidation, and now it is 1,200; and that is why this is a bipartisan concern.

It is interesting, groups as disparate as the National Rifle Association and William Safire have come out against this. I love to quote William Safire, at least when I agree with him. He said, ``The concentration of power, political, corporate, media, cultural, should be anathema to conservatives. Why do we have more channels but fewer real choices today? Because the ownership of our means of communication is shrinking. Moguls glory in amalgamation, but more individuals than they realize resent the loss of local control and community identity.''

I think that is what happened to the FCC. They may have been stunned by this outpouring of concern, but it is there. Ninety-nine percent of all of the input they have received in the last several months on this issue is against the very rules they just shoved down America's throat.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to respond to this bogus argument that the Republican FCC commissioners put up when they decided to repeal this fairly long-standing, common-sense approach that has enjoyed up to now bipartisan support, and I hope will again.

They argued that, essentially, because we have had a technological revolution in the last decade or so, that removes the necessity of having rules against somebody getting too egregious a distribution proportion.

They said basically that the Internet solves all ills that humans will ever know. I am from the most Internet-involved part of the world probably. I represent the First Congressional District of the State of Washington. It is where a little company called Microsoft is located, together with probably thousands of spin-off companies from Microsoft. I represent a community that are evangelists for the Internet, who really are believers that this is a way to change the way we do business in fundamental ways. But the people there have told me, do not let the FCC remove these anticonsolidation rules, the fans of the Internet, the fans of new technology, the believers in new technology.

What they tell me is the reason we still need these rules is that even though we have now Web-based distribution systems, the Web distributors are owned by the TV companies. It is the same message. What they tell me, again coming back to this kind of host analysis, you don't get a new view just because it is a Web-hosted message if it is the same message you are getting on television or if it is the same message you are getting in the newspaper. And so what they have told me, do not let them remove these anticonsolidation rules. The Internet cannot solve the fact that democracy suffers when there are fewer voices to provide Americans the news. This is going to result, as God made little green apples, in fewer voices delivering news to Americans because that is exactly what has happened in the radio industry, and we know that that is going to happen.

I think it is important to note, too, that there is an economic reason why this new rule, which is going to create these large concentrations of media power, is a bad idea. I think it is important to talk about the economic reason as well. The economic reason is that these megacorporation media conglomerates will have the ability to stifle entry of new businesses, particularly small businesses who want to break into the media market. One of the great things about the American economy is we have traditionally recognized having a dynamic economy which allows entry into the market is important so that people can get new ideas, new creative products and the like.

Here is a fellow who is not exactly in William Safire's philosophical base, but he had an interesting comment. Ted Turner said, if these rules had been in place in 1970, it would have been virtually impossible for me to start Turner Broadcasting or, 10 years later, to launch CNN. The reason it would be impossible is that these consolidations basically allow these companies to build these Chinese walls around their little media fortresses which prevents these small businesses from breaking into the market.

So if you are a small business-oriented person who believes in a dynamic entry of markets, this is a mistake to allow these sort of giant conglomerates to take over. Fundamentally, though, the democratic argument and the damage to democracy is the one that is really bothering Americans tonight, because one of the things we have learned through history is that the paper on the parchment of the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution are nice and they are important; but the Soviet Union had the same language in their Constitution, but they did not have a vigorous press or a vigorous independent judicial branch, and democracy never got going. We are very concerned that absent a vigorous, competitive, dynamic, change-oriented media in our democracy that our democracy will suffer. You can have the best Members of the U.S. Congress, the best Members of the U.S. Senate, and an enlightened President; but unless Americans can get the truth by looking at various different colors in the spectrum, this place is not going to work.

And so, yes, there is an economic rationale; but people value democracy above everything, and they understand the threat that has happened in this rule. I believe, and I know that the gentleman and I and others will be working to pass legislation to reverse this rule. As you know, we have cosponsored a bill already to repeal the 45 percent national consolidation. Other bills will be introduced. We hope to attract bipartisan consensus. We hope Americans will let their Members of Congress know what to do here.

And the reason that I think people are so upset about this, and they are upset, I have talked to a lot of people who are really hot about this issue, and I think justifiably because this has been one of the more outrageous instances of a public agency willfully and consciously, number one, shutting to the extent humanly possible the public out of the decision-making process of their government by holding one hearing in one part of the country. There were other members of the commission who begged the chairman, Mr. Powell, to hold multiple hearings, because he knew this was something that really people cared about around the country, not just inside the Beltway, and Mr. Powell refused. Because they are too busy? Excuse me, this is the single most important decision of the FCC probably in the last 10 years, but they only hold one hearing because they do not want to listen to Americans, and it is wrong. Then when the word snuck out through various efforts, including our own, they have been deluged with almost a unanimous position of the Americans who care about this.

And what is their response to Americans who have taken the time to send postcards, to send e-mails, to call in? Their response has been, go fish. That is about what it boils down to. I heard Mr. Powell today briefly, I did not hear his whole comments, but I heard him say, if we don't do something, this rule will get changed anyway by the courts. That is true if you do not prepare a record; if you do not go out and ask people what is going on in America to prepare the record, then this rule might be subject to judicial scrutiny. He is correct. But the reason is that they did not go out and ask anybody around America. They held one lousy hearing. So if they want to preserve the rule which they had the opportunity to do, they needed to build a record. The reason they did not build a record is they knew the message they were going to get. They had a predisposed decision. These commissioners had made a decision before they opened up these hearings at all. It is pretty obvious when you see the railroad job that took place.

I just have a closing comment, which is that democracy is not self-executing. It does not get done by itself. Now is a moment for all men and women to come to the aid of their country on this issue. We need, those of us who care deeply about this, for everyone to let their Member of the U.S. Congress and Senate know how they feel about this issue, because we need to kindle and blow a little air on this fire to keep it going. We are going to hope that we will have enough support across the aisle of our good friends, the Republicans, that we are going to have enough Republicans who will join us in forcing a vote on this issue on the House floor. That is going to be very important. It will be a great victory on a bipartisan basis for American democracy. I thank the gentleman for raising this important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to salute the common sense of the American people who, after weeks of stumping by the President, have concluded that this alleged tax cut plan is a fraud and a failure.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans two to one have concluded that this plan will have no real effect on U.S. economic performance, and the American people are right. Six out of ten Americans have concluded that this plan shortchanges job creation in favor of tax cuts weighted to the rich; six out of ten Americans have concluded that this tax cut plan benefits the wealthy more than average people; and six out of ten Americans

have concluded that this tax cut plan will increase the Federal budget deficit. And they are right, because we will now have to increase our debt limit $894 billion.

Mr. Speaker, the American people have got it right, because they have common sense. In the midst of this situation, we ought to create jobs, not debt. In the midst of this situation, we ought to be favoring working people, not just the wealthy.

The American people have got it right; and I will tell you, they are not buying this used car from this President.

Mr. Speaker, history is a harsh judge. In years to come, our children will be called to judge what happened here tonight, May 22, 2003. When they learn that you have put $1 trillion of debt on their young children, something they do not understand tonight, their first instinct will be to forgive you. That will be their first instinct. But they will not forgive you for putting $1 trillion on our children's backs because that is unforgivable.

It is unforgivable on a moral basis. This is not an economic issue. These children are going to be dug into a hole deeper than the hole out in front of the Capitol. It is unforgivable because they know you are handing out crumbs as you deliver your tax breaks to the wealthy. It is unforgivable, and our children are forgiving people, but this they will not forgive.

Mr. Speaker, this rule is not in the finest traditions of this House. As it applies to Washington State, we have three icons in Washington State: the United States Navy, orca whales in the Puget Sound, and the Columbia River. All of them can live in perfect cohabitation if we come up with a rule that respects the values of all three. This rule does not allow this House to do that, because it seriously weakens the protections of the orca whales in the waters of the State of Washington. That is wrong. It is unnecessary. The bill that we will be considering without allowing an amendment proposed by Democrats would seriously strip the protection of orca whales in a way that is not necessary. We have proposed a way to protect both the strong U.S. Navy and a strong orca whale population.

In the Columbia River system, we are now allowing potential leachate from radioactive materials being buried in unlined trenches, and the majority has denied us an amendment to solve that problem to keep radioactive waste out of the Columbia River system.

The State of Washington says we ought to have a strong Navy, a strong orca whale and a strong Columbia River; and this rule does not allow any of those to take place.

Mr. Chairman, I come to the floor because men need to come to the floor and say that it is time to end the second-class treatment of the proud women who are serving in our Armed Forces. This is fundamentally a debate about freedom. Because in America, the U.S. Supreme Court has said women have the freedom to make this decision. And women are treated as second-class citizens by saying they may have that freedom when they are in the United States, but once they leave our shores to serve us, to fight for the very freedoms that we stand for in America, they lose that freedom right.

My good friend from Kansas has suggested that they are free to fly to Afghanistan for this procedure. That is a great irony. Because when a man goes in for reproductive services, he can get a vasectomy in his military hospital in Germany. That is fine. But we are asking our sisters and our wives and our daughters who serve proudly in the Army and the Navy and the Air Force to fly to Afghanistan, a place that we just went to war to try to serve women to free them from the Taliban. This is a freedom matter, and we ought to support this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, this is indeed a very serious bill we have on the floor today of the House of Representatives.

Some time ago, I visited with a couple parents of one of the firefighters who was killed in the fire in Washington State that the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) made reference to. It seems to me in the memory of all firefighters and for those families that the U.S. House of Representatives owes it to the men and women affected by fire to allow democracy on the floor of the House, to give time to a bill where we will consider some of these amendments that should have been allowed for a vote.

Why is the House in such a hurry that it cannot work past 4 o'clock in the afternoon when we have got firefighters potentially losing their lives out in these forests?

I am ashamed that on the floor of the House of Representatives with that loss we cannot allow a full and fair consideration of more than one single, lousy amendment to this bill.

I would posit that that great Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, would be spinning in his grave if he knew about this effectively closed rule, because he was a champion of participatory democracy and a champion of the forest. Neither democracy nor forest are served by this rule, which shuts off honest and full debate in this House.

Let me address just one amendment that this rule denies the House the opportunity to deal with, and that was an amendment I had, went to the Committee on Rules with, that would preserve the heart of our environmental policies when it comes to our forests. The heart of the National Environmental Protection Act simply requires our agencies to consider at least one alternative to the proposal on how they are going to deal with the fuel reduction program in a no-action consideration.

Is that too much to ask simply to preserve the heart of our environmental policy when it comes to our forests? Are the special interests so powerful on the floor of the House that we cannot even debate, we cannot even vote on an amendment to preserve the very heart of the EPA act when it comes to our forests?

It is not just me saying it is the heart; it is the law of the United States of America. I want to quote from the Code of Federal Regulations. Right now in our law, our agencies are compelled to one alternative, to consider no action when they consider these fuels reduction programs. It says: ``Alternatives including the proposed action. This section is the heart of the environmental impact statement. It should present the environmental impacts of the proposal and the alternatives in comparative form, thus sharply defining the issues and providing a clear basis for the choice among options by the decision-maker and the public.''

Is it too much to preserve the heart of environmental protection? My amendment would simply allow the House to vote that we should compel our agencies to think and use their scientific information to think about at least one alternative to the proposal.

We should be working arm in arm to design a bipartisan fuels reduction program, one that protects the public, one that does not allow one person in one bureaucracy to decide we are going down this road and blind ourself to the other. We got into this pickle due to ignorance, and now this rule will continue that path of ignorance in our forests. Reject this rule.