Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, Republicans and Democrats should be united in one proposition, and that is that we should never allow our foreign competitors to steal our jobs by using illegal subsidies. And, in fact, that is what has happened with the Airbus company that has now been found guilty of receiving billions of dollars of illegal subsidies from European governments to subsidize their airplanes, including a tanker.

Now that company wants to steal American jobs by taking away a contract for the next tanker for the U.S. Air Force, so that those jobs can be shipped to France and other places. This is wrong, and it cannot stand.

We need to pass an amendment that will be offered on the defense authorization bill that will assign a cost of those illegal subsidies to the Airbus bid. If we do this, Republicans and Democrats will be united in standing for American jobs, for fairness, and for the rule of law. It's the right thing to do. We can't allow these jobs to be stolen.

Madam Speaker, today Congress passed H.R. 5128, to designate the Depitment of the Interior Building in Washington, D.C. as the ``Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building''. Mr. Udall, a former Secretary of the Interior, Congressman, outdoorsman and environmental leader, deserves this honor so every American can recognize his long, dedicated service. With his strong leadership, Congress passed monumental environmental laws including the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund. He began, in his early years, by protecting natural resources like the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in 1960, which protected habitat for more than 244 bird species. Mr. Udall's visionary leadership and environmental legacies are enjoyed by all Americans, from the North Cascades to the Canyonlands National Park. Past and future generations alike will be able to enjoy and recreate in some of America's most grand locations because of his service.

Madam Chair, scientists have made an amazing discovery, and that is, we are the Saudi Arabia of energy. We have the ability to power the growth of our economy by finding efficiency right in the walls and windows and doors of our homes, and this bill will unlock that incredible source of energy that is clean. If Americans want to know what we can do to avoid the problem we're seeing in the Gulf of Mexico, it's to take advantage of this bill and make our homes more efficient.

Some of the Republicans don't want to help us on this bill, but they sure had no problem giving $1 billion of subsidies to the oil companies that are responsible for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. If they want to help us in finding a way to pay for this bill, which we are going to find, I hope they will cosponsor our bill to raise the limit of liability of the companies that are responsible for this to $10 billion so that they pay for this cost. They will need to abandon their friends in the oil industry, but help the American taxpayer, and we will get the efficiency we deserve.

Mr. Speaker, 40 years ago the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire, and Congress got the message and passed a suite of clean waters bills that cleaned up our waters. Now, with this 5,000-barrel, maybe-plus, oil spill in the Gulf, Congress and the U.S. Senate particularly needs to get the message and pass a clean energy bill that will reduce our addiction, reduce our dependence on oil from any source. We are fully capable of doing this.

This fall, because of a bill we have already passed, the Johnson Controls company will open up a lithium ion battery production facility in Holland, Michigan, to power electric cars. I

drove the Chevy Volt and look forward to driving the Ford Focus, an all-electric car.

We can reduce our dependence on oil if the U.S. Senate will get the message, get off the dime, and pass a clean energy bill like we have in the House to reduce our dependence on oil and reduce the threat of these horrendous oil spills.

Mr. Speaker, after the collapse on Wall Street and after the multiple abuses, the American people are very disappointed that one party in the Senate is filibustering so that we can't move forward to have a bipartisan Wall Street reform bill.

The Republicans' filibuster kind of reminds me of the old ``Get Smart'' show where they had the Cone of Silence. When they wanted to keep a secret so that nobody knew about the secret, they brought down the Cone of Silence. That's what the Republicans want to do about Wall Street reform. They want a Cone of Silence over the Senate so that nobody knows whose side everybody is on.

We are on the side of the American people to have aggressive Wall Street reform. The people who are over there who are filibustering are on the side of Wall Street. They want the Cone of Silence so that people won't know that they're standing up for their friends on Wall Street. That is wrong.

You know, maybe the answer ``no'' is the right answer to some things, but it isn't the right answer to Wall Street reform. End the filibuster. Get a vote. Let's tame Wall Street the way it ought to be regulated.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor to speak against a significant injustice to both American workers and the American taxpayer, and that is the decision by the Air Force to extend the deadline for offering bids for the Air Force's new imperative tanker, which has allowed an illegally subsidized competitor, the EADS Company, which has now taken advantage of that, to the disadvantage of American workers and the disadvantage of American taxpayers. It is inconceivable to me that we have extended this deadline to allow a competitor to offer a bid that will be illegally subsidized by European governments.

If this travesty is allowed to happen, we could lose thousands of jobs. The taxpayers would have been suffering seeing these illegal subsidies, and a great injustice will have been perpetrated.

This cannot stand. We should continue to fight this grave injustice.

Madam Speaker, I would like to speak in favor of this resolution that commemorates and honors those who were lost in the Tesoro explosion in Washington State. And this is something that is felt, I think, nationwide. And I appreciate Rick Larsen and his leadership bringing this for the Congress to consider this tragedy. And the reason is maybe twofold. One, we really look forward to a day in this country that our loved ones can go to work without the fear of them not coming home in these jobs, and we hope that this will help focus Congress and our continuing efforts to improve safety in the workplace for our loved ones.

My son worked on a pipeline project that terminated at the Tesoro facility and got to know some of these hardworking people, and they were aware of the dangers associated with the product they work with. And he was impressed, and I think we're all impressed, with their dedication to their jobs.

And I just want to express from the folks I represent our empathy for the families.

I also want to express my admiration for a fellow named Matt Gumbel who today is recovering at Harborview Hospital from his burns and doing well and is very impressed, as I just read some comments on his Web site of people saying, if Matt could get 100 feet following his injuries to the control room to help get help for the people who were injured, he'll be able to get through this. So we're thinking of him. And we commend this resolution to the Chamber.

I commend this bill. This is a bipartisan bill to attempt to prevent a bipartisan epidemic of diabetes from swallowing the next generation. And as Mr. Wamp, who has done a great job, and Mr. Kind, who has done a great job on this bill, know, we have had No Child Left Behind. And as a PE teacher who helped develop this bill said, now we need a ``leave no child on their behind'' bill. This will help our parents work with their children to make sure that that is the case.

I am particularly appreciative of what a little physical activity can do for students in their academic pursuits. We are not talking about necessarily growing Olympic champions here. We're trying to get kids who are active to help their academic performance. My dad is an old PE teacher. I have seen up front and personal the benefit of getting kids active. And this is a very reasonable means to make sure parents have information of how active their children are because we intend, in a bipartisan way, to stop a bipartisan diabetes epidemic. This is a great bill; let's pass it.

Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for carrying the load here. I just want to, in closing, note tomorrow the actress Sigourney Weaver will be hosting a movie, a documentary called ``Acid Test.'' And it's a very interesting movie with some very disturbing news about our oceans, and that is that our oceans are becoming more acidic. And what this movie discloses is that our oceans are actually 30 percent more acidic than they were before we started to burn coal and oil in the industrial age.

And the way this works, the way this movie that Ms. Weaver narrates, carbon goes up out of our smokestacks, out of our tailpipes, goes into the atmosphere, then falls into the ocean, goes into solution in the ocean, and creates acidic conditions. And I don't think probably many people know that our oceans are becoming actually more acidic.

And the concern of course is that when you change the acidity level of the ocean what it does to life forms. And we had Jane Lubchenco, who is Dr. Jane Lubchenco, who heads NOAA, our National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the other day she showed us some time-lapse photography of what happens when you put a shell, like a clam shell, in ocean water that will be as acidic as our oceans will be by the end of the century. And it essentially melts.

What we are finding is the oceans are becoming so acidic that if this trend continues, it will actually dissolve little creatures that form calcium carbonate shells. Shells are made out of calcium carbonate. They take the calcium that precipitates out of a solution and they make a shell. And this isn't just crabs or clams or oysters or coral; it's the little pteropods, the very small creatures that form 40 percent of the bottom of the food chain in the oceans. Of course it's the bottom. And the evidence is showing this may prevent these creatures from having a healthy ability to precipitate calcium to make their body form.

So the long and the short of it is that the actor who gave us ``Alien,'' which was pretty scary, tomorrow will be showing in Congress a movie that I think is maybe at least equally as scary as ``Alien'' because this acidification of the oceans that is caused by carbon pollution has already possibly disrupted some life forms.

In the State of Washington we haven't been able to grow a baby oyster for 2 years in our oyster industry. And we are not sure yet whether that's because of an infection process or because of acidification or both. But it's an example of the kind of thing that can happen if we don't stop ocean acidification.

So the point I want to make tonight is the U.S. Senate is now considering a bill to deal with carbon pollution that will also jump- start the economy by creating thousands of green collar jobs. But to succeed in both those things, they need some limitation on the amount of carbon pollution that's going into the atmosphere. And they need that because that's the only way we are going to compete with China to drive investment in these green collar jobs, but also because it's the only way we are going to keep our oceans from becoming fatally acidic for large parts of the biosphere.

We get a lot of our human protein from the oceans. I think it is 10 or 20 percent of the human protein comes out of the oceans. So I am hopeful they will do this. And I hope they will know, too, they need some limitation on carbon pollution, because we have a way to do that right now through the Environmental Protection Agency that is going to do it. They have been ordered by the courts to do this. And we are going to either have a good carbon pollution protection system in this bill or we are going to have the EPA do it. We think it's better if Congress designs it.

But if Congress does not design it, the EPA is going to do that. And we are not going to vote for bills that do not solve this problem that would strip the EPA of their authority to solve this problem. So we need the Senate to step up to the plate, have some system to reduce carbon pollution so that we can move forward.

I want to thank Mr. Tonko for his leadership here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, we have been doing a lot of work here in the House to try to lead the country forward on energy independence and energy security, but there's been some great local leadership as well.

I want to honor today one of those great local leaders, Mr. Steve Johnson, one of my constituents who, for 23 years, has served with distinction as the executive director of the Washington Public Utility Districts.

Steve has had an incredible career leading this group forward, which represents 27 public utility districts. That's over 1.7 million citizens. And I want to note three of this local leader's achievements.

First, he has led to reforms which have benefited Washingtonians who have not had high speed telecommunications available to them, truly a visionary action by Steve.

Second, Steve's leadership has always helped PUDs obtain funding for more energy efficiency and conservation projects. Steve's been ahead of his time.

And, third, Steve's been a real leader in municipal water systems. Steve's career has really been notable for moving the PUDs forward. He's been a great local leader. We hope the country follows his leadership.

Congratulations to Steve and Vicki in their next great pursuit.

Mr. Speaker, this discussion has gotten a little bit away from this bill about trying to preserve Americans' estuaries so Americans can go fishing with their kids. It's kind of gotten a little far away from estuaries.

I will note that, painful as it is to pay our taxes, some of my constituents don't think it is a bad idea to be able to go fishing with their kids and to keep estuaries. That is a legitimate purpose, and this bill is going to help it along the way.

But my Republican colleague from North Carolina has tried to turn estuaries into the discussion about taxes because it is April 15, and I think it's appropriate to address a couple of facts about that issue, and I thought I might inject a couple facts into this discussion.

There is always a disagreement between sides of the aisle on what reality is. I thought I might turn to a fellow that might have an interesting viewpoint about this. His name is Bruce Bartlett. He is the former Domestic Policy Adviser under President Ronald Reagan and Treasury Department economist under President George H.W. Bush.

On March 19, 2010, here is what this former Reagan and Bush administration official said, and my friend from North Carolina might be interested in this from this former staffer under Republican Presidents. He said, and I quote, ``Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became President. According to the JCT,'' the Joint Committee on Taxes, ``last year's $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced Federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $220 billion this year.''

Now, that is not some Democrat Member of Congress saying it. This is the official under Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush.

Now, what does that mean in the State of North Carolina? My colleague from North Carolina has been down there suggesting that there has been a horrendous event on taxes. Let's look at what the Citizens for Tax Justice say the result of these tax cuts under President Obama are. Because I want to make sure people understand what they mean in the real world.

According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, in the State of North Carolina, the State that my colleague is now attacking the President from, the lowest 20 percent of her fellow citizens in North Carolina have received average tax cuts, average tax cuts, of $612. That's an average. The next 20 percent, average tax cuts of $792; the next 20 percent, average tax cuts of $646; the fourth 20 percent, average tax cuts of $711.

The next 15 percent, $1,900; the next 4 percent, $4,600; and the next 1 percent, $3,019.

In fact, my colleague, who is today on a bill about estuaries trying to fan April 15 into a jihad against supporting Uncle Sam, every single one of the quartiles that you represent has had their taxes cut under this President and you voted against--excuse me, Mr. Speaker--the speaker voted against every single one of those tax cuts. Those are the facts.

Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

I want to congratulate those who have been working on this, the Chair, ranking member, to get this bill through.

I want to make two points. This effort is one that reaches in to improve certain areas that we may not think of when we think about spectrum. I note the little town of Republic in Washington, in eastern Washington, where my grandmother grew up--and it's a great town--but right now you essentially have to shut down the entire city's access to the Internet to send one X-ray from a physician in Republic to a reader, an expert in Seattle to read the X-ray. You have to sort of shut down the whole town because we don't have enough access in spectrum. This making access to spectrum more available helps health care in many, many places across the country.

The second point I want to make, I met with my law enforcement community last week who are still thirsting after an interoperable standard so that we can in fact have interoperability for emergency services radio communications. We still don't have this at this late date. Freeing up spectrum, allowing a financing system to really build that out is necessary.

So this is good for economic growth. It is good for health care. It is good for emergency services. There are multiple reasons this is heading in the right direction.

I do want to point out--and I'm happy to have co-sponsored this bill. We have another bill we hope to have on the floor in a while, the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act, to improve the availability to do auctions to get this out into commerce. We look forward to working with the chair and ranking member to get this bill to the floor so we can build on this success.

Congratulations.

Madam Speaker, today, I was attending to official business in my district, and missed votes on the following three bills considered under suspension of the rules: H. Res. 1222, H. Res. 1041, and H. Res. 1042.

On H. Res. 1222, supporting the goals and ideals of National Library Week, I would have voted ``aye.''

On H. Res. 1041, congratulating and commending the University of Idaho's football team for winning the 2009 Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho, I would have voted ``aye.''

On H. Res. 1042, commending the Boise State University Broncos football team for winning the 2010 Fiesta Bowl, I would have voted ``aye.''

``We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union''--that is what got America started. And when we form a more perfect union, it is always a continuous and controversial process. Social Security, Medicare, civil rights, at those times it was always controversial.

But Americans are going to grow confident in this for two reasons. Number 1, we know that all Americans should have a choice in health care. It shouldn't be the government's choice. It shouldn't be the insurance company's choice. It should be individual Americans' choice, and that is what they will get today.

Number 2, we know that a nation is truly healthy only when all of its citizens have health care.

Today, we will have choice. Today, we will have health care. Today, we are forming a more perfect union in the tradition of this great country.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support for this American health care bill.