Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and compliment him on a good process in tough times.

I have listened to the discussion so far this morning, and I find there are two different schools of thought here on the floor. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) I think believe from my long years of friendship with them, and I consider them friends, they believe that our future in this country depends on what we spend here.

I do not agree with that. I believe our future depends on the opportunities we provide to have good jobs for people to be self- sufficient, to be employed, and to pay taxes. All the programs we provide here help those who cannot participate in that and help them get the education they need and the health care they need.

We keep hearing about these horrible, huge tax cuts. A huge number of the taxpayers they keep talking about are employers. They are people who provide our children and our grandchildren jobs. They are the growth part of this country. They are individual family businesses who, through subchapter S corporations, pay the individual tax rate.

Now I have been in government quite awhile. I have been in business and government about the same length of time. I was in local government, State government and now in Washington. There is a rule that I believe in: If you want less of something, tax it. If you want less, tax it again. The more you tax something, the less you will have of it. If you want something to prosper, tax it less. The theory is the individual family businesses that pay that individual rate, they are the ones that are growing this country, not the global corporations, not these huge companies that we talk about. It is those family businesses. The more we tax them, the less their business can grow because as they make profits, and I know businesses that have poured all of their profits back into the company, buying machines, putting more people to work because they did not have to pay it in taxes.

We cannot have it both ways. The more we prevent them from growing, the more programs we are going to need to support the people that do not have jobs. So the tax cuts Members rail against are the hope of our young people, and I will debate that issue with Members any time.

We heard that in education title I, a $666 million increase was categorized as a $340 million cut. In IDEA, a $1 billion increase was characterized as a $1.2 billion shortfall, but let us talk about IDEA a minute. When I came here, we

were at 5-6 percent of the 40 percent that we had promised. We are now at 20 percent. That is a wonderful, huge increase that did not happen when the other party was in control.

NIH, we doubled their budget and they are now at $27.7 billion. This year they will have an additional $1.7 billion in new research funding. We can play with those numbers and some of last year's money went into construction of buildings and things, but in reality they will have a $1.7 billion increase in research funding.

To conclude my comments, yes, we stand for helping people have a job, and to help people have a job, we help businesses grow by cutting the individual tax rate that prevents them from putting that money back into their business. The big taxpayers in this country, the bulk of them are businesses that are putting our people to work. I am for growing them so that our social programs will be less needed.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 280 had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 3.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would first like to compliment the chairman and the ranking member for, I think, putting together an exceptional bill. I want to thank them for working with us on this amendment that we think will improve the bill.

I am glad to be joined by the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster) to offer an amendment that will remove the copayment for a number of the smallest airports who will be receiving essential air service, saving them from making a copayment.

We understand the logic, but at the present time we all know that our airlines are in trouble. We have bailed them out with $18 billion trying to keep them solvent. We know airports are struggling. We know the commuter services are struggling even more because a lot of the commuter services got no portion of that bailout. We know that small commuter airports are fighting for their economic lives, and often in communities that are fighting for their economic lives.

Just for example, the Venango Regional Airport is trying to raise $6,000 to market the services there and improve emplanements. If this amendment was not accepted, they would be paying $22,000 the first year, which I think would be much better used marketing, and on the fourth year would be paying $87,000.

It is important that we pass this amendment that allows these small regional airports to rebuild the services.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), who wants to help support this bill.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I again want to thank the chairman and ranking member for their support. I understand how they were trying to protect this program. As an appropriator, I can assure the gentleman that I will be working to solve that problem on the appropriations side. We have had our opponents.

I have never understood when we can spend $7.5 billion for mass transit and not ask a question. We spend merely $100 million to provide rural air service, it is the one rural program, it has been continued under attack since I have been here. And I understand, but I do not think there has ever been a time that we need to give the rural airports a chance to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to reinvigorate the use of these airports, when the airports were shut down literally because of the parking requirements, they all lost their parking lots because it had to be so many hundred feet before you could park a car from an airport; these rural airports were all shut down unless they were parking in plowed fields. It caused damage that has not recovered yet.

We are hoping to get some marketing money so we can get the service back there to these rural communities because it is a vital part of economic development and growth. And we know that most of the money went to the big airlines and did not trickle down to the privates that served them.

So we just are thankful that the gentleman is willing to work with us. We might be willing to look at a partnership with the States if we can get the States to buy in to help a little bit with this program, but to put it on the individual communities will not work.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the Committee on Ways and Means and the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Dunn) for her leadership on this issue.

I come from western Pennsylvania, which has been struggling with high unemployment. We have had many plant closings, a very difficult time. I believe this committee and this Congress has been meeting these issues head on and appropriately.

Why do we have the high unemployment? I hear today we are laying blame. If we are laying blame, I mention where I think the blame lies. September 11 shook the economy of this country. Why did we have 9/11? We had two embassies blown up. What did we do about the terror? Nothing. We had a barracks blown up, and several hundred of the Marines killed. What did we do about the terror? Nothing. We had the side of a ship blown up. What did we do about that terror? Nothing. We had an attempt to blow up the towers in New York before 9/11. What did we do? Blow up a baby milk factory.

We have an energy issue in this country that the last administration ignored. Every time we have had energy spikes in this country, our economy has gone down. Because we do not have adequate energy supply in this country, and when we do not have ample supply of all energies, we have spikes in prices.

We have been unwilling to have an energy policy. We have moved to all-natural gas for power generation. This very day we have gas prices that are going to hurt this economy in the year ahead because they are the highest they have ever been, and our storage is the lowest.

Yes, a lack of fighting terror years ago in the last administration, lack of an energy policy in the last administration, is the reason. Unemployment does not happen in a year. Those things happen over years of not taking care of business.

I just wanted to share my thoughts of where the blame ought to be.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 224 I was inadvertently detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, the Miller amendment would eliminate title 4, and it is about management techniques on an accelerated basis to stem the exploding insect epidemics.

To say that a research program is a ruse for commercial timber harvest is to ignore the plain language of this legislation. Large- scale studies are needed to test and demonstrate the effectiveness of treatments. This title creates a partnership between the Forest Service and academia to bring the very best minds in this country to solve these problems.

We want to talk about a new insect, the Hemlock woolly adelgid. It has come into the eastern part of this country. It came in 1950, and by the early 1990s this had spread into 11 States from North Carolina to Massachusetts, causing extensive Hemlock decline. This map shows where it is now spreading.

This insect, the adelgid, kills infected trees in 3 to 5 years after attack and spreads quickly. This next picture here shows these egg sacs that have up to 300 eggs apiece and how to identify a tree that has this insect. It feeds on the needles, and when they are done, here is what a Hemlock tree looks like. A beautiful Hemlock tree now looks devastated.

We need research. We need the ability to stop these insects that will destroy the Hemlock forests in the East. The substitute is removing the ability to do this. This substitute is not about helping fight the insects that are destroying the forests in this country.

Mr. Speaker, 7.2 million acres last year. When is enough enough? This is a 20-year-old problem. How did we get there? On the Allegheny National Forest, which I represent, we have foresters, biologists, hydrologists, soil scientists, game biologists, fish biologists, and renowned research labs trying to help to do things right.

One college student with a free lawyer from the university and a judge who knows nothing about forestry suddenly stops the whole process, and that is why we are having a problem in this country.

This bill is trying to open up at least 20 million acres so we have the ability to prevent forest fires; 7.2 million last year.

I flew over with a group in the West a few years ago with the Speaker. We flew for an hour and a half. We never saw a blade of grass, never saw a green leaf, where the fires had been the year before. The streams were full of mud; the hillsides were washing into the valleys. You talk about devastation: no bugs, no insects, no birds, no animals. That is what is left in the path of these forest fires.

You talk about environmental degradation? These forest fires are the worst, and we must stop them.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise today with my colleague from Pennsylvania to offer an amendment that will provide additional energy assistance to low- and fixed-income individuals under the low-income assistance program, LIHEAP.

LIHEAP provides heating and cooling assistance to nearly 4 million households across the Nation. Unfortunately, LIHEAP is able to provide assistance to only about 15 percent of the 30 million households who are eligible. The amendment the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) and I are offering would authorize funds paid to the U.S. Treasury as bonuses for leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, to be used for LIHEAP. The Congressional Budget Office estimates $2.1 billion in revenues would be generated over a 5-year period from the bonuses.

Today we all know that energy prices are high due to a long, cold winter across much of the Nation. In Pennsylvania, it is still snowing today. Energy prices this winter compared to last year are 30 percent higher for natural gas, 60 percent higher for heating oil, 25 percent higher for propane, and 11 percent higher for electricity. I can testify to the long, cold winter in Pennsylvania and the great need for energy assistance.

The Pennsylvania LIHEAP program in fiscal year 2003 will serve over 300,000 households. The average household benefit is just over $200. Without LIHEAP assistance, many of my constituents would have to make a choice between heating and eating.

The amendment before the House will provide much-needed energy assistance to low-income consumers. The amendment can provide an additional average to $400 million annually to LIHEAP. Dedicating funds to LIHEAP from the production of oil and gas from ANWR will help low- income consumers lower their energy burden. It is a sound public policy to dedicate funds generated from the hope of oil and gas production in Alaska to people in need of energy assistance across the country.

I urge my colleagues to have a heart and support the Peterson-Hart amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

We are not appropriating. We are authorizing over and above what has been authorized in the past. We are increasing the authorization. We cannot appropriate.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, when we authorize, we never can guarantee that it is going to be appropriated. It is a two-part process. I am a member of the Committee on Appropriations; and as a member of the HHS subcommittee, I intend to do my best to make this a reality, hopefully with the gentleman's help.

If the gentleman would continue to yield, yes, I have; but I think I am in a little better position in this situation. I know the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) is very sensitive to this issue. We are not on the authorizing, but we are making a source of funding available to increase by this amount of money. That is our goal, and we are going to do our very best to make it happen.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart).

(Ms. HART asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg).

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

This amendment is a Band-Aid. This amendment helps people who cannot afford to pay for energy, and there are a lot of them. This winter we have had spikes in prices because we do not have enough gas and we do not have enough oil; and when prices spike in this country, it hurts our country and it hurts the poorest of people who have to still drive a car, who have to still heat their homes.

This debate is about having adequate energy supplies to prevent spikes in prices, because I want to tell my colleagues, if we do not do that, we could double and triple LIHEAP next year and the year after and there will not be enough to help the poor who will need it. Because people will not be able to afford to heat their homes, our commercial businesses will not be able to afford to heat their places, and our industries will be going out of business because they will not be competitive.

This amendment just helps those for the moment, but if we do not fix the

main problem, we are going to really be in trouble.

Mr. Chairman, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), chairman of the Committee on Resources.

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

I will conclude by sharing that this amendment is important to the parts of this country who have huge heating costs and cooling costs, to help those that are less fortunate than most of us, those that a big piece of their income goes to heat and cool their homes; and this takes a part of the bonuses and puts it in that fund. It has been argued that we do not appropriate, but we do not appropriate anything as an authorizer.

I happen to be an appropriator too, and I intend to do my very best. I will promise the gentleman from Massachusetts that I will do my very best to make sure this gets in the pipeline.

But I want to conclude with the following: The real problem of LIHEAP will only quadruple if we do not bring energy supplies available to this country. If we do not increase oil supplies, energy prices will spike. If we do not increase gas supplies, home heating and manufacturing costs will go out of sight. If we look at the charts, if we look at the graphs, our gas supplies are the lowest in this country they have ever been. Our prices at the moment are prices they do not want to fill with because it is over $5 a 1,000.

We have an energy crunch in this country. We have a shortage of both gas and oil. We can import oil from unstable parts of the world, but we do not have the ability to do that with gas, and if we do not bring supplies out of places like ANWR and every place we can, if we do not open up lots of parts of this country that are locked up, I am going to tell my colleagues, people are not going to be able to afford to heat their homes, businesses are not going to be able to run efficiently and be competitive, and our economy will be in the tank.

We must pass a comprehensive energy bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I come from Pennsylvania where the first oil well was drilled. I live 5 miles from Drake's well. When we discovered oil in Pennsylvania, it changed the world. The whole industrial world as we know it today came about when oil became one of our energy sources. Since then, many energy sources have been added.

What do we need? Do we need ANWR, you bet. Do we need to open a lot of the west and other parts of this country that are locked up to oil and gas drilling, you bet. I am going to try to explain why. When we look at the consumption figures for the world, 39 percent of the energy used in the world is oil. And of our oil, 60 percent of that comes from unstable, unfriendly countries. That is certainly not a good position for a country like the United States to be in.

Mr. Speaker, 23 percent of our energy in the world comes from natural gas, and 23 percent of the energy that fuels the world comes from coal. Now when we add those three items together, that means 85 percent of the energy consumed in the world is fossil fuel. That is an alarming figure when we think about it. Eight percent of the energy consumed in the world is nuclear. Now we are up to 93 percent of our energy. That leaves 7 percent renewables. I support renewables every way we can support them. We need to do more hydro, we need to do more wood and biomass, ethanol, and wind solar. But when we look at the figures a little further, hydro is 3.2 percent so now we are at 96.2 percent of the world's energy. And when we add wood and biomass, we are now at 99.4 percent of the energy in the world.

I have been in so many hearings where people say if we would just stop holding back wind and solar, they would solve our problems. Wind and solar collectively is 6-10ths of 1 percent of the energy of the world. Am I for wind and solar, you bet. A company in my district has just developed some technical engineering that will help wind be far more efficient because it will automatically position the wind turbines so they face the wind properly. As the wind changes, they change. It adds to their efficiency. I am very proud of them for that. But the problem with wind is that it is only really available in a few parts of the world. Often those areas are far from transmission lines, and the wind only blows 38 percent of the time. The rest of the time we have to have a redundant source to take the place of the wind that is not blowing.

The volume of wind turbines needed to supply a State like Pennsylvania would cover half of New England. The other part is that is not where the wind blows. In Pennsylvania they have found two places, up in the north central part of the State in my district and in the south central part of Pennsylvania. There are two areas where the wind is the best, and they have developed a wind farm at one and are talking about a wind farm at the other. Where the wind blows best in the far reaches of Texas where there are no transmission lines to get it out.

With solar, there are only a few places in the country where solar is regular, and there is no solar power at night, and the few parts of the country that have the majority of the solar available are in places where there are no transmission lines. If we double wind and solar in a 5-year period, we would be 1.2 percent of the energy needs of the world.

Mr. Speaker, what we need for the sake of our economy is we need reliable supplies of all energies, and we need to prevent spikes. The spikes from 2 years ago started us back into a recession. The spikes this winter are going to

slow down our economy further. The one energy that is the greatest concern right now is natural gas. Many years ago in the last administration there was a decision made that coal was out and gas was in for electric generation. I personally am not a big fan of gas for electric generation. We used it for peaking power because I believe it has been the main source of home heating, commercial, and the main source for our industry, and it should be the main source for bus fleets and truck fleets in our city areas where we need clean air. The easiest conversion away from petroleum is natural gas for our transportation fleet. In my view, that would be a better use.

But what has happened in this country in just a few years, natural gas, not generally used for power generation for making electricity, now the gas being used in this country, 13 percent of the gas is for power generation; 14 percent of the gas fuels all of commercial in this country. So power generation has caught up with commercial in a 5 or 6- year period, and every day they are hooking up new power generation plants, and the rig counts in this country to produce the gas are not there. It is interesting, and I have a map here. I wish I had a blow-up of it. The dark blue on the map is where the energy is locked up.

Around the Great Lakes, this Congress voted not to allow slant drilling under the Great Lakes, yet we are buying gas and oil from Canada who is drilling under our Great Lakes and selling us the product. It does not make much sense. But if natural gas is the new fuel for electricity and we want to keep it reasonable for home heating and we want to keep it reasonable for commerce and reasonable for our manufacturing and industries, we have got to have a greater supply of it. We cannot import natural gas.

A lot of people think we import natural gas from Mexico. Actually we buy some from them, but we sell more than we buy, so we are actually an exporter to Mexico. We do buy considerable natural gas from Canada, but about 86 percent of our natural gas that we use in this country comes from America, and our source and supply is dwindling because we as a Congress have locked most of those spots up, and some that are not on there, saying we cannot drill there.

Mr. Speaker, in my district there are a number of caverns that are used to store gas for the New England area and the northeast. There are huge salt caverns that we pump the gas into in the summertime. The underground gas reserves in America are the lowest they have ever been historically. The concern is that with the amount of gas that we are using ongoing now to generate electricity, there is not going to be enough to fill them this summer. Last September we had the biggest, the largest amount of gas we ever had in this country. By late November, we had those reserves almost all used because we had an early winter and a cold winter all up and down the East Coast, and so we used more gas than usual.

The problem is right now the average gas price is somewhere between 5 and 5.50 a thousand. We were used to in this country $2 and $3 gas. It was $3 during the peak season in the winter, $2 in the summer when they would fill the reserves. We are now looking at filling reserves at $5 gas if we had it to put there, or $6 gas. When we raise the cost of doing business that much, double energy prices and more than double for large businesses that use a lot of gas, we will put them out of business.

It was at 19 at one point.

No, the reserves I am speaking about are the caverns where we store storage gas. Not reserves. There are a lot of reserves in this country, but a lot of them are under those orange areas where we cannot drill.

That is correct. And if we do not up the drilling in this country, because we are only importing a small part from Canada, and then we import 4 or 5 percent of liquid natural gas, but we only have two places, one in Louisiana and I think one in New Jersey, where ships with liquid natural gas can come here. They liquefy it in other countries, bring it here and then put it back into gas form in the pipelines, and it is used, whether in our homes or commercially or business.

So we do not really have the options of importing gas like we do oil. You have to have a pipeline, and the only place the potential is up through Canada to ANWR. Now, ANWR is a huge gas supply. The ANWR field has tremendous volumes, but it is going to cost a lot of money and it is going to take years to build a pipeline to get that gas down to us.

But the problem we face in this country I do not think a lot of people are looking at. I have been watching it for 3 years as we started hooking up power generation plants. You can talk about an 18, 20, 24 inch high pressure gas line sucking gas out of our system. That heats a lot of homes.

This year we had very high home heating prices. Next winter they are going to be much higher, because there is really no solution to the problem. Everybody all of a sudden is panicking because the gas supply is much lower than they ever anticipated, and since global warming sort of left us out this winter and we have cold weather in April in Washington, we are using gas at an unprecedented rate now, so they are still drawing out of the underground storage, and there is going to be nothing in storage, and if we fill, we are going to be filling at very high prices, which are now $5 to $6 dollars a thousand.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is very vital that we pass an energy bill in this Congress and pass one that is meaningful. We must continue to improve efficiency and conservation of our energy use. I think in electricity we need to veer away from natural gas and go back to clean coal and nuclear for the interim, because if we continue to use natural gas as we are, we are going to threaten home heating. Gas should be saved for affordable home heating, commercial, industrial, and should be used for mass transit in our cities, which would help clean air there.

Oil should be replaced in transportation as quick as we can, whether it is hydrogen fuel cells, the new cars that use multi-fuels or whatever, because we only have 2.5 percent of the world's oil and basically our transportation is funded with oil, and we do not have a long term source of oil.

We need reliable supplies of all energy sources to prevent the price spikes. Why do I say that? Every time we have energy spikes in our country, we have a downturn in our economy and millions of Americans lose their jobs. Seventy percent of our economy is commerce, and when you take money out of home heating budgets, if home heating prices double, when transportation prices for driving our cars spike at the same time, all of that spending comes out of commerce. People do not go and shop, people do not go and spend money, because they have already paid it to their energy sources.

It is vital for the business future of this country, for the home heating efficiency of this country, for an economy that is reliable, we need reliable supplies of all kinds of energy. It will not be easy. We are going to have to do a lot of things differently than we are today. We will have to change a lot of our priorities. It is vital to the future of this country.

If there is one thing in my view that threatens the economic future of America, it is the lack of reliable, affordable energy prices that our businesses and our homes and people can use to fuel their homes and our businesses. Without that, our economy will be very difficult.

Mr. Speaker, it is great to join my friends from the West. I come from western Pennsylvania where the energy crisis started. I live 5 miles from Drake's Well, the first oil well ever drilled.

The question is, do we need an energy policy? In my view, it is the number one need of this country. There is no issue that makes this country more fragile economically or in our defense than availability of energy.

Why do we need to have a policy? We need a policy that will provide us with ample sources of all types of energy. There is no silver bullet in the energy issue. Every time we have an energy spike in this country, we then have a downturn in the economy because of the cost that takes out of our economy.

I want to share with my colleagues some numbers that are a little surprising. These are world numbers. We all think that we are just days away from new energy sources that are going to replace fossil fuels. Currently in the world, we consume 39 percent, which is oil, 23 percent of energy that is natural gas, and 23 percent that is coal. Now, when we add those three together, that is 85 percent of our energy is fossil fuel.

We have 8 percent nuclear and 7 percent renewable. Now, renewables are the ones we all hope and support and hope will be the supply of the future. But let us look at those numbers. Hydro is almost half of that 7 percent, or 3.22 percent. Wood is .0266 percent, or just under 3 percent. Wood waste is about a half a percent. When we add wind and solar together, we have just over a half a percent of the energy consumed in this country. Yet, we have a lot of people who keep talking like if we would just stop holding back wind and solar. Folks, nobody is holding back wind and solar. When the wind does not blow, we have to have a redundant source. When the sun does not shine, we have to have a redundant source. And it only blows about 38 percent of the time in the areas where wind power works. So those are not as quick a solution as many people would like to think.

Now, transportation is where we use our oil. Thirty-nine percent of our energy is oil, and the vast majority of that is an oil-based economy: our transportation system. We have a little bit of ethanol which is growing, and we have a little bit of natural gas in there. Sixty percent of the oil we purchase will soon come from foreign countries, unstable parts of the world.

Hydrogen fuel cells, I applaud the President. I have been supporting hydrogen for all of my 6 years in Congress. Hybrid cars is another one that has hope. But they are a long ways from solving the energy problems in this country.

If we quickly look at natural gas, which is 23 percent of our energy, that is home heating, commercial, industrial, and mass transit. Eighty- five percent of that is produced in this country and creates wealth from the ground to the source of use. Many of our best fields, though, in this country, and we were really putting a lot of horses on natural gas because we have added it to electric generation, are locked up. Most of the west coast shoreline is locked up, most of the east coast shoreline is locked up. Under the Great Lakes where we drilled down, do not even drill down through the lakes is locked up. Canada drills under the lakes and sells gas to us, and many of our best fields in the Midwest and all around Florida are locked up.

Electric generation is today 52 percent coal, 20 percent nuclear, 60 percent natural gas, 7 percent hydro, and 3 percent oil. So the electric that we supply in this country has basically, in recent years, all the new electric plants have been natural gas. Now, I have never been a fan of that, because we have always kind of held natural gas back for home heating, for commercial and for industrial. And we found this winter what has happened. Now that we are hooking up these big generating plants, we had natural gas prices just a month or two ago that reached $9 and $10 a thousand, which is devastating to those who depend on it for home heating.

We should be using natural gas for mass transit and short-term transportation, in my view, not for future electric generation.

I will conclude my comments with the following: every downturn in our economy has been preceded by high energy prices. Home heating and transportation, when those two costs spike, it comes right out of the family budget. Seventy percent of our economy is from commerce, and that is the same family budget. When we have energy spikes for driving our cars and for heating our homes, it will hurt our economy every time. We must have an energy policy so that we have ample energy supply in this country.

Mr. Speaker, there is not ample wells being drilled in this country to continue to hook up power plants to be produced by natural gas, from all of the experts I have talked to.

But so much of those best gas fields are locked up.

Mr. Speaker, we only can import gas from Mexico and Canada. We can import it from ships, but we only have two ports that can take liquefied natural gas, so we are really limited. We are dependent on what we can drill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller) today on this resolution establishing a national Visiting Nurse Associations Week.

As we were growing up, doctors visited homes and nurses visited homes. Today it is seldom that a doctor visits a home unless it is a personal friend; but the visiting nurses just keep right on trucking.

Serving communities around the country for over 120 years, congressional recognizing and gratitude for these nonprofit health agencies is long overdue. The nearly 500 VNAs across the country collectively provide home and community-based services to over 4 million Americans each year. Founded in the 1890s, VNAs have continuously served as charitable providers in their local communities, creating a safety net for the poorest and most chronically ill and functionally disabled individuals. VNAs serve the majority of Medicaid home health beneficiaries and represent nearly one-half of all nonprofit home health agencies in the United States. On average, Medicare and Medicaid represent approximately 82 percent of VNAs' revenue, and this percentage is even greater in rural areas such as my rural congressional district.

Mr. Speaker, this fact is significant because rural America has always been shortchanged in the Medicare payment system. My rural providers are asked to provide the same level of care with less Federal dollars, even though wage rates have largely equalized between rural and urban areas due to the current workforce shortage. The Medicare home health reimbursement was slashed by 15 percent last October, and the 10 percent rural add-on is set to expire this April. Home health providers, including VNAs, are being crippled by these cuts and I will continue to fight as co-chairman of the Home Health Working Group to resist them. In the meantime, I am pleased to introduce this resolution with my colleague from Massachusetts to demonstrate our continued support for these under-recognized heroes.

In a country struggling with staggering health care costs, the Visiting Nurse Association continually and successfully works to achieve its mission of cost-effective and compassionate home and community-based health care to individuals, regardless of the individuals' condition or ability to pay for those services. They are a leading provider of mass immunizations in the Medicare program and constitute over 50 percent of all Medicaid home health admissions. The association relies heavily upon volunteer nurses and reinvests any budget surplus into charity care, adult day care centers, wellness clinics, Meals-on-Wheels, and immunization programs.

This resolution will establish an annual National Visiting Nurse Associations Week in order to increase public awareness of the charity- based organization. They unquestionably deserve recognizing for their noble services; and by establishing this resolution, Congress would support the continuation of their mission.

I want to particularly mention, too, Ruth Ann Nerlich, who has been a part of VNA in Venango County as long as I have been aware. When I served in the State legislature, she was the go-to person State-wide. She was the person that best understood and best sold the message of home health care delivered by the VNA. And also Betsy Roberts of Elk County, who for decades has been a leader in providing home health care.

I want to conclude my comments with when the Balanced Budget Act was passed, there were problems in this country, mainly with for-profit home health care agencies which were really taking advantage of the system. Unfortunately, Congress, at that time, squeezed the system equally, and the Visiting Nurse Associations, scattered around much of this country, were not fat and wasteful. They raised millions of dollars to give free care to those who could not pay. They were made up of boards of local people, in health care and out of health care, who cared about and helped deliver the services that they provided.

So when the Balanced Budget Act cut them and squeezed them about 30 percent, it squeezed some of them out of business. Some of the VNAs in my district today, the only reason they stayed in business, they borrowed money to continue providing those services. They have debt to service today.

Mr. Speaker, it is vital that this 15 percent cut is taken away, and it is vital that the 10 percent add-on that was proven was needed for home health care is continued on past April.

With that, I am proud to recognize these individuals and the invaluable contributions of our VNAs by cosponsoring this legislation, and urge the support of my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Rogers is someone that all Pennsylvanians were so proud of. Our hearts are sad today because of his leaving us, but he left behind a heritage that we are all so proud of and will always remember in such a wonderful fashion.

I think in Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania, if you are traveling around today, at the Eat'n Park restaurants on their lighted signs, they say it all: ``Fred Rogers, we miss you.'' He studied childhood development at the University of Pittsburgh. Then he went on to be an ordained Presbyterian minister. His landmark show, ``Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood,'' inspired, taught and encouraged children, families and adults since its first nationwide broadcast on February 19, 1968, with messages of love, peace and comfort.

Mr. Rogers created over 200 of his own songs for his show, which always began in a comfortable family living

room as he changed into his trademark cardigan sweater and sneakers, to encourage the healthy emotional growth of children and their families through imagination and friendship.

He encouraged millions of children across the world to love themselves and their neighbors and to deal with complex emotional issues in a safe and reassuring way. On July 9, 2002, in recognition of the contributions of Mr. Rogers, President George W. Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony and said, ``Fred Rogers has proven that television can soothe the soul, nurture the spirit and teach the very young.'' We all know that does not happen on television every day on many programs, but it did on his.

The final show of ``Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood'' aired in August 2001 after completing 33 television seasons and nearly 1,000 episodes. He was always called on whenever we faced a crisis in this country that would put fear in the hearts of children, September 11 the most recent. But he had a calmness and a kindness and a love that changed the atmosphere in any room he entered. Yes, as the Eat'n Park signs say today: ``Fred Rogers, we miss you.''

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to introduce to my colleagues a resolution establishing a National Visiting Nurse Associations Week. Serving communities around the country for over 120 years, congressional recognition and gratitude for these nonprofit home health agencies is long over due. Currently, they are composed of 500 different associations and care for over 4,000,000 patients each year, many of whom are chronically ill and unable to pay medical expenses.

In a country crippled with staggering health care and medical costs, the Visiting Nurse Association continually and successfully works to achieve its mission of cost-effective and compassionate home and community-based health care to individuals regardless of the individuals' condition or ability to pay for services. They are a leading provider of mass immunizations in the Medicare program and constitute over 50 percent of all Medicaid home health admissions. The association relies heavily upon volunteer nurses and reinvests any budget surplus into charity care, adult day care centers, wellness clinics, Meals-on-Wheels, and immunization programs.

This resolution would designate the second full week in February as National Visiting Nurse Associations Week in order to increase public awareness of the charity-based organization. They unquestionably deserve recognition for their noble services and by establishing this resolution Congress would support the continuation of their mission.

I am proud to recognize these invaluable contributions of our VNA's by cosponsoring this legislation.