Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, America deserves a fuels reduction program in our forests that protects two American icons: first, small towns; and second, big trees. This bill does neither. This bill is doomed to failure in not protecting either small towns or big trees, for three reasons.

The first reason is, it does not provide the money that is necessary to do the job. If we take a look at this map, the Forest Service suggests there are 190 million acres needing treatment. They propose to do about 2.8 million in the next year, this tiny little red dot. That is the combination of three States.

They want to propose to do a tiny little red dot, and they do not authorize a dollar for the fuels reduction program. They are so fixated on red tape they forget green money. They cannot do the job without it. Our bill does that job.

Second, the bill does not target our precious resources to protect human property and life first as a priority, unlike our bill, which does. It is not just me that says this. There are a dozen letters to the Republican chairman of the committee responsible for this bill pleading for help for our local communities to protect against a fire in the crucial wildline-urban interface.

A letter from Donald Vanderhoof, Mayor of the city of Glenwood Springs, said, ``Unfortunately, H.R. 1904 does not provide local communities with the necessary tools to mitigate future fires. Despite the fact that 85 percent of the land within the community protection zone is non-Federal, H.R. 1904 channels funds to Federal land projects.''

They have not provided monies for small communities where the rubber meets the road and the fire hits the edge of their town; our bill does.

Third problem, their bill does not protect big trees. Now, there is a bipartisan consensus that there is some thinning that is appropriate in the forest, but we do not thin trees like this multiple century-old tree. Their bill allows that to be done. Their bill does cut the heart out of NEPA, because the very heart of NEPA is considering alternatives to what size trees they are going to thin.

It seems to me that our Federal agencies ought to think about what size they are going to thin and study alternatives in the NEPA process. Their bill cuts that out. Instead, essentially, they want to sell these big trees

to generate money. That is where they propose to get money for this program.

That is a little bit like somebody who is sick selling their good kidney to treat the bad one. They end up with no kidneys. That is what they are proposing to do to forests. They want to let the Forest Service finance this plan by cutting down big trees to do these thinning projects. It is unnecessary, it is wrong, it is against what their constituents want and ought to be defeated. Support the Democratic substitute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to address what the Environmental Protection Act does. It is intended for taxpayers to ask agencies to think twice about what they do. It is intended to ask agencies to look at alternatives to what they do, to figure out what the best alternative for the taxpayer dollar is and for the environment.

The reason this bill cuts the heart out of the Environmental Protection Act is that it stops any consideration of any alternative to exactly what one person who works for this agency may say.

Now maybe cutting 18-inch trees is the appropriate thing in one forest, but maybe it is appropriate to cut 12-inch trees or 8-inch trees in another one. What they have done is taken away from taxpayers the right to ask their government employees to consider what the right size trees ought to be in these projects. That is the heart of the Environmental Protection Act.

It is an unfortunate step and an unnecessary one, because we ought to preserve both our big trees, our small towns, and our citizens' rights.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I see a copy of one of these letters was sent to a fellow congressman from Colorado. I was provided these by my staff.

If these are inaccurate copies, please advise me. But everything I have read, as far as I know, is accurate. If these are inaccurate copies, please advise me; and I will correct the Record.

To date, I have 12 letters from cities and counties in Colorado claiming that they are not taken care of.

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak in favor of the Miller substitute. I have two, I think, critical questions that need to be answered. The first question is, How does the majority party in the underlying bill purport to actually pay for what the Forest Service says is millions and millions of acres of fuel reduction treatment? Are they going to hold a lottery? Are they going to hold a bake sale? There is nothing in their bill to say how to get the payment. The Miller substitute is a mature, responsible bill because it authorizes the money. It authorizes the money not only for the Federal Government but for the State and local government.

It is not just the Federal Government that needs help here. It is local government. Earlier I made reference to Glenwood Springs, the mayor sending a letter asking for an amendment to make sure there is help to local governments. It was suggested, I suppose, that there is something wrong with that. In fact, we went through and we found out that it is not just Glenwood Springs. There are letters from officials in Basalt, Pitkin County, Gunnison County, Summit County, Nederland, Boulder, Wheat Ridge, Golden, Silt, San Miguel, and Carbondale asking this Congress to help local communities solve this problem. There is not a penny in the majority's bill that does that. It is wrong.

It is an echo of the homeland security issue. It is an echo. We have not helped local communities deal with this problem. I think the assessment of the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) of how we got into this pickle was really quite eloquent. I think it was right, that there was a bipartisan failure of management for a long time. But the problem is that there is not bipartisan support not on whether to have a fuels reduction program but how to have a fuel reduction program. We think on this side of the aisle we ought to help these local communities.

The second question: How in the underlying bill do they guarantee the American people we are not going to cut down old growth timber like this in this fuel reduction program? We have no business cutting down big trees like that instead of the little, tiny, skinny trees that we ought to be cutting down in a fuel reduction program. Their bill does nothing to guarantee Americans in that regard. They criticize the gentleman from California's bill for having categorical exclusions. But those categorical exclusions have protections to guarantee against this stuff being cut in those wildland-urban interfaces and the community protection zones. We have language protecting specifically against old growth being cut. We have provisions against using the fiber from these big trees for financing this program.

This dovetails back to the very first question I asked, Where are they going to get the money to pay for this? I know they are intelligent folks and I respect them all. They are not going to get it from lotteries and bake sales. They have only got one place I can possibly imagine to get the money from this and that is cutting down trees just like that to pay for it. We could do a lot better job on a bipartisan basis answering the question how to have a fuels reduction program, whether to have one, and that is by having protections for trees like this. They did not do the job. We ought to pass the Miller substitute.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for letting me join him.

I think this is perhaps one of the most important and least talked about issues in American democracy during this Congress, and it is fascinating to me that an issue that has such large ramifications, has such a bearing on Americans' ability to know what is going on in their government and their world, is such a closely held secret from the American people. The reason it is a closely held secret is it is not reported in the media.

This is one of the most important, contentious issues. This should make great fodder for TV talk shows and radio talk shows and newspapers. It ought to sell a lot of newspapers because it is contentious. Yet there is a blackout on this subject for the American people, and that is why I want to thank the gentleman for doing this Special Order to talk about it.

The reason I came to the floor this afternoon is I think it strikes at the very heart of a basic American value. There are five values actually inscribed on the bar of the House right behind the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders). I can read them. They are Union, Justice, Tolerance, Liberty, and that is the one that is in question here, is the liberty interests of Americans, because you cannot have liberty or democracy if you do not have multiple sources of information.

Clearly, when the rules were amended years back to allow further consolidation in the industry, guess what you got? You got further consolidation in the industry. It is not exactly rocket science that will be required to predict the results if the FCC allows this further deregulation of the industry. If they do allow further consolidation in the industry, you will have further consolidation in the industry, and when you have further consolidation in the media industry, you have fewer real choices to get access to diverse opinions. Republican, Democrat, up or down, left or right, tall or short, you will have less real choice.

Let me say why that has been borne out in real practice. Some of the people who have advocated for this change, to allow further consolidation in the industry, to allow the bigger to get bigger and swallow the smaller stations, have suggested that because, for instance, there are a lot of radio stations out there, that in fact there is no damage to the value of liberty and diverse opinions.

But they forget one very central fact: when you want to know whether there is diverse opinion in the media, you have to follow a rule, and that rule is this: follow the money. You might have 10, 15, 100 radio stations; but if they are all owned by the same corporation or individual, you do not have 100 voices. You have the same person with 100 megaphones.

Does that help American democracy? Does that help diverse opinions? No. It centralizes it. It reduces the number of voices that America has, and that is exactly what the empirical evidence has shown.

Since the last effort to allow consolidation in the industry, we have 34 percent fewer owners of radio stations. Now, it is of academic interest how many stations we have; but we have fewer voices because we have fewer owners of radio stations, and we have fewer views on the spectrum of political thought and historic thought and spiritual thought than we should have, because we allowed more consolidation, and we got more consolidation; and we have less liberty interests as a result because there are fewer voices in the spectrum to be heard.

Now, I want to say just one more thing, and then I will yield to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders).

To me, a taste of what is coming in the media we have in what we got from the FCC, which is a blackout. Because here we have this incredibly important rule to American democracy, and what did the FCC do? What did they do? They are supposed to be working for us. They held one hearing in Virginia.

After being begged by multiple people, they held one hearing 2,500 miles from my district.

Mr. Speaker, the Forest Service, by contrast, when they considered the roadless rule, which is another important rule, they held six hearings, multiple hearings in Washington. This is under the cover of darkness. This avoids sunlight, which is the best anecdote to any virus of political thought; and it is a rotten shame the FCC has to do this under the cover of darkness.

Mr. Speaker, if I may report from Seattle what happened, two courageous members of the FCC came out and were willing to listen to citizens on their own time a few months ago; and over 300 people, I think, turned out, once we got a little bit of the news out. We did not have much cooperation from the media, of course, who about 99.9 percent of them in the audience were very, very concerned about this further consolidation. And I think that voice is an overwhelming one across America.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, just one more quick point. This is an issue that ought to unite Republicans and Democrats. It really should. I know the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) has talked about talk radio. But I just believe, no matter whether you are vanilla or chocolate or Neapolitan here, you ought to stand up and say that it is not healthy when America has 20 or 30 percent less TV stations and half as few newspapers. This should be an all-American, bipartisan statement that America deserves diverse opinions so that they can make decisions and do not have to trust just one.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his efforts.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman coming here to talk about this important issue. I just have two comments to make about the majority party's plan. We are talking about a way to get our economy going again and to me, the acid test of any economic plan is, is it going to work. This should not be based on idealogical principles; it should not be based on partisan politics; it should not be based on sort of a pie-in-the-sky theory. The question should be: Does it work?

The two points I would like to make is first off, we have very good evidence that it does not work. We are all talking about the best way to administer medicine, if you will, to the economy; and it kind of reminds me, what the majority party is doing reminds me of the physicians in the 18th century. When you were sick in the 18th century, you went to a doctor; they bled you. They put leaches on you. And if you did not get better, they put more leaches on you. And if you still did not get better, they would put more leaches on you, and they would bleed you some more, because it is all they knew how to do.

Well, what we saw in the year 2001 when the Republican Party did this big tax cut, a trillion dollar tax cut plan, told the American citizens it was going to create tens of thousands of jobs, and the economy has gone south. It has gone south like it has not at any time since World War II. We have had the largest number of job loss; over 2.5 million Americans have lost their jobs since that ill-conceived plan by the Republican Party. It is the largest job

loss since Hoover was President of the United States. And here we have the doctors to the economy, they want to do it again when it was so damaging to the economy in the first place. The deficit has skyrocketed. It has gone from a $5 trillion surplus to deficits of $300 billion, at least, probably more. And so we want to see this sort of application of this 18th century medicine again when it did not work the first time.

We should not repeat the mistakes, and the reason it was a mistake then, and they are repeating exactly the same failure this time, number one, their plan is too late. It is too late because almost 95 percent of the benefits are in the years after this year when we need the stimulus this year; and, number two, it goes inordinately to people who are not going to put the money right back into the economy. So we are repeating a failure of 2001, as the doctors of the 18th century repeatedly bled people if they did not get better, and they just kept bleeding them. And that is what the Republicans are doing to the Federal budget.

The second point I would make is, this is called a tax cut. But it is really not a tax cut to Americans over the long term. If anything, it is a tax increase. And the reason is that our children are going to have to pay and we are paying today the burden of not balancing the Federal budget. Right now, because we pay interest on the Federal debt, I have some really bad news for Americans. Of every $100 Americans paid, they paid $100 on April 15 in taxes, $14 went to pay interest on the Federal debt. For that $14, you got no soldiers, no sailors, no police officers, no nothing. It went down a black hole. And now it is going to increase because the Republicans' own numbers, these are not Democratic numbers, the Republicans' own numbers demonstrate another $1 trillion of indebtedness they will create that American taxpayers are going to have to pay at some point, only now they are going to have to pay interest on top of that.

So this really is not a tax cut. At best, it is a tax transfer. It is a transfer from us baby boomers on to our children's shoulders, which is immoral, number one; and, number two, it is a tax increase by increasing the interest payments we have to pay on the Federal debt. It is an increase on what we call the debt tax. We all pay the debt tax now because we pay interest on the Federal debt. This could be called at worst a tax increase and at best a tax transfer to our children. Both are wrong; it should be rejected. Let us not repeat the failure of 2 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman addressing this important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to note an encouraging sign that yesterday, the President of the United States evinced a willingness to become an active player in seeking a peaceful resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. And I do so because it is clear

that the United States of America is the only world force that has the ability to offer both peoples meaningful hope in this region. And as such, it is very important that our President of whatever party be engaged in that process. This President evinced some reluctance to do so early in his term. But I believe now has, by issuing this road map, stated an interest to become personally involved in trying to find a resolution of this dispute.

Both Democrats and Republicans have to note that is a positive step at a very difficult time. Ending the violence by the Palestinians is paramount. And there is going to be daunting challenges working with our Israeli allies involving settlement issues; but the American President has to stay engaged. This is a first step. We welcome it. We look forward to its successes.

Mr. Speaker, we just wanted, from the State of Washington, from the University of Washington Huskies, to congratulate the Connecticut Huskies on this tremendous achievement. I just want to tell my colleagues, it is a particular personal satisfaction to see women's basketball so successful nationally.

My dad was the athletic director for the Seattle public schools in the 1970s when we were starting to break these barriers to fight the sort of coaches of the boys' team to get them to share the gym. This was a very controversial effort to get some of these old codgers to see the light to share the gym, and it is really satisfying to see this tremendous satisfaction. I hope we can work together to make sure that our title IX continues to protect the wonderful growth of women's athletics. Congratulations.

Mr. Speaker, every State has citizens who do something special, and the State of Washington has a gentleman named Ira Spring. Ira Spring is a great outdoor photographer who, along with Harvey Manning, published the famous 100 Hikes in Washington, a series of guidebooks which ignited the movement to protect the environment of our State because it introduced thousands of people to the outdoors and the tremendous forests in the State of Washington.

Ira has also mentored some of our best mountain climbers, including Jim and Lou Whittaker of climbing fame.

Ira's gone on now to establish a foundation to help introduce young people to the outdoors and encourage trail maintenance, and he is a fellow who we have tremendous respect for in the environmental community. And I just want to quote something Ira said the other day. He said, ``I feel you need a lot of people to become aware of their surroundings,'' and he is certainly right on about that, because he has dedicated his life to doing that.

We are protecting our forests and wildlands and using them to great enjoyment in the State of Washington. I say thanks to Ira.

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing wrong with this rule except the fact that it will doom America to a failed energy policy that will not get us out of the problems we are now in.

Everyone in this country knows that our addiction to Mideast oil is a chronic security threat in this Nation. But even the authors of this underlying bill will tell you it will not solve that addiction. It is an abject failure. Almost everyone in this country knows that

we have a problem with global warming that America needs to address, and even the authors of this bill will tell you this bill will be an abject failure in dealing with global warming and will do nothing about it.

Almost everybody in this country knows that we want to stop hemorrhaging jobs to the Germans in solar energy and the Japanese in hybrid cars and the Danish in wind turbine technology, and even the authors of this bill will tell you this will be an abject failure in solving that challenge.

This bill is weak tea, and this rule will deny a bold American plan to deal with it. We and a group of other Democrats offered a comprehensive package, a new Apollo Energy Project, an energy project which is akin to what John F. Kennedy suggested in 1961 when he said we should go to the moon in 10 years. We say we should be breaking addiction to Mideast oil and dealing with global climate change gasses in this decade. And you would not even allow a rule to allow a vote on that project.

You yielded a lot of little dibs and dabs. You allowed hors d'oeuvres, but you did not allow the full meal deal for this Congress to work its will.

If you are going to try and sell an Edsel policy to the U.S. Congress, you ought to at least allow a vote for a nice car, a nice, fuel-efficient car; and you did not do that.

It seems to me that you ought to allow the U.S. Congress to have one small step for Congress and one giant leap for American energy policy. And you failed to allow us to work Democratic will.

It is an irony to allow democracy in Iraq, but not on the floor of the House of Representatives. Defeat this rule.

Mr. Chairman, two facts are on a collision course:

Fact one, the concentrations of carbon dioxide, a pollutant that causes global warming, is skyrocketing and will continue to do so as this graph indicates.

Fact two, to date, the U.S. Congress apparently believes that since the mid-1980s American technological genius has disappeared by its willful failure to use our smarts and our can-do efforts to improve fuel-technology efficiency. If we had simply continued on the path of improving the efficiency of our vehicles from the mid-1980s until now, we would have eliminated our need for 70 percent of the imported oil from the Mideast.

How can the U.S. Congress be so pessimistic to think that the people that gave us Microsoft, that gave us biotechnology, cannot improve the efficiency of our vehicles?

John Kennedy said we could go to the Moon in 10 years. We ought to be able to improve our fuel efficiency in the 10 months in this session.

Mr. Chairman, I have been to Yellowstone, Glacier, and Mt. Rainier National Parks. And after being on the banks of the Aichilik River, right next to where they want to put this oil production facility, I can warrant there is no more beautiful biologically dynamic place, full of wonderful critters, grizzly, caribou, and ptarmigan, anywhere in America.

I think Americans think about the Arctic a little bit like they think about the Mona Lisa. It is beautiful, they will probably never get to see it in person, but they would not want to put a mustache on it, albeit just a small mustache. Americans do not believe a mustache belongs on the Mona Lisa, and an oil production facility does not belong in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

Mr. Chairman, speaking in favor of the amendment, I think one of the reasons we have not moved forward on energy as much as we have is the vision of new technologies is difficult to visualize.

I want to show Members a home located in Loudoun County, Virginia, Hillsboro, Virginia. It is owned by Alden and Carol Hathaway. It was built for a total of $365,000. It incorporates solar photovoltaic cells in the roof panels, in the shingles themselves. It has an in-ground heat pump, and it is a net zero energy-using home today in Loudoun County, Virginia. During the year, it is zero. It qualifies as a net zero use under energy qualifications, and that is happening today for essentially what it costs to build a house in Loudoun County today.

This is a real thing that is here. It is not some sort a figment of our wild imagination, and the reason this works is a phenomenon the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) has used as the basis for that amendment, and this show the price of solar photovoltaic starting at about $1 in 1980 per kilowatt, and has continued to decline in a radical reduction in cost down to about 20-25 cents per kilowatt at this time, which is exactly what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) stated, and he is always right about these things. That is about where it is today.

But the thing that is important to note is this graph is going to keep going down; and the reason it is going to keep going down is the economies of

scale that allow us to produce units at a lesser price the more of them we make. So we should have confidence that if we increase the demand for photovoltaic cells, this price is going to continue to come down, and there will be more homes like the Hathaways' home in Virginia.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, this projection goes to 8 cents per kilowatt hour in this projection. This projection is a little less optimistic than the actual which the solar association predicts.

The solar industry believes that this rate of decrease will be relatively constant because what they explain, because of the economies of scale, largely the price of production is the issue and the cost of solar photovoltaic efficiency. Because when we ramp up our production facilities, we dramatically lessen our costs. I think every time we increase the photovoltaic number of cell units produced by a factor of 10, the price has gone down by a factor of almost 2. That has been relatively consistent.

So they are a little more optimistic than this chart. I think the other thing about photovoltaics, what I think the future is, these are not going to be enormous plants that cover Arizona, but they are going to be more discrete local plugged-in networks that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) has shown leadership on to produce this back into the grid. I think we have good opportunities there.

Mr. Speaker, I thought about characterizing the Republican budget as a bad budget, but that is not really right, because it is not a budget, it is a ``fudget.'' It fudges cuts in veterans affairs, it fudges the tax cut you cannot reconcile yourself to, and it fudges the biggest deficit in American history.

I thought about characterizing it as a budget fit for the Titanic, because we do have a disaster in the economy, a surplus turned into a deficit, the largest unemployment for years. But it is really not a Titanic budget, because the captain of the Titanic only rammed the iceberg once. You want to do these tax cuts twice in the hopes the iceberg will sink.

You made a mistake. You ought to face it. Let us defeat this budget.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Watt amendment. I think anyone who has been listening to this debate realizes that this is not a debate about the ability of Americans to have responsible gun ownership, something I think everyone in this debate has recognized. But I rise to support the Watt amendment because it shows some attention to the over 1,000 children a year, our children, who kill themselves using a firearm. I rise to pay some attention to the hundreds of children every year who shoot their playmates unintentionally, our children.

The reason these children deserve some standing in this debate is that those children would be alive if there was some way that these guns were secured so that our children did not get access to these firearms. Right now, many people of common sense who may stand as jurors believe that manufacturers should provide responsible gun owners with the ability to secure their firearms so kids do not get them. That may include trigger locks, it may include boxes, it may include these new computerized systems to keep our kids from shooting their playmates and shooting themselves in a moment of temporary teenage depression.

But this legislation, without the Watt amendment, would preclude jurors from holding manufacturers responsible and prevent jurors, reasonably minded jurors, from finding them responsible and not giving consumers what they deserve. And consumers of a firearm deserve the ability to lock them away and not allow them to be used by their children. If we adopt the Watt amendment, we will allow jurors to make that decision.

I have to tell my colleagues, when I read about some 10-year-old getting his uncle's gun and shooting his playmate because it was not secured, I stand for the proposition that jurors ought to be able to say that trigger locks ought to be sold with these firearms so that consumers will have them.

Support the Watt amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to join my colleagues here this afternoon to speak against this new Republican policy of eternal deficits. I am happy to speak against it because I think it represents sort of a ``three-strikes-and-you-are-out'' economic policy which really will doom America for quite a long period of time for three separate reasons.

Before I talk about those reasons, I want to note that this probably, as far as I can tell, is the biggest political flip-flop in the last couple of millenia of American history. That may be perhaps a little bit of an overstatement.

But as I recall the proud traditions of the Republican Party under Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and many good Republicans who preached the gospel in every political church in America that deficits clearly were a mark of evil, they fought for years against deficits. They came here and they sought constitutional balanced budget amendments, which they are still seeking.

Now, after decades of propounding this basic bedrock principle, their answer is, never mind, we were just kidding. Now that they have decided that tax cuts for Ken Lay at Enron are more important than a balanced budget, they have decided that their decades of fundamental economic beliefs and theories were just a bunch of hokum.

They were right then, but they are wrong now. They are wrong for three reasons.

Number one: The Federal deficit that is now attempted to be foisted on the American people by this Republican majority is the biggest contribution to waste, fraud and abuse in the U.S. Government that is possible. It is waste, fraud and abuse because the biggest number of items of clear waste, fraud and abuse in the Federal Government is the interest paid by American taxpayers to service the Federal debt.

That waste, fraud and abuse is an enormous number. It is close to the defense budget of the United States. For every $100 that American taxpayers pay in taxes, $14 goes to pay interest on the Federal debt that has been accumulated over the years of multiple generations and multiple Congresses. So $14 of every $100 every taxpayer pays does not buy a single soldier, it does not buy a single police officer, it does not get a single pharmaceutical prescription drug benefit; it goes right down the rat hole. This $14 figure out of every $100 will grow if the Republican budgets of longtime fixed deficits that will grow over the next decade prevail in these Chambers.

That would be a sad day, because frankly, a lot of my friends in the Republican Party have also been quite vocal and eloquent about the need to end waste, fraud and abuse in government. Now, by their own budgets, they seek to increase the money of taxpayers going down that rat hole of paying interest on the Federal debt.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot understand what Republican would take cheer from knowing they are going to waste more of the taxpayers' money to go down this black hole, but they certainly are. The reason they are is that they have decided it is more important to them, apparently, and of course I do not know this for sure, but the only assessment one could make is they have given greater priority to tax cuts rather than a balanced budget.

The second reason, perhaps not as important as the last reason, but important nonetheless, this deficit is a dead weight around the United States' economy. I listened to Mr. Greenspan tell us that these deficits have the potential of increasing interest rates. Once the economy starts to rebound, once it starts to come back, he told us that we face the prospect of interest rates going up and choking off the eventual recovery.

I do not think it is just his testimony that is persuasive to me; it is listening to the financial people that I represent, my constituents.

I was on the ferry boat the other day and talking to a fellow that sells municipal bonds. We were talking about the fact that they have had a lot of municipal refinancing going on, besides homeowners, with the current low interest rates.

But he was concerned, as a lot of people are in various sectors of the economy, that once we start to get out of this shadow and start picking up, that as soon as we start to get some growth in the economy, boom, interest rates go up because the Federal deficit continues to fuel that fire, and we are back into recession.

This is like taking a big anchor and tying it to the leg of the U.S. economy, and it is a Republican anchor. It is a sorry thing to see that my colleagues on the other side have decided to embrace these deficits that they know, because of their own economic theory, are a drag on the economy.

It is interesting, I believe the new assistant Secretary of the Treasury just a couple of years ago wrote a book, a textbook, saying how interest rates can go up as a result of these deficits, and now he has had this great epiphany. He has heard this voice from the heavens telling him, well, I must have been wrong. I guess tax cuts are more important, and he is working for the Bush administration. We know it is wrong, but it can cause enormous havoc in the economy.

Perhaps, the other reason I have come to speak on the tax cut, economic models can come or go. We have different viewpoints. Economists feel different about what the theories are, the economic models.

The one thing all Americans ought to agree on is the value of protecting our children. We are three fathers here tonight talking. We know all fathers and mothers care about their kids. The one value all of us ought to hold, Republican and Democrat alike, east and west, north and south, tall and short, is do not put a burden on our children.

This is a moral issue much deeper than any particular economic theory. I think we all ought to share it. It is a very sad day when the majority party has decided to break that moral bond to our kids to put this indebtedness on them.

Just one more comment and then I will close. The thing that is extraordinarily sad about this is that this is not a surprise. Our short-term deficits are in part due to war and recession. Part of the deficit on the short-term basis is clearly the war and the recession. However, we know these are intentionally inflicted, conscious, premeditated deficits. They are going to be here for decades because we know we are getting older and the baby boomers are going to retire.

This is a premeditated moral and economic crime. I am speaking against it. I am pleased that some of the Senators in the other Chamber have stood up on a vote of courage and have prevented some of these tax cuts going through. I hope they can continue some of that profile in courage, and we can get a budget that does not break the bank and our children's backs.

Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor tonight to talk about the energy challenges facing America and the opportunities that we now have before America and to advise the House that this afternoon, along with support of about 40 Members of the U.S. House, I introduced an amendment to the underlying energy bill which could be on the floor tomorrow that would give America a new Apollo Energy Project that would give America an energy program that is befitting the boldness and can- do spirit of this country. I will come back, in a moment, to explain why it is called the Apollo Energy Project.

Before I do, I thought I should address what the challenges are to America and our energy world. They are three. They are really quite obvious, and I think that they are well understood by Americans and accepted by Americans on a consensus basis.

Challenge number one: Our Nation has an addiction.

We are addicted to oil from the Mideast. We are addicted to oil from one of the most turbulent, incendiary, dangerous parts of the planet in the last couple of centuries. This addiction, in all administrations, Democrat and Republican, has resulted in a foreign policy not to the security interests of America and not to the interests of spreading democracy in the Middle East.

Americans understand that, both in their head and in their gut, because they know that the policies, for instance, in Majlis, in the Saudi Arabian Royal House, is they have refused to cooperate fully in the war on terrorism and in fact have allowed certain elements in their society to support terrorism without cracking down on it. Americans understand that the reason for that is because of our addiction to Middle Eastern oil, and they realize that our foreign policy has been tainted, has been poisoned, by this addiction. And Americans understand that breaking that addiction perhaps is job number one for an energy policy of America. That is the first challenge.

The second challenge is to deal with the phenomena of global warming. Americans now have come to understand overwhelmingly that when we place into the atmosphere pollutants from our burning of fossil fuels, by necessity these pollutants have caused a huge proliferation of global gas emissions to increase the rate of these gasses that warm the planet and the atmosphere.

Americans know if we are going to continue to burn fossil fuels without using new technologies to trap these pollutants, we are going to continue to increase the increase of carbon dioxide and methane and other global warming gasses in the atmosphere. Americans know if we do that, that these gasses are sort of like a blanket, they trap infrared radiation escaping the Earth and will be warming the planet for the next century.

Americans are concerned when they see what has happened as a result of global warming already. They know that in Glacier National Park, where we had 150 glaciers about 100 years ago, we now have 50, and we are projected to have no glaciers, no glaciers, in Glacier National Park in the next century if trends continue. We will have to rename it ``Puddle Natural Park'' I suppose.

Americans have seen the melting of the polar ice caps, the reduction by 10 percent in breadth and 40 percent in depth of the arctic ice cap; the melting of tundra in Alaska, where dead Indians are popping up out of graveyards because the tundra has melted.

We have seen the extraordinary increase in dangerous weather in the continental United States that is associated or could be associated with this phenomenon. We know that we have a responsibility to our children to stop our proliferation and contribution of these global warming gases and that we can do so. That is the second challenge.

The third challenge is an economic one, and the challenge is that we know that technologies always are continuing to grow, and we know that because of this challenge in the Mideast with oil and because of global warming, people are going to want new technologies for new sources of energy. The problem is that we have kind of a gap, we have a technology gap, because we are losing jobs right now in the new energy technologies to Germany for solar, as Germany now is the leading solar manufacturer of solar chips; to Japan with hybrid vehicles, as Japan is now leading us in the production of fuel-efficient vehicles; and to Denmark, a small European country that now is leading the world in the production of wind turbines, and these are jobs that belong right here in the United States, not to be lost to our economic competitors. We have a job loss phenomenon because we do not have an energy policy that is forward-thinking. We have an energy policy that looks backwards.

Well, today, Mr. Speaker, we offered an amendment for a new, bold, visionary energy policy, and we call it the New Apollo Energy Project. We did that, inspired by a former member of the U.S. Congress who, on May 9, 1951, walked down this aisle right here and he walked up to the platform and addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress of the United States. That night, John F. Kennedy challenged America to go to the moon within 10 years and bring that man back safely to earth. At the time, he challenged America to exercise its can-do spirit. People thought that was a little bit nuts, to send, at the time they were thinking of a man, to the moon and bring him back within 10 years. That idea stunned people at the precursor of NASA thinking, how the heck are we going to do that?

But John Kennedy knew something about the character of America. He knew that when Americans recognized a challenge and were rallied to a cause, they could produce like no culture in human history, and this American culture responded with technological innovations which led the world in using our can-do spirit to create new devices, new software, new computers, new rockets, new navigational systems, new satellites that were unheard of before John Kennedy asked America to accept that challenge.

That is exactly the type of challenge which we need to give to America tomorrow when we adopt an energy policy.

Mr. Speaker, the reason I have, along with my colleagues, offered this New Apollo Energy Project is because unfortunately, the underlying bill that we seek to amend is timid, it is slow, it is too little, it is too late, and it is a package deserving of some country less than America, because it fails to cut the mustard in dealing with the 3 fundamental challenges of energy that this country is facing.

Number 1, it fails to give America any hope whatsoever to break that addiction to middle eastern oil. Second, it fails to give America any hope that it is going to deal successfully with this challenge of global warming. Third, it fails to give America any hope that we are going to bring those jobs back to America that now are going across the waters to countries that recognize, are recognizing these new potentially job-creating economies.

So we have introduced this New Apollo Energy Project to introduce those 3 challenges.

I want to discuss the difference between this proposal, which we would be proposing at this moment by Democratic Members of the House, and we hope that Republicans will join us tomorrow or the next day when this bill

is voted on; I would like to talk about the differences between the New Apollo Energy Project and what I believe must be characterized as a timid, half-measure project that is in the underlying bill.

The first thing that our New Apollo Energy Project will give America are goals. I guess it has been said by other folks, if you do not know where you are going, you will probably get there. We need to have goals like Kennedy set for us in 1961, because unless we set those goals, we will surely muddle along and not make significant progress.

So what we have done in this bill with this amendment, which will be on the floor tomorrow, we hope, we have set some goals for America and we have set these goals so that they are both ambitious and reasonably achievable. And we have set these goals by looking at the existing technology, looking at what we have today, looking at the scientists and the scientific evaluations that seemingly may be possible in the future. Let me address some of those goals.

Number 1, we have set a goal that by the year 2010, America will adopt, and the President will help implement through very flexible means at his discretion or her discretion, the goal of reducing Americans' dependence on oil in our total energy package by 600,000 barrels of oil a day by 2010 and a little over 2 million barrels a day by 2015. Now, why do we pick those numbers? We do so out of an acute recognition of the costs of our addiction to Middle Eastern oil. The first figure of 2010, if we reach this target, which I believe is imminently achievable through ways I will talk about in a moment, we will replace the amount of oil that will be produced by Iraq. If we meet this goal by 2015, we will eliminate the need for the oil produced by Saudi Arabia, essentially the largest producer in the world.

Now, why is this important? It is important because right now, we already are depending on 55 percent of our oil coming from foreign sources, and that is expected to rise over 60 percent by the end of the decade. Half of that comes from the Mideast. That is the addiction we have to break.

So we have set this realistic goal, and if we look at the Department of Energy assessments, we will see that this is a realistic goal.

The second goal. We have set forth a goal for America, which again is a reasonable and achievable one, to reduce our contributions to global warming gases that we put out from burning fossil fuel by the year 2010 to essentially 1990 levels, of what we were putting out in 1990.

Now, that is less ambitious than the Kyoto Treaty. It is less ambitious that most other civilized nations have agreed to in the Kyoto Treaty. But we have sought to have a goal that every single Member of this House ought to be able to embrace. If folks do not like the Kyoto Treaty, then they ought to agree with us to set some goal, and we have put on the table the goal, the democratic folks who have been working on this bill, and I hope my Republican colleagues will rise to the challenge and embrace this goal for America. Because if they do not, they are dooming our kids to a place that is different than we knew when we grew up.

We are telling our kids that they can just accept 2 to 8 degree increases of global mean temperatures over the next decade. We can expect them to see the increase of infectious diseases move north: Malaria, encephalitis, Dengue Fever. We can expect to see droughts in the western United States, somewhat similar to what we have experienced in the last 2 or 3 years. We can expect to see a lessening of the snow pack in the Cascade Mountains, which can reduce the ability to irrigate our fields in eastern Washington. We can expect to have an America that is not the kind that we had when we were children. We need to set this goal.

Third, we would set a goal of creating 1 million new jobs in these new infant industries which can be so beneficial in helping America reach their economic potential. Wind turbines, solar, clean coal, thermal incline facilities using the thermal temperatures in the oceans, energy efficiency systems, efficient cars. All of these, a whole basket full of new jobs for Americans that ought to be here rather than Denmark, Japan, and Germany. So we intend to set those goals and we have done so.

The second feature of our plan. We know that this is an ambitious challenge. Let me tell my colleagues how ambitious it is. Three weeks ago, or 2 weeks ago, an article came out in Science Magazine that suggested that by the end of this century, if we were to expect to hold the rate of global warming to about 2 degrees over the next century, to just limit it to that amount, not stop it, but limit it to that amount, we would have to have somewhere between three-quarters and 100 percent of our energy produced by nonCO2-emitting industries. That is a big challenge. Now, it is over a century, but it is still a big challenge. So this is an ambitious undertaking that we have to face for a variety of reasons.

So in doing that, we need to embrace a whole host of solutions. There are no silver bullets to our energy policy. But we have to be bold and visionary and break the habits of our old ways and our old industries, at times, in order to reach these goals of more self reliance in energy.

So let me talk about some of the ways we propose doing it. First, let me say we want to address new sources of energy and we want to address old sources of energy. Let me address the new ones just first briefly, because they are things that are not yet seen, just like in the 1890s, the internal combustion motor was only a tiny part of our total energy consumption, our production. And if we looked at charts, we would say, well, is the internal combustion engine going to mean much to America? At the turn of the century, it was only a few percentage points of our production, but it changed us dramatically. The same can be said, I believe, of the new emerging technologies that can help produce energy. Wind energy and wind turbines.

Mr. Speaker, wind turbines now are economically competitive with electricity produced by other means. We are building the North America's largest wind turbine farm in southeastern Washington, enough to supply energy for thousands of homes at a competitive price. And the Department of Energy studies have shown that the potential for wind energy, assuming that this becomes economically productive, as much as in the Midwest alone could potentially generate enough electricity for United States consumption needs. Now, those prices are becoming competitive, particularly with the modest tax breaks that the industry now takes advantage of.

This is happening around the world. When I was in Denmark a couple years ago, I saw them producing 15 percent of all of their electricity with wind turbines, some of these 300 foot-long blades that are outside on the ocean, outside of Copenhagen. They intend to have 50 percent of their electric produced by wind power by the end of the decade, and they are going to reach that. We have that alternative to do also, if we will give this industry some of the modest help to get off the floor and get into the mass-scale production that we need. I look forward to that day.

Solar power. Solar power at this moment is not economically competitive at this moment, except in certain circumstances. But the facts have shown that every time we increase the rate of production of solar units, the price can get cut by as much as half, and we believe, by ramping up, by obtaining the scales of economy of production of these solar units, we believe they have a realistic possibility of being economically productive by the end of the decade, if, if Uncle Sam will pull its head out of the sand on this issue and help this emerging technology along.

Now, there are just a couple of new technologies, but let me talk about some of the old. Coal. Coal right now, we have enormous supplies of coal in this country as a domestic fuel supply, but a problem with it is that at the moment, it contributes enormous pollutants in the form of carbon dioxide, which is one of the global warming gases that we have that are so problematic for the future climate of the world.

The question arises, why do we not just trap the carbon dioxide? Let us trap it. The fancy word for that is sequestration. We in our bill have put research and development dollars in to study the opportunity of trapping or

doing carbon dioxide sequestration and perhaps injecting it back into deep mines or potentially the ocean, although there are environmental challenges there, to try to be able to use coal without marring the atmosphere.

There are some real challenges to doing that technologically; but given the enormous challenge we have over the next century, it seems to me that it is an appropriate expenditure of research dollars to see if we can make progress in that regard.

One of the simple things to say about energy is that the best way to produce energy is to use it efficiently. I believe a very significant portion of our solution to our energy needs, although not talked about, although not quite as romantic as wind, solar, or various other fusion technologies and the like, it is going to be a very significant part of our savings, and that is to use energy efficiently.

Let me tell Members how important that is. Look at Seattle, Washington. I come from Seattle, and represent the north Seattle area. Seattle, Washington realized it was going to start to have an energy crunch in the mid-1990s. The folks in Seattle, instead of just rushing out and producing more CO2 emissions, they decided to see what they could do to use energy efficiently.

They adopted some very commonsense measures in Seattle to have incentives for better building code standards, to have incentives to use energy-saving lighting, to have incentives to use energy in a more efficient way for advertising, for instance; very simple things.

The city of Seattle saved enough energy, enough electricity, to heat and light 58,000 homes in about 3 to 4 years; 58,000 homes in a city of 1,000,000 or thereabouts. That is an amazing statistic, doing something that did not change anyone's lifestyle in a deleterious manner. Everyone enjoyed the same lifestyle. Before the bubble burst, Seattle was a pretty chic place to live, and I still think it is a great spot, without any degradation of our lifestyle.

In our bill, we have called for a number of measures, essentially, to get efficiencies on how we use energy.

Look at our transportation sector. In transportation, we did some very farsighted things in the 1970s. We adopted measures to raise the fuel economy of our fleet of vehicles, and it was successful. We raised it almost 10 miles a gallon, probably 8 miles a gallon or the like, in our fleets of vehicles.

Then, in the 1980s, that stopped. That rate of progress that America was making came to an absolute halt. It is interesting, because if we had simply continued to increase the rate of improvement of mileage in the cars we were driving through the 1980s and 1990s, we would have replaced all of the oil we buy from Saudi Arabia today.

Just think of the opportunity we lost in not continuing those efficiency increases. Now we have to start again on the road to efficiency increases, and in our bill we have not proposed a specific efficiency standard, what is called the CAFE standard, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard; but we have created a goal that would give the President a flexible tool in one manner or another to save 600,000 barrels a day by the end of the decade, and that is a realistic goal. Heaven help us if we cannot use our brains enough to increase the efficiency of our transportation sector.

Since the 1980s, when America stopped because Congress stopped improving the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, since that time virtually the entire computer and Internet industries have developed, the biomedical industry has just essentially been created from scratch, and we have had these tremendous technological advances, but the cars we are driving get less mileage today than they did in 1984. That is simply wrong.

The Republican approach has not offered, in this bill, any solution to that failure; we have. I am hoping some of my Republican colleagues will join us in fixing that problem.

Let me address the hydrogen economy, if I can. Many of us were pleased to see the President in his State of the Union at least mention the possibility or the prospects of developing hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Many of us believe that is a bright future for the country to develop a fuel cell-driven car; but it is a ways off, of course, to develop the technologies, particularly for the infrastructure to fuel those cars.

Unfortunately, upon reflection, we found that the President's and my colleagues', the Republicans' plan, has this enormous loophole, this bridge between here and the future that is simply down. That is the bridge between us and the production of hydrogen; because we could have everybody in America have a hydrogen-fueled car in our garages, but it does not do us any good if we do not have any hydrogen. The President totally failed to give us a way to produce hydrogen. The Republican bill tomorrow gives us a total failure of a way to produce hydrogen.

What we found was this President's allusion to hydrogen was really a failed allusion of an energy policy. I regret to have to say that, because it is a biological fact hydrogen does not grow on trees; it has to be produced. It has to be produced through electrolysis of removing it from water molecules. We have to use electricity to do that. We have to have some way to generate the electricity, or it has to be stripped off from a fossil-based fuel system in some process which also takes energy.

So the fact of the matter is, although a hydrogen car is a good idea and the research to produce it is a good idea, we have to grab the bull by the horns and figure out how to produce hydrogen. The Republican Party is not telling us how to do that. We will offer proposals in our bill, in the New Apollo Energy Project, how to do it.

The reason we will do that, do all of these things, relies on a fundamental character belief in the ``can do'' spirit of America. If you believe in this new Apollo project, you are an optimist; if you do not, perhaps you are a pessimist.

We are optimists because we believe in the ``can do'' spirit of this country. When we roll up our sleeves, we get it done technologically, but we do not if the U.S. Congress sits here in the posture of an ostrich with the head in the sand and our tailfeathers in the wind, rather than the American eagle. That is the posture we want the U.S. Congress to take, of the eagle with a can do spirit.

Some of my colleagues earlier this evening were talking about one of the provisions in the Republican bill would purport to solve this problem by drilling in our Arctic wildlife refuge that was established as a wildlife refuge by Dwight David Eisenhower way back when. It was established to be a wildlife refuge. It has been one ever since.

I think that there are several comments I have to make, because I know a little bit about this. I was up in the Arctic wildlife refuge the summer before last. Just to give Members who have not been there a brief description of it, I have been to Yellowstone, I have been to Glacier National Park, and my parents used to work in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State. I have been to the bayous of Louisiana and I have been to a lot of beautiful places in this country, but I can warrant in the 4 days I was camped on the banks of the Achelik River right next to the area they want to turn into an oil production facility, it is one of, if not the most, spectacularly biologically dynamic beautiful places in America.

The wildlife is spectacular like no place I have ever been, and for 24 hours a day, because the sun is up 23, 24 hours a day, there are birds singing, there are grizzly bears walking, there is caribou snorting going right through your camp. That place is the most spectacularly exciting place I have ever been, just to be.

For Members to come here and describe it as some sort of wasteland that we should toss aside like a piece of sort of litter from the American political structure is just wrong. It is a beautiful, beautiful place, and it is a special place. That is why a good Republican environmentalist, Dwight David Eisenhower, set it aside for future generations as a wildlife refuge.

A couple of things about this. Number one, although we know increasing production domestically is an element of this, and we have in our bill proposed increasing domestic production of oil in some of our wells, we have some tax incentives to improve the efficiency and productivity of what are called marginal or stripper wells that are now in marginal production domestically in the United States. We have a variety of things to do to help technologically to increase the oil production

from wells in the continental United States now.

But the sad fact is, we cannot rely simply on oil production as an only or major source of solving this problem. The reason is that while we consume 25 percent of the world's oil, there is only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves in the continental United States. We use 25 percent, but we only have 3 percent of the world's reserves.

The Creator did not put enough dead dinosaurs under America to solve this problem simply by oil production. That is why we cannot rely on the Arctic, which is only about somewhere between 6 months' and a year's worth of production, and which would not be on line for 10 to 12 years, in any event.

There are two pieces of this puzzle that my friends across the aisles left out. Number one, they talk about this, that they will only put a 10,000-acre imprint or footprint on this beautiful area. I have been to Prudhoe Bay, and I can tell the Members that it looks more like New Jersey than it does Yellowstone National Park. We do not need that in the Arctic wilderness refuge.

They say it is only 10,000 acres on this, what they call the imprint where the industrial sector would meet the tundra. The problem is, everything is built in Alaska on stilts, and the only thing they count in that 10,000 acres is where the stilts touch the ground. It is sort of like measuring how much your furniture in your office covers your office by where the little corner of your desk leg touches the tile. That is a gross distortion. This place is going to look like an industrial production plant if this wildlife refuge is destroyed by making it into an oil facility.

I realize that not a lot of Americans are going to see the Arctic wilderness, wildlife refuge. It is very remote. But I think a lot of people think of this sort of like the Mona Lisa. A lot of Americans will not see it, and maybe it is only like putting a little small mustache on the Mona Lisa to put this 10,000 acre industrial plant; but it is a mustache, nonetheless, and it would not look good on the Mona Lisa, and it is not going to look good on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The best argument I heard about that is from a young environmentalist constituent of mine from Bainbridge Island, Washington, his name is Sam Zuckerman. Mr. Zuckerman told me that in his view, we ought to leave it for the kids and our grandkids. I think Mr. Zuckerman is right, that we should do so. I think that is the American sentiment.

I also may note that the people who live in the area are divided on this issue. The native Americans who live in the Arctic village who depend on the caribou herds, which potentially could be threatened by this development, are adamantly opposed to this. But we ought to know this, this refuge belongs to all Americans, not to any one of us. All Americans should have something to say on this. All Americans ought to have the opportunity to give this spectacular place to their children and to their grandchildren.

With that, Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I just hope that in the next day or two while we are talking about energy in this Chamber that our effort to have this new Apollo energy project will be joined by some of our Republican colleagues.

We ask for their assistance in passing this, because America needs something more than half measures. We cannot break our addiction to oil with baby steps. We cannot solve the global warming problem with baby steps. We cannot grow the U.S. economy by these half measures that are now proposed in the Republican bill.

It is time to embrace and use the American talent for technological innovation. And it is time for the U.S. Congress to recognize both the challenge and the promise of what America can do when it comes to developing these new technologies.

There is a group in Lake Union, Washington called MagnaDrive, some former people from Boeing run it, and they have developed an electric motor coupling device which can increase the efficiency of an electric motor of about 30 percent. A fellow came up with this technology literally in his garage from Port Angeles, Washington, and now they are selling this to various building companies for their air conditioning systems to improve their electric efficiency.

We are going to solve this problem by 10,000 new inventions like that, by asking Americans in their garages, in their large corporate research and development facilities, to bring us into the next century. So I hope tomorrow or the next day we will indeed adopt this new Apollo energy project to give us, not an energy program for the last century, but one for the next century that is befitting the can-do talents of the American people.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to mention a very important charitable project by our National Association of Letter Carriers, who have been engaged in this for several years. On the second Saturday in May, which will be May 10 this year, letter carriers in over 10,000 cities and towns will be delivering much more than mail on their routes. They will be collecting food donations left for them by their caring patrons on the 11th annual letter carriers national food drive.

I want to take this opportunity to commend the letter carriers for this incredible charitable endeavor. This effort by the letter carriers is the largest 1-day food drive in the Nation, and it has resulted in the last 10 years in over half a billion pounds of food donations to our local communities. I hope everyone listening will participate on May 10 by leaving a box of nonperishable food next to their mailbox before their mail arrives. It will help the estimated 30 million people who go hungry every day in America, including 12 million children.

Congratulations to our letter carriers for a job well done.

Mr. Speaker, the United States Government is still not doing its job on homeland security. It is failing in a very, very elementary manner. The way it is failing is that it is failing to give the tools that our local communities need to prepare an adequate homeland security plan and procedures in our towns and in our cities.

It is very sad to say that where the rubber meets the road on homeland security, and that is in our cities and towns, this administration and the majority party in this Congress are not giving our cities and towns the tools they need to do the job. The sad fact is, the Federal Government is not cutting the mustard when it comes to helping our cities and towns prepare their police departments for terrorism, prepare their fire departments for terrorism, prepare their emergency response plans for terrorism. The job is simply not getting done.

Now, we had a little bit of good news today out in the State of Washington. The city of Seattle will be receiving about $11 million to help with some of their plans. But unfortunately, all of the cities and towns around Seattle are not getting help from the Federal Government, and they need it.

I will give an example. The town of Bothell, Washington has and will spend over $200,000 this year on their homeland security plans to deal with terrorism, from buying gas masks to training for their personnel. Over $200,000, Mr. Speaker, and no help from the Federal Government. The city of Monroe will spend over $45,000. The city of Monroe is not the largest city in the whole country. They are not getting help from the Federal Government. Mountlake Terrace, a small town in my district, they are spending $2,400 on gas masks, just one little tiny element for their expenditures, together with overtime for their officers, no help from the Federal Government. The city of Edmonds is spending $145,000 for homeland security, a significant figure for overtime, for training of their personnel, and over $30,000 of training of their fire department for hazardous materials training, no help from the Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, where is the help of the Federal Government for Edmonds to deal with terrorism training, for Bothell to deal with gas masks, for Mountlake Terrace to deal with overtime, for Edmonds for their HAZMAT training? Where is the help for our cities that the Federal Government should be giving to these local communities? It is not getting done. The reason it is not getting done is that this Chamber and the other Chamber are not passing the appropriations that should be passed to help these local communities.

Now, on this floor last week, we in the minority party made an effort to increase the appropriation and supplemental budget to get help to Edmonds, to Mountlake Terrace, to Bothell so that they can prepare an adequate homeland security response. And we wanted to boost, by $2.5 billion, help for our first responders, for our police and fire departments. But unfortunately, the majority party stymied that and would not support these increases in our plans to deal with homeland security.

I think it is important to point out the reason for that. The reason that this bill did not pass to help these local communities is that the majority party thought it was more important to give the folks at Enron tax breaks in their multibillion-dollar tax package than it was to give the city of Edmonds help for gas masks, the city of Bothell help for overtime for their police departments.

We believe in the Democratic Party it is more important to help these local communities deal with the threat of terrorism as a first job before giving these tax cuts, a predominant amount of which goes to the wealthiest Americans in the country. We believe that, because the city of Edmonds has a job to do for the people they represent, and that is to do an adequate job to get ready for potential terrorism. The city of Bothell has that responsibility. The city of Mountlake Terrace has that responsibility. We are going to continue working on this until we get this job done, because Americans are entitled to know their local communities have responded with as much vigor as we are seeing in Iraq from our very, very proud, honest, and effective military personnel today serving in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that folks will join us in this effort, because our local communities need the help of the Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to briefly talk about the Arctic, because we were on the banks of the Ivishak a couple summers ago. I have been to Yellowstone, I have been to Glacier, I have been to the Grand Canyon; and this area is the most biologically dynamic place I have ever been, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life, and certainly it will not solve our energy needs.

People sort of feel about the Arctic the way they feel about the Mona Lisa. They may not get to see the Mona Lisa. The advocates of drilling are saying it is going to be a small footprint, just a relatively small oil production facility. I think that is a little bit like putting a small mustache on the Mona Lisa.

It is small, but it is still disfiguring, and Americans do not want it.

I hope that we will have an opportunity to offer a new approach to energy in this year's debate that is akin to a new Apollo energy project for America that will be as bold as the Apollo project that John F. Kennedy stood in this Chamber in 1961 and challenged America to go to the Moon in 10 years. We think the U.S. Congress ought to be challenging America to go to a future of self-reliance in energy to break our addiction on Middle Eastern oil, to adopt and embrace a goal of reducing our global warming gas emissions and, in fact, grow jobs in America.

That is what we need, a visionary, bold, creative energy policy; not one that relies just on the technologies of the past, but one that will, in fact, engage the American talent and that can-do spirit.

We know that Americans have the most creative talent in the world. We have created most of the technologies of the last century. Now it is time for us to create the energy technologies of the next century. We know the world will beat a path to the door of the country that does this. We do not think we should give these markets of wind turbines to Denmark, or the market for fuel-efficient vehicles to Japan, or the market of solar power to Germany. We believe those jobs should be right here in the United States.

So we hope to offer, and in fact, we will be going to the Committee on Rules tomorrow, to offer America a new Apollo energy project which will, in fact, attempt to use all of our sectors in a creative way; to do research on coal to see if we can find a way to sequester the climate-changing gases of coal emissions; to help both consumers in the auto industry to get more fuel-efficient cars; to help our local domestic auto manufacturers with tax breaks for the retooling expenses they are going to need to make fuel-efficient vehicles; to help improve some of the productivity of some of our oil wells in our domestic facilities now. Because we believe that America ought to adopt the can- do spirit of a new vision of energy, rather than simply relying on the old, the old types of technologies that we have used.

So I appreciate the opportunity to talk with the gentleman. In fact, we may be back tonight or tomorrow to talk some more about that.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for a minute, I am glad he brought this point up, because we out in Washington State think the administration's effort to essentially gut, and it really is gutting, five major environmental bills for the Department of Defense activities is seriously misguided. The reason I say that is out in Washington, we have a whole host of military establishments. We have the Akamai Firing Center in eastern Washington. In my district we have the Bangor Nuclear Submarine Facility. We have the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. And at every single one of those sites, we have had the Department of Defense work with our local communities and we have solved some of the environmental challenges without any great failure of training or security.

The Department of Defense has worked with these local communities to solve a problem with the sage grouse at the Akamai, to solve the problem of water quality in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, to solve a salmon habitat issue at the Bangor facility. And this proposal to gut these environmental protections is really a solution looking for a problem, because the Department of Defense in the State of Washington, one of the most heavily defense-oriented places in the country, has not experienced any particular qualm or difficulty in solving this problem.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, that is true. And the Hanford site, this is going to be a 50-year recovery effort.

But some of the problems in the State of Washington, perhaps less known, but every bit as concerning, are water quality issues now, of some of the toxic chemicals that have been, by necessity, associated with the Department of Defense sites. And I can say without hesitation that the people of Tacoma and Federal Way and Paulsville, Washington do not believe it is necessary to allow a degradation of their drinking water standards in their kids' drinking water in order to have the most secure Nation we have. And the reason they are confident of that is they have seen the dedicated men and women of the Army and Navy work with these communities to solve these problems.

So they cannot understand why this administration would come in for what appears to be simply idealogical reasons and gut the protections that have assured citizens that their Federal Government is not going to let tetrachloride or some of these other heavy metals get into their drinking water. It just does not make any sense to them when we have been able to solve these problems because of the flexibility that the gentleman alluded to.

So we hope that this effort will be beaten back and that the common sense that has been used, both by the Department of Defense and our local towns around this country, will prevail.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, he just prompted a thought.

One of the problems on this sort of assault on environmental protection by this administration is that it is not just one front, it is a multifront assault on environmental protection. One that the gentleman just alerted me to is the attempt to weaken our ability to successfully prosecute Superfund toxic waste dump cleanups, and the gentleman may have talked about this this evening, I do not know. But in my district, I live right across the harbor from a site called the Waco Creosote Plant. It was an old creosote plant, where a lot of the lumber they brought in, in fact some I think may have gone to the Panama Canal construction project, was created there. Creosote is really effective at killing little bugs that might get into your pilings, but it is very, very toxic. It has some very, very nasty chemicals in it.

That stuff is on a point at a harbor right across the bay from where I live on a little island just west of Seattle. That Superfund site now, to clean it up, is costing tens of millions of dollars to successfully clean up that creosote, because it is leaking into Puget Sound now, and that stuff is a carcinogen and we believe it has caused some pretty awful things to happen to the fish that a lot of people like to eat. In fact, the shell beds, the shell beds are closed around this area. You cannot eat the clams and oysters and the like.

But the administration, despite the ongoing demand to clean up not this one, but thousands of toxic waste dumps around the country, has decided not to fund those by canceling the tax that would pay for this cleanup. That are now paid by the polluters. Before

we have had a policy that the polluters will pay to clean up this pollution, rather than John Q. Citizen. This administration wants to take the cost of the cleanup of this creosote toxic waste dump, and there are thousands arose the country, and take it off of the polluters who put the creosote in the ground, who should be morally, ethically, and legally responsible for that, and put it over on the taxpayers, so the taxpayers have to pay for this cleanup.

Well, I can tell the gentleman that my neighbors do not think it should be their job to clean up the creosote that these companies put in the ground, because they were not following the law for decades. And we believe the administration is flat wrong in trying to take care of these special interests by putting that enormous cost of these cleanup efforts on to people who are playing by the rules, earning a paycheck, paying their house payment, and they are now having to pay their taxes for that Superfund cleanup.

Mr. Speaker, it is one manifestation of how special interests here in this Chamber have got their way when they should not get their way. These cleanups ought to be borne by the polluters. Not only is it an equity issue, but the clear fact of the matter is that because of the costs associated, these are billions and billions of dollars, one little cleanup on my little island, it is about 16 acres, is going to cost something like $20 million or $30 million, and we need to repeat that across the country to keep this stuff out of our water. If we do not keep that polluter-pays concept, these jobs are not going to get done.

So this is related to the issue, and I just want to point out that it is not the only assault that we suffer.