Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, today I am proud to introduce the ``Transportation Emergency Relief Funds Availability Act'' to safeguard federal funding for disaster-recovery projects.

I want to thank my colleagues from California's Congressional delegation for their support: Representatives Jared Huffman (D-CA2), Mike Thompson (D-CA5), Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA11), Barbara Lee (D-CA13), Jackie Speier (D-CA14), Eric Swalwell (D-CA15), Ro Khanna (D-CA17), Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA 18), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA 19), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA20), Salud O. Carbajal (D-CA24), Katie Hill (D-CA25), Julia Brownley (D- CA26), Grace F. Napolitano (D-CA32), Norma J. Torres (D-CA35), Raul Ruiz (D-CA36), Gilbert Ray Cisneros, Jr. (D-CA39), Alan S. Lowenthal (D-CA47), Harley Rouda (D-CA48), and Scott H. Peters (D-CA52).

Our legislation would prevent the Trump administration from targeting disaster-recovery funding for highway and transportation projects across our state. In January 31, 2019, the Federal Highway Administration denied the California Department of Transportation's (Caltrans) request for 1-year extensions for 66 out of 73 projects awarded ``emergency relief'' funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation. During previous administrations, such 1-year extensions were routinely granted under the Federal Highway Administration's and Federal Transit Administration's emergency relief programs.

Californians are facing increasingly frequent and severe floods and wildfires due to climate change. They deserve nothing less than the full-throated support of their Federal Government, and that is exactly what our bill ensures.

Current U.S. Department of Transportation regulations allow the Federal Government to claw back ``emergency relief'' funding for highway and public transit projects if those projects do not reach construction within 2 fiscal years. The ``Transportation Emergency Relief Funds Availability Act'' would repeal this regulatory deadline and provide up to 6 years for projects awarded these funds to advance to construction. The new 6-year deadline would start following the date on which a disaster was declared by the respective state's governor or the president.

I also want to thank Caltrans, the California State Association of Counties and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) for their support of this critical legislation for our state.

Madam Speaker, I hope that any surface transportation reauthorization bill this Congress will include the ``Transportation Emergency Relief Funds Availability Act. ``This is a major priority for California: the nation's most populous state and the fifth largest economy in the world. As a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, I am working with my fellow California colleagues to see this done.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory and service of Thomas A. Cahill, a member of the University of California, Davis community for over 45 years who embodied the American spirit of innovation and enduring dedication to his family and community.

Born on March 4, 1937, Thomas grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts and earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from University of California, Los Angeles. In 1967, Thomas joined U.C. Davis' Crocker Nuclear Laboratory, where he conducted research for the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft before beginning his work on California air quality. The aerosol and visibility network he developed as the director of Crocker Nuclear Laboratory improved the health of millions of Californians and expanded into the current nationwide IMPROVE program, widely considered the network of its kind in the world.

Beyond his scientific contributions, Thomas served as the thesis advisor to over two dozen Ph.D. students, published eight books, and donated 196 acres of land to the U.C. Natural Reserve System as the Cahill Riparian Preserve. For his work, U.C. Davis awarded Thomas the Academic Public Service Award in 1994 and the Outstanding Emeritus Professor Award in 2014. Following his retirement in 1994, Thomas continued his work on aerosols, including testimony before Congress on pollutant levels caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center. Even while ill, Thomas developed an ultrafine aerosol sampler to help people living near freeways. His contributions to science and public health established a legacy that will endure for many years to come.

He is survived by his wife Ginny; children Cathy and Tom; sister Barbara; and nieces and nephews. I know that they, along with the rest of his extended family and friends, join me in celebrating his life and his memory.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Florida bringing to the floor an extremely important issue: the way in which China is removing the civil liberties.

Tonight, I do want to talk about America and some of the things that are going on within our own country.

When I do these floor sessions, I always want to start with some sense of value and purpose, so I usually begin with this quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and I think it pretty much describes--not pretty much. It definitely describes how I view my job and how I view what I would hope would be the work of the Congress of the United States.

So here is his quote: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

This statement of value really flows down through much of what we do here. We make a choice almost every day in ways that are very direct, for example, when we talk about Social Security, or indirect when we talk about war and peace. In the case of war, men and women who die are generally those who have little, not those who have much.

So I want to keep this in mind, and I want to talk about several pieces of legislation that we are working on right now. I want to talk about seniors.

Now, way back when Franklin Roosevelt established the Social Security system in the height of the Great Depression, Social Security was a pension system. Over the years, it has become the foundation for the support of retired men and women.

Over the years, because of the way Social Security is structured, the inflation set up in Social Security does not keep pace with the normal expenses that a senior has, which is really much different than the general inflation rate for the Nation.

I have introduced a piece of legislation, H.R. 1553, known as the Fair COLA for Seniors Act.

Now, COLA is the cost-of-living adjustment. What we want to do is to make it fair for seniors so that we can honor the value that Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated so clearly for those who have the least, and generally that is the senior population.

So what we want to do is to adjust the COLA to reflect the real expenses that a senior has. They are going to have far more medical expenses, some of it covered by Medicare, but a lot of it not, out-of- pocket costs--we want to do that--housing and other kinds of transportation issues and the like.

So this would be an adjustment to the COLA and provide a modest, very small, modest increase that, over time, would generate a substantial improvement for the benefits that seniors receive from their Social Security benefits.

Another group that we ought to be paying attention to, if we are looking at what Franklin Delano Roosevelt has said should be the test of our progress, is what we are doing for those who have little.

Focus for a moment on students in America. Maybe it is a grandchild, a child, or an adult. If we take a look at the students in America today, not those who went to school when I did decades ago but, rather, students in school today, they are expected to borrow money to pay for their education.

It used to be that higher education was a public benefit, not a private benefit, a public benefit supported by the taxpayers of America because the American public understood that if we had a well-educated workforce, not only high school but through the college years, we would have good, strong economic growth, and we would all be much better off.

Those days when education was a public benefit have long been forgotten. Now it is perceived to be a private benefit to be paid for by the individual who is fortunate enough to go on to college.

They do go, and right now, students who have gone to college in the past and students who are still in college today have accumulated $1.5 trillion of student loan debt.

Over $875 billion is owed to the Federal Government through the various Federal loan programs. And guess what? The interest rate averages over 4\1/2\ percent, 4\1/2\ percent at the very same time that the Federal Government is borrowing that money to then loan to the students.

I looked at it this morning. The 10-year Treasury rate, which is the borrowing rate for the Federal Government, is right around 2 percent. The 30-year rate is just under 3 percent, if I recall correctly, 2.8 percent.

The Federal Government is doing an arbitrage here. It is borrowing at 2 percent and loaning at 6 percent. We are making money on the backs of the students.

What is the effect of that? The effect of that is that a student cannot engage in the normal economic activity of their parents where they are able to buy a car, go on vacation, buy a house, raise a family, begin a family. They are burdened by student loans.

Here is what we are proposing in H.R. 1899, the Student Loan Refinancing and Recalculation Act. This would simply say that the Federal Government will refinance student loans at a rate that is about 1 percent above the rate at which the Federal Government is able to borrow the money.

Right now, instead of 6 percent on a 10-year loan, it would be 3 percent. That is a lot of money. That is a lot of interest. It is not necessary for the Federal Government to do that. This is the Student Loan Refinancing and Recalculation Act.

Undoubtedly, the parents of the students are able to refinance their home, refinance their mortgage. Who amongst us who owns a home has not refinanced that home? Most have as the interest rates have fallen. As I say, the interest rates for the Federal Government 10-year loan or 10- year note is now about 2 percent.

Here we go. We think H.R. 1899 is a good thing. If we can reduce that interest rate to the students, they will be able to pay off their loans faster. By the way, the same policy would apply to new loans not at 6 percent but at the going rate for the Federal Government plus 1 percent.

That is H.R. 1899, which I think fits very directly with what Franklin Roosevelt said should be our purpose.

We have several other bills that I have introduced, and I am going to go through some of them rather quickly here.

I want to take up another one that really deals with a very special problem. I think I have put this board up before. That is Oroville Dam 3 years ago. The Oroville Dam is the highest dam in the United States, over 700 feet.

It rains in California. Sometimes, we have a drought. Sometimes, we have rain. Sometimes, when we have rain, we get too much rain.

This is the spillway at Oroville Dam that failed. If the rain had continued

for another hour or so, the emergency spillway on that side was about to be--in fact, it was overtopped. It was beginning to erode beneath the foundation for the emergency spillway.

That is a 17-foot high spillway. If that had gone, if the flood had continued, if the rain had continued for another hour or 2, that erosion would have undercut that emergency spillway, that wall, sending a 17-foot cascade down into the Feather River.

I represent the downstream of the Feather River, and I know that as a result of this, 200,000 people had to evacuate in communities downstream, the communities of Yuba City and Marysville and other communities in the area, Live Oak and Gridley--200,000 people.

Where did they go? They went onto a two-lane road, and the backup was hours and hours. Had this thing broken, there is no way that they could have escaped.

I am going to put up another picture. This one is more recent. This is last year, 2018. This is Paradise, California. At one point, the people there thought they did live in paradise. Then there was a fire, and they lived not in paradise but in hell. The largest death toll of any fire in California occurred a year ago in Paradise, California.

We can see some of the remnants here. People couldn't escape. A two- lane road out of town and traffic jams, so people had to get out of their cars and run for their lives. Many couldn't run fast enough. Lives were lost.

Here on the East Coast, there are vulnerable areas, for example, Cape Cod with one road in, one road out, a two-lane road.

What we have done here as a result of these issues, Marysville, Paradise fire, Yuba City, in my district, the supervisors in Yuba County and Sutter County downstream from the Oroville Dam came to me and said we have to do something. We have to do something about the escape routes. We have to have better escape routes. We have to have signage. We have to have other kinds of control. We have to make it so that people can pull off the road if they have a flat tire and the like.

At the very same time, my friends from Massachusetts, my colleagues here in Congress, Congressman Bill Keating and Senator Ed Markey, knew that they had the very same problem in Massachusetts, in Cape Cod.

Last year, we introduced legislation, and we reintroduced it this year. Here in the House, we call it H.R. 2838, the ESCAPE Act, the Enhancing the Strength and Capacity of America's Primary Evacuation Routes Act. This would give communities across the Nation an opportunity to go to the Federal Department of Transportation and put projects before it to receive grant money to improve escape routes in their communities.

There are many communities around America that have one road in, one road out, two lanes or even fewer than that. We hope that this ESCAPE Act becomes part of the transportation infrastructure program that is now being discussed here in the Congress of the United States--H.R. 2838, the ESCAPE Act, Enhancing the Strength and Capacity of America's Primary Evacuation Routes Act.

We don't ever want to see this again. We don't want people to be trapped. We want to use the programs that the Federal Government can make available to assist communities in improving their escape routes, their emergency evacuation routes.

There are three different pieces of legislation that I want to bring to the attention of the Congress.

I have another one. I am on the Armed Services Committee. On the Armed Services Committee, we spend a lot of time looking at war, the materials that are needed for war, how the men and women are going to have the proper equipment.

One of the things we have noticed over the years, and one might expect this--certainly, we should expect it--is that the men and women of our armed services are often in harm's way. Usually, we think of this about the kinds of things that occur with IEDs, improvised explosive devices, where some 4,200 Americans were killed in Iraq and similarly in Afghanistan.

But there is another risk. It is deadly, and it is mostly not known at the time. What we want to do here, as we have studied the effects of war on the veterans who have returned, on the men and women who are out there, we have learned that whether they are in Afghanistan or Iraq or at the various bases here in the United States, they are often exposed to chemicals, mold, and other kinds of things that over time present themselves in serious health risks and serious health events.

We know this. Think back to the Vietnam war and Agent Orange. It took more than 25 years for the veterans of the Vietnam war to be able to receive benefits for the injuries that they sustained because of Agent Orange being used in the Vietnam war. We don't want that to happen again, but we know it did.

We know that in the first Iraq war in the 1990s, thousands of our soldiers were exposed to toxic fumes and smoke as the fires raged in the oil fields. During the period of time of occupation in Iraq in Iraq I and Iraq II, the military routinely disposed of chemicals of other kinds of materials in burn pits. Soldiers were exposed to those toxic chemicals.

We call this the OATH Act, and this is H.R. 2617. It is known as the Service Member's Occupational and Environmental Transparency Health Act.

What we want to do is when the men and women are in the field or on the bases here in the United States, when they are exposed to some sort of chemical contaminant, they would have in their medical records at that time that they had been exposed. That sometime in their work, in the tasks they were carrying out, they were exposed to these toxic materials in their normal work, that would go into their medical records.

As they proceed through their careers in the military or leave the military and move on into the Veterans Administration, that information follows along with them so that there is always that data.

Then someday in the future, when some occurrence happens, for example, cancer or some other illness happens that can be traced back to this exposure that took place years before, they will be able to receive the benefits and appropriate treatments without having to guess what happened. It is there in their records. It is part of their files. That will be available for them to be able to get appropriate medical care at some point in the future.

That is H.R. 2617. It is called the OATH Act.

I must say that this particular bill came from one of the members of the military who served as my military fellow, Stephanie Harley. She is a lieutenant colonel now, and she was an environmental engineer.

As she worked with me last year, she said that there is an ongoing problem, that they do not have in their records the exposure that they have had to some toxic chemical or toxic environment during their days of service.

She said there ought to be a law, and I agree. There ought to be a law. This is what she recommended, and I think it is going to pass. In fact, I think we are going to try to put it in this year's National Defense Authorization Act. We have strong support.

We also know that Tulsi Gabbard, one of my colleagues here, has introduced a bill that fits very nicely with this. It deals specifically with the burn pits. This particular bill is much broader, and it fits very well with the work that she is doing on a very similar subject.

These are just a couple of examples, and I want to deal with two more, if I might. It won't take too long, but I do want to put this up on the board here.

Back to FDR, what are we doing for the least of our society? This is a pretty good example of where American policy has gone wrong.

Last year, I served as the ranking member of the Coast Guard and Maritime Subcommittee. I have done that for the previous 7 years. We spent a lot of time worrying and thinking about the American merchant marine.

These are the ships. The United States is a maritime state. No other country in the world has more ocean frontage than the United States. We have inland rivers that are extraordinarily important, the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, all of those, and out in California, the Sacramento River.

What has happened? We used to have thousands of American flagships on which Americans would work as the

mariners, the sailors, the captains, the engineers, and the like.

But just take a snapshot. In the 1980s, we had 249 flagged American ships, built in America, manned and ``womanned'' by Americans. The mariners were Americans. And here we are now, this is actually 2016. We are down to 78 ships.

This is a fundamental national security issue. We spend all of our time thinking about the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and we should. However, if you are going to go to war, you are going to need ships. And I don't think we can call up the Chinese and say: Hey, can you send us a couple of ships so that we can send our men and women off to the Pacific?

It is a national security issue that we be able to transport our military on the ocean. More than 90 percent of it has to go by sea, not in the airplanes. We have got wonderful, large airplanes, and they are great, but if you are going to move a lot of equipment, you are going to need ships.

So that is the state of it. We think we can do something about that.

I am going to put up a couple of other charts here. Let's do this one.

Next year, 2020, the U.S. is expected to be the world's third largest producer of liquefied natural gas for export. 225 LNG--liquefied natural gas--vessels, ships are expected to be added to the world fleet by 2020. But due to the eroded capacity of the American shipyards, none of these will be built in the United States.

So it is not just the ability to move equipment around the world. The same thing happens with the oil that we will soon be exporting. The statistics are almost exactly the same.

It is also about the jobs, the jobs in the American shipyard, good, well-paying, middle-class jobs that simply don't exist today because we are not building ships in the American shipyards.

But if you happen to be in the Chinese shipyards, you have got a lot of work to do. Fifty of the vessels are going to be built in China. In Korea, 70 percent of these new ships are going to be built in Korea.

How many in America right now? Zip, zero, none, nada.

We can change that. We have a piece of legislation to do that, not yet introduced. It will be introduced in the days ahead. We call that the Energizing American Shipbuilding Act.

If we are going to ship energy, export oil and gas, why don't we do it on American-built ships?

Not all of it. We, frankly, don't have the capacity to build 200 ships or 250, 300 ships. We just don't have the capacity.

But what if we started with 5 percent? What if we said that 5 percent of the export of oil and gas--and America soon will be the third largest exporter of natural gas, and we are certainly exporting oil. What if we did that on American ships?

This legislation, the Energizing American Shipbuilding Act, which we are going to introduce in the days ahead, probably next week or the week after--we will be introducing it with a bipartisan group.

Senator Wicker in the Senate carried this bill last year, as I did here in the House. We didn't get it passed. We are making some progress. We hope to get it this year.

What does it mean? Well, we can kind of see what it means up here. It means that we will be building about 50 ships over the next 15 years or so, LNG tankers and oil tankers.

What does it mean? It means the shipyards will be busy. It means the steel yards or the steel factories in America will be busy. The manufacturers of pumps and engines and hydraulic systems and electronic systems will be busy.

And, by the way, we will rebuild the American mariner base. Right now, TRANSCOM, responsible for moving all of the equipment for the Army, Navy, Air Force across and around the world, says that one of the key deficiencies in American security is we don't have the mariners to man the ships that we don't have. And the ships are aging out almost as fast as the mariners are retiring. So we can solve this problem with the Energizing American Shipbuilding Act.

So I draw the attention of my colleagues to this legislation. We will have a number in a couple of weeks. Senator Wicker will have the bill on the other side, and we will carry forward and, hopefully, we will have our shipyards busy. We will have Americans working in the shipyards, Americans building big engines for these ships and the other kinds of equipment that are needed.

At the same time, we will begin to rebuild the force of men and women who will be on those ships as they travel around the world carrying a very strategic national asset.

Speaking of veterans, this is another piece of legislation that we are working on, and this one really, really touches me.

This is a picture that we took 2 years ago. These three gentlemen were mariners. They were merchant mariners in World War II. These were the men who were on the ships that took the supplies to Europe, took the supplies to the Pacific so that America could fight in World War II. All three of these gentlemen were over 90 years of age.

It took nearly 40 years before the Congress of the United States recognized that the mariners, the merchant mariners, were part of our military program. More than 40 years, they were on the outside. They were never, ever recognized as veterans, even though the merchant mariners in World War II had the highest death rate of any other service.

We know about the bombers that bombed in Europe. We know that the casualties were extraordinary. We know that men and women lost their lives on ships of the Navy and, of course, in the battlefield, men in the Army.

However, those men, just as these in this picture, had a higher death rate than any of those in the Army, Air Force, any of those in the Army serving wherever it may be, or the Marines or the Navy.

It took a long, long time for us to recognize them as veterans and make veteran services available to them, but that was done about, I think, 40, 45 years after the war ended.

And here we are. Here we are today, with just one more way to remember the extraordinary sacrifice that these men, most of whom are dead--in fact, earlier today I put a resolution across the floor on one of these gentlemen that died this last week.

So we think they ought to be honored. We think we ought to honor them with a Congressional Gold Medal, and so we are now pursuing that. I think we are going to get it done. We tried last year. We came up short. The Senate adjourned before they would take it up last year.

But we are going to give it a shot this year, and I think we are going to do it; and I think we need to do it, just as we needed, some years back, to make certain that they had veteran services available to them.

Now we need to honor them one more time. For those few who are still alive, for those who have died, their family should know that the Congress of the United States recognizes the extraordinary sacrifice that was made by their colleagues.

So this will be the Congressional Gold Medal Act, and we will have that out on the floor this next week, and we will be pushing it along. We need 290 signatures. Don't ask me why we need more than a majority just to present this. But anyway, those are the rules of the House, and we will follow the rules. We are at about 220 people.

So now if you have some friends out there who you think are here in Congress and not paying attention to the gold medal for the merchant mariners of World War II, give them a holler and tell them to sign on. We will get it done this year and, hopefully, the Senate will work with us on it.

A final point, and I will end with this in just a few moments, but I need a couple more pictures.

In case you didn't notice, I love these pictures. I love to put them up here so that you are not just listening to me; you can see some of the things we talk about.

So here is what I want to talk about: the U.S. military in the age of climate change.

I became the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, an incredible honor and, actually, a lot of work, very, very important work. That subcommittee is responsible for over 1,000 military installations all around the

world, responsible for the feeding and care of the military personnel-- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines--their equipment.

The purchases of new equipment is in another subcommittee, but once that equipment is purchased, is it ready to be used? Are the troops ready? Are they properly trained?

And, as I said, we are responsible for the installations.

We asked a question when I became chairman, and the question was this: Is the Department of Defense ready for the era of climate change? It turns out the answer is: Not really.

Out there across America, there are thousands, tens of thousands of men and some women who served at Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps camp here on the East Coast, famous. It was hit by a hurricane last fall. The deluge went on for hours.

The damage done at Camp Lejeune, trees falling, flooding occurring, roofs being blown off, leaking, water damage, hundreds of buildings seriously damaged and uninhabitable, could not be used, including the headquarters--Camp Lejeune.

Next to it, Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, similar damage.

It is estimated that here at Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point, more than $3 billion of damage has occurred that will have to be made up for in the days and weeks ahead.

Now, you may think that was a wake-up call. Indeed, it should have been. However, the wake-up call was occurring just a few days earlier.

That is a picture of Tyndall Air Force Base, a key Air Force base on the west coast of Florida in which our fighter bombers and fighter jets do their training, the new F-35, the F-22, all of them.

This base, it was literally blown off the map. It is right on the edge of the Gulf. Hurricane came through--I think it was a 5 hurricane--and literally blew this base off the map, obliterated major parts of the base.

This is just one of perhaps 100 pictures I could put up.

Is the military ready for climate change? Well, certainly not the Marines at Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point or the Air Force at Tyndall. This is probably a $4 billion fix-up to rebuild it. And I will tell you what we are going to do about it here after I put this up.

This is actually 2019. You have heard of the Strategic Air Command. That is the bombers that carry our nuclear weapons. This is Offutt Air Force Base in the Midwest, underwater, the Missouri River, probably a billion dollars damage here.

You say: Oh, that is just flooding. No, it is extreme flooding. Extreme weather events. Three bases critical, absolutely critical to the training and the readiness of our troops.

I think the water has subsided, but the damage to the buildings has yet to be repaired--a billion here, $4 billion there, $3 billion there, and that is not all.

We know that out in California we have had our fires. I just showed the Camp fire, but you may not know that Port Hueneme, the Naval base in Ventura County just north of Malibu, fire raged down the hill. They had to evacuate the homes for the servicemembers, and there we have it.

So we are looking at the new National Defense Authorization Act, and in that act writing in the following changes to the law, and that is that the U.S. military, in all of its future construction, will build to the maximum threat in that area, maybe a tornado, as it could have been in the Midwest, or a flood or a hurricane or a deluge or sea level rise or a fire out in the West. All future construction will be built to the maximum threat at that specific base. That is it.

We are not going to build for yesterday and just go back and have another flood or build for yesterday at Tyndall and see the next hurricane come through and wipe it out one more time. We are not going to do that.

At the same time, we are going to make sure that in that construction and in the improvements, that they maximize energy conservation.

The single largest consumer of petroleum in this Nation is the U.S. military. It is expensive. We are spending a pile of money, billions of dollars on energy consumption in the military. We will emphasize energy conservation, things such as windows and insulation. And when we build new, we will build to the maximum standard for energy conservation, as well as for resiliency; that is going to be in the new National Defense Authorization Act. It is in the work of the Readiness Subcommittee. We are going to drive this, and I think we are going to drive it to success.

And I will say, this is not all new. The military is aware that climate change is a threat, but they haven't been focused sufficiently, in part because we, the Congress of the United States, have not focused it and we have not said: In your construction, in your reconstruction, and in the upgrading of your facilities, you will build to the maximum threat that you face in that area. Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods, whatever it is, you must build to the maximum threat, so that you are resilient, so that you can come back to provide the necessary support that may be desperately needed.

This is not just in the United States. There are major construction programs going on in Guam, out in the Pacific where we know there is going to be another typhoon, probably within the next 9 months. So those facilities also will be built for resiliency.

So these are just a few of the things that we are working on. We have many, many others. We know that we can do better.

We know that as we said with the words of FDR: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

That may be a senior on Social Security; it may be a young man or woman that wants to get an education and is paying a very high interest rate; it may be a military family that is living in a house somewhere across the United States or around the world, in a house that is owned by a contractor that is providing housing for the military that is not up-to-date, that is filled with mold or some other contaminant; it may be a military person that is exposed to some sort of toxic chemical or toxic smoke, we are going to make sure that we follow this advice. It is not for those who have much, it is for those who have too little, wherever they may be.

That is our value, that is our goal.

I appreciate the opportunity to share with everyone several pieces of legislation that I will be working on together with my colleagues here in the House of Representatives.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, a Republican and Democrat talking to each other across the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the gentleman. I have followed him, and he has followed me, and we have had the opportunity to talk. I am just not prepared tonight to go into the kind of detail the gentleman is about to, but he is absolutely correct. There are solutions. There are solutions to the problems that confront this Nation, confront individuals in the Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I know Mr. Schweikert is going to pick up some of that in the next few minutes as he talks about it, and I am going to sit down and listen to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory and service of Robert James Glass, a 40-year Yuba City resident who embodied the American spirit of enduring dedication to his family and country.

Born on December 4, 1927, Robert joined the U.S. Merchant Marine at age 16 to fight in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Through his service as a merchant mariner during the war, Robert joined in an effort that proved to be an instrumental asset on an untold number of occasions.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated in 1944 that the Merchant Marine had ``delivered the goods when and where needed in every theater of operations and across every ocean in the biggest, the most difficult, and dangerous transportation job ever undertaken. As time goes on, there will be greater public understanding of our merchant fleet's record during this war.'' It was in that ultimately victorious cause that Robert volunteered to lend his hand.

Following the war, Robert served 22 years in the U.S. Air Force, including deployments across the world. He retired as a Master Sergeant at Beale AFB, California. Through his active engagement in local organizations such as the American Legion he remained a dedicated member of the Yuba City community until his passing.

He is survived by his three sons, Robert, Richard and Bruce and their families. I know that they, along with the rest of his family and friends, join me in celebrating his life and his memory.

Madam Speaker, today I reintroduce the ``Enhancing the Strength and Capacity of America's Primary Evacuation routes (ESCAPE) Act,'' with Congressman William R. Keating (D-MA). I want to thank Congressman Keating for his leadership as the sponsor last Congress and partnering with me this year.

This bicameral bill would establish a new U.S. Department of Transportation grant program for roadway, bridges, and other transportation projects that strengthen and protect routes essential for mass evacuations caused by natural disasters and other emergency events. With increasingly frequent and severe disasters across the country due to climate change, Congress must provide dedicated funding for resilient evacuation routes.

In 2017, nearly 200,000 Californians were forced to evacuate when they learned that Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the nation, was on the verge of failing. Thousands of drivers funneled onto a narrow two- lane highway, spending hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to reach safety along the Sacramento Valley's major north-to-south evacuation route.

Last year, Paradise, California, just north of my district was reduced to rubble by the devastating Camp Fire. As the flames engulfed the single-lane road that served as the city's primary evacuation route, residents were forced to abandon their vehicles and escape on foot--some to their death. The lack of adequate evacuation routes in our nation--particularly for small rural communities--is costing lives every year. Our bicameral legislation would provide dedicated federal funding for evacuation routes that save lives in times of crisis.

I hope that any infrastructure package passed this Congress will include our ``ESCAPE Act.'' I plan on making this a major priority in my work as a senior member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join Congressman Keating and me in cosponsoring this critical legislation.

Mr. Speaker, tonight is a very special night for many of us. Tonight, we honor the memory of an extraordinary Representative, Ellen Tauscher, who served the Contra Costa area of California for almost two decades.

She died nearly 3 weeks ago. Tonight is our first opportunity to come to the floor and to pay tribute to her. I had the pleasure of knowing her before she became a Member of Congress and then during her years in Congress and I also had the unique opportunity to take her seat when she retired to become the Assistant Secretary of State.

So tonight, we pay tribute to this extraordinary woman. We do this in recognition of the work that she did on Wall Street, the work that she did here in the House of Representatives, and

her unyielding desire to reduce nuclear risks throughout the world.

To conduct the rest of tonight's tribute, I am turning to a woman who served with Ellen for all of the years that she was in Congress, a woman who is the leader of the Democratic Members of California, Zoe Lofgren.

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

Mr. Speaker, on April 30, the United States lost an incredible leader, a Member of Congress, one of the first women to serve on the New York Stock Exchange, and a good friend to many of us from California, Ellen Tauscher.

She served here for more than a decade, became one of the ranking members and chairwoman of the Armed Services subcommittees, and led this Nation in an effort towards nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.

She left Congress to take on the task of Under Secretary at the Department of State for that purpose and carried out that extraordinarily important task as a member of the Obama administration as Under Secretary of State.

We will miss her, and I will particularly miss her. When she left Congress to join the State Department, she left an open seat. I had the pleasure and privilege of following in her footsteps and becoming a Member of Congress.

We mourn her, we miss her, and we call to an American people Ellen Tauscher as an example of what an American can and should be.

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that occasionally happens here on the floor of the House late at night, when most everybody is doing something else, is an opportunity to hear what our Republican colleagues want to talk about, and I must commend them.

I actually sat through a very fascinating discussion on the American economy by Mr. Schweikert about jobs, about the development of the workforce and the way it relates to Social Security.

Very, very interesting. And I just wish there were 433 or 434 others that could have listened to what he had to say. And he very well described a fascinating part of the American economy and how it might relate to our future.

I am going to go into it in a few moments.

I had no idea that our colleague was going to pick up the short line railroad issue, which is a big deal in my district. I have a very large agriculture district in California, and the short line railroads are critically important. And as we talk about infrastructure--yeah--we really ought to be considering the first and the last mile. In other words, the short line railroads and how they fit into this transportation system that is so critically important to the American economy.

Fascinating. I want to commend my Republican colleagues for bringing all of that to the floor, and I am going to make a few comments about it.

Let's start with Mr. Schweikert on the issue of Social Security and growing the jobs.

He is absolutely correct. If we have a robust economy, if the men and women of America are working, they will be paying into Social Security insurance systems and the life, the viability, and the financial integrity of the Social Security system will be improved.

One of the facts that Mr. Schweikert, my friend from Arizona, pointed out is that, already with the economy as it is, we have extended, by 1 year, the financial viability of Social Security.

Now, think for a few moments. And my colleague didn't bring this up, but if the minimum wage, either legally in law or in competition for quality workers, were to increase, say, across the Nation to $15 an hour, then that much more revenue would flow into the Social Security system.

So as we think about these things and as he correctly pointed out, high employment, very low unemployment, is a benefit to the viability of Social Security, to say nothing of the viability of the individual that is able to earn a living, to participate in whichever way they may desire to engage in the economic activities of this Nation.

All very, very good points, and I really want to commend them for that.

One issue that was discussed, but I don't think was fully explained, is how do you prepare people.

Years and years ago in California, in the 1980s, I led a committee on the future of the California economy. And we studied the California economy, we studied the world economy, the history of the growth of the California economy, which today remains the largest economy--I guess, it is fifth largest economy in the world--and one of the most rapid- growing and one of the most advanced.

We said then that if a government--really, the people--of a society, were to invest in education, and if you had the best educated workforce in the world, you would have the best economy.

Now, California does not have the best education system at K through 12. Community college and the university systems, public and private, are extraordinary, literally, the best in the world.

Now, if we were to add that same principle to the American economy, then those men and women that are ill-prepared to enter a modern workforce, could--in the K through 12 system, high school--begin their preparation to enter into the workforce at a skilled level.

Maybe that skill is computer science, and all of that, or maybe it is welding, or in the construction trades. Whatever it is, they would be prepared.

And so as we look at the options that were discussed first by Mr. Schweikert as he talked about the workforce, I would suggest that he look at this issue of education. I know he mentioned it, but how do we then fund it. And here is where we ought to have an interesting debate.

In December of 2017, my Republican colleagues and the President decided that the way to grow the economy was to massively cut taxes, and they did. Probably a trillion and a half dollars over the next 10 years--a massive, massive tax cut--that significantly reduced the revenue to the Federal Government.

Choices were made in that process.

The choice that was made was to reduce taxes a little bit across the board. Working men and women and families did receive a tax reduction.

In my view, it was very small, and certainly statistically--and by the numbers--very, very small compared to the top 10 percent, the top 1 percent that received a massive tax cut. And American corporations saw their tax rate fall from 35 percent down to 20 percent.

Now, that was supposed to create massive economic growth, and it could be argued that we have had a good economy for the last year or so. And my colleagues did put up some charts to support that argument; however, we need to consider some of the underlying implications of that.

First of all, who got the great bulk? 90 percent--I guess, about 80 percent--of that great tax reduction went to the superwealthy and the corporations.

What did they do with it? Did they invest in the elements of economic growth, education, research, capital outlay in businesses, and transportation and infrastructure? Was that where the tax reductions were invested? Well, no.

The corporations used the clear majority, in the 60 to 70 percent range, of their reduced tax for stock buyback, which had the wonderful effect of driving up the price of stock.

Who benefited from that? Was it the working men and women in the shipyards or on the short-line railroads, or the teachers in education? No. It was the top 10 percent who owned the stock.

Let's think this through. Now, nonetheless, the economy has grown, and I would posit that one of the reasons the economy has grown is the Keynesian economic theory. The Keynesian economic theory, developed in the 1930s with the Great Depression, was that when the economy is slow or depressed, government steps in with deficit spending. Government supports the economy with deficit spending.

Guess what is happening today: massive deficit spending by the government, tax reductions, $1.5 trillion gone this year, a $1 trillion deficit for the Federal Government. By the facts, massive deficit spending by the government, not in education, not in infrastructure, but, rather, in the military and, interestingly enough, through the tax policy so that the great benefit went to the top 10 percent. Nonetheless, we have seen a stimulated economy, as Keynes suggested would happen with deficit spending.

Mr. Schweikert correctly points out that we have not seen the inflation, thankfully, and interest rates have remained low. I would posit the reason for that is that we are still importing cheap products from around the world, and despite the chaos here in Washington, D.C., the safest bet in the world is America. People are continuing to buy American bonds and invest in America, bonds and debt, all of which has kept the interest rates low.

Here is what I would suggest we look at, and there is a lot of opportunity that exists. I was really enthusiastically listening to Mr. Schweikert as he laid out his proposals and his description of the economy and the labor force. I would suggest that we continue this debate.

I spoke to the gentleman a few moments ago. I said: Let's get in a colloquy back here. You can open with your discussion, and I will come back with my side of it. I think we have some opportunity here to really develop some decent policy.

Let's take investing. There is a lot of talk about infrastructure investing. We are going to have to find the money for that. Can we do it all on debt with deficit financing? I don't think so. I think there is going to be some limit to that, so we need to talk about tax revenue. We might want to go back and revisit the 2017 tax cut and who benefited and what the opportunities might be to rearrange that equation.

What would we invest in? Infrastructure. Now, if we are going to invest in infrastructure, we already know we are short of skilled labor. That brings us to education and labor force preparation. Is there a role for the Federal Government here, together with the State governments and businesses, to develop the workforce, to train the workforce? The answer is absolutely yes.

We know how to do this. This has been done before during World War II. As Mr. Schweikert pointed out correctly, the millennial women joining

the labor force--guess who the millennial women were in 1942 and 1943? Yes, they were Rosie the Riveter. Who trained them in the government contracts to the shipbuilders, to the tank builders, to the truck builders? There was money in those contracts to train the workforce. The government, together with the private sector, trained the workforce. The models are there.

We do have community colleges. We do have apprenticeship programs with labor unions, labor-management apprenticeship programs. All of those are there.

If we need a well-trained workforce, we don't need to reinvent it. It is already available to us: labor-management apprenticeship programs and the Federal Government providing incentives in the contracts for shipbuilding.

I was talking to one of my Democratic colleagues about a shipyard that was unable to have trained workers: welders, shipbuilders, plumbers, pipefitters, and the like. The company was not investing in the workforce, in the apprenticeship programs. That can be solved.

If we need to subsidize that through the contracts, do it. Set it aside, make it a special part of it. Yes, you are going to build naval ships, but, yes, you are also going to train workers. Here is how it will be done. Here is the money to do it. We can do these things.

Education, research, fundamental investments, we need to pay attention to making it in America. I have spent days and days here on the floor in these Special Order hours talking about how we can do that. I want to give you an example.

America today is exporting oil and natural gas. Ten years ago, we used to be net importers. Now we are net exporters. That strategic natural resource is going out to the world, largely to China, on ships. Whose ships? This strategic national asset needs to be coupled with another strategic national asset, which is the American maritime industry.

Consider for a moment, if we were to require that a small percentage of that oil and natural gas be on American-built ships with American crews, American mariners, what would happen. One, 2, 3, percent, up to 5, 6, 7, 8 percent over the next decade, we would build 50 ships. In the shipyards across America, we would employ American workers to build those ships.

Is it possible? Absolutely, it is possible. Do you know what it takes? It takes a very simple law requiring that, for the necessity of America's national security, we be able to maintain our maritime industry so that, should something happen, we will be able to transport across the oceans of the world our military as needed, that we in our shipyards maintain the workforce and the viability of the shipyards so that they can build the necessary naval vessels.

Is it possible? All it takes is a law.

I recommend that we pay attention. I introduced this legislation last year with my good friend, Senator Wicker from the Senate side, and we are going to reintroduce it here in the next few days.

The Energizing American Shipbuilding Act will soon be on the floor of the House and the Senate. I draw our attention to that because it combines a necessary national security issue with jobs.

However, what I said a moment ago is critical. That is that, along the way in this process, we must train workers starting in high school, starting with the apprenticeship programs, making sure that the shipyard businesses are in the business of training workers together with community colleges and other apprenticeship programs. If we do this, even if we need to subsidize that process, we will grow this economy, and we will have high-paid, high-skilled workers.

Similarly, as we rebuild the American bridges, as we rebuild the short-line railroads, as we rebuild the infrastructure of America, whether it is in high-speed internet communications systems or in highway transportation, river transportation, all the rest, we need to keep in mind the training of the workforce.

I thank Mr. Schweikert for bringing to the attention of the floor tonight this critical issue. There are so many things we can do together. There are different ways of approaching this. But I know that if we are willing to engage in a debate, an honest debate about growing the American economy, about making sure that our task is for the people, not the special interests but for the fundamental American working men and women, we will be successful.

Again, we can do it through education, job training, research, make it in America, and paying attention to our infrastructure.

If we are short 350,000 workers to fill the 350,000 jobs that are open today, then it is incumbent upon this Congress to get at it.

I want to do one final thing. There is an infrastructure project in California. It is an infrastructure project that has been discussed for the last 30 years, and it is an infrastructure project that is extraordinarily damaging.

California water is extremely complex. Basically, water flows from northern California rivers into the great Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest inland estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere, an extraordinary place, a place that I represent and a place where I have lived for the last 40-some years.

It is an extraordinary part of America. It is now a national heritage area.

It has been suggested over the last three decades that the water systems of California need to circumvent the natural flow of water into this estuary. Over this period of time, I have had the obligation to fight those proposals.

First, it was the Peripheral Canal to take the water around the delta. Then in the last decade, it has been the Twin Tunnels, two massive tunnels that literally had the capacity to drain the Sacramento River, to drain it dry. The river runs some 12,000 to 16,000 cubic feet per second 6 months of the year. The tunnels were sized at 16,000 cubic feet per second and, therefore, capable of literally drying the delta and destroying the incredible ecosystem of the delta.

We fought. We fought the battle, and I commend our new Governor, Governor Newsom, for stepping back and taking the time to rethink this proposal called the California WaterFix, to rethink its impact on the ecology and the environment of the delta. I thank him for taking WaterFix and pushing it aside.

He said no, we are not going to pursue that. We are going to go back and do the environmental analysis, not on two tunnels capable of drying out the delta or drying out the Sacramento River, but, rather, look at how this water problem in California can be solved without ecological damage.

We will pursue this once again, and I know that it can be done. Nearly 8 years ago, I proposed what I called a Water Plan for All California. It laid out solutions, not that I developed, but that had been developed by Californians in the water industry, in the agricultural industry, in the urban as well as the agricultural water systems.

Those proposals have been out there. We simply compiled them into a program: conservation, storage, paying attention to the aquifers, paying attention to the ecology of the fish and the environment, and providing in the delta a solution built upon improving the transport of water through the natural levees and through the natural sluices and rivers while keeping in mind that water should not be exported when it would damage the fish. All of that is possible. That law is now in place; it is called the WIN legislation, water infrastructure.

Now, we can move forward with a new opportunity as we revisit a solution that is both good for the environment, good for the delivery of water to all Californians, and done in a way that does not set up an existential danger, an existential system that could damage forever the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere.

We can do it. Just as the optimism that I heard from my Republican colleagues in the first order hour here, I present an optimistic opportunity. I am not yet joyful, but I am optimistic because I know these solutions are there if we work together and if we keep our eye on the prize for the people, for the American people, not just the superwealthy, not just the major American corporations, but for mom and pop, for Wall Street, for the men and women who are working in the shipyards, working on the rails, and for those millennial women who are entering the workforce and the millennial men who will be following along.

I am optimistic, and I hope to be joyful.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 46 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 8, 2019, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, today I introduce the ``Cabin Air Safety Act of 2019,'' to protect commercial airline passengers and crew from toxic air onboard commercial aircraft.

All Americans have the right to expect safe, clean air when travelling or reporting to work. I am deeply concerned by the documented cases where pilots, flight attendants, and other airline crewmembers have been incapacitated or even hospitalized following exposure to toxic cabin air.

The ``Cabin Air Safety Act'' takes commonsense steps to protect airline passengers and crew, including installing carbon monoxide detectors in commercial aircraft. I thank Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) for leading this bill last Congress and look forward to working with him to advance this critical legislation.

``Toxic fume'' events occur when air contaminated by engine exhaust, fuel fumes, deicing fluids, and ozone enters the aircraft cabin through the jet-engine intake. Exposure to even low levels of these contaminants can incapacitate passengers and crew and long-term exposure could lead to serious, debilitating health issues.

Our bicameral legislation would better protect airline passengers and crew by: mandating training regarding toxic fumes on aircraft, requiring the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to record and monitor reports of toxic fume events, ensuring that investigations occur following toxic fume events, and installing carbon monoxide sensors on aircraft.

Senator Blumenthal's and my legislation is endorsed by the Air Line Pilots Association International, Association of Flight Attendants, Allied Pilots Association, Association of Professional Flight Attendants, International Union of Teamsters, National Consumers League, Southwest Airlines Pilots' Association, and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to cosponsor the ``Cabin Air Safety Act.''

Madam Speaker, I thank the freshman class for giving me the opportunity to take a few seconds here.

Madam Speaker, I wish to recognize Brigadier General Thomas Kunkel upon his departure as Chief, Air Force Legislative Liaison to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In this role, General Kunkel managed the Air Force interaction with Members of Congress and their staffs in support of the Air Force programs and congressional oversight and travel.

He served as the Air Force's senior escort for staff and congressional delegations, traveling to more than 20 countries, supporting leadership, Members, and committee offices.

Prior to his current position, he served as the 23rd Wing Commander,

which operates A-10Cs, HC-130Js, HH-60Gs, and Guardian Angel pararescuemen at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia; Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona; and Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada; and oversight of Avon Park aerial gunnery range, Florida.

General Kunkel received his commission in 1994 from the University of Texas, Arlington. He has served in the Air Force Special Operations and the Combat Air Forces as an HH-60G special operations and rescue pilot, flight examiner, and weapons officer. He has deployed in support of operations Allied Force, Enduring Freedom-Philippines, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom. During his time serving in operation Allied Force, then Captain Kunkel was the pilot in command who rescued the now Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General David Goldfein, whose aircraft had been downed by an enemy surface-to-air missile in Serbia. General Kunkel has also served on the Air Staff as Program Element Monitor for helicopter sustainment and acquisitions.

He is married to Jennifer and has three children--Avery, Noah, and Griff--who have supported him and his career.

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the U.S. Congress and a grateful Nation, I extend our deepest appreciation to Brigadier General Thomas E. Kunkel for his dedicated service to the U.S. House of Representatives and to our Nation. We wish him well as he moves on to his next role at the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon.

There is no question that the Air Force, the Department of Defense, the United States, and all of us have benefited greatly from his service.

Mr. Speaker, as I often do these Special Order hours here on the floor, I want to start by stating the fundamental reason I am here and my Democratic colleagues are here. I harken back to a very famous American, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is actually etched in stone down at his memorial on the other end of the plaza here. He said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

That ``we provide enough for those who have too little,'' a fundamental value, a fundamental statement of purpose, a fundamental statement of why we seek elective office, not to provide more for those who have much, but, rather, for those who have too little.

In that regard, Mr. Speaker, I do not understand why a man who says he has much would purposely set out to harm those who have too little.

Why, Mr. Speaker, would the President of the United States put in place a policy to take healthcare away from Americans? Obviously, he has much, or at least he says he does. But millions of Americans rely upon the Affordable Care Act for their insurance, for their health insurance, literally for their ability to stay alive.

Why would the President of the United States ask the court to repeal, to find unconstitutional, the Affordable Care Act that has provided insurance coverage to more than 20 million Americans and healthcare benefits to millions upon millions more?

Why would our colleagues on the Republican side of this aisle fall in lockstep to support the President's effort to take away healthcare from Americans?

I do not understand this. Where is the compassion? Where is the empathy? Where is the concern for Americans, not one or two, but millions upon millions of Americans who have come to rely upon the Affordable Care Act to give them their basic insurance?

More than 20 million Americans found insurance coverage through the expansion of the Medicaid program, not in every State, because there were State Governors who were willing to go along with the President and the Republicans and not institute the Medicaid expansion. But there are still 20 million more Americans who have comprehensive healthcare coverage today.

Why? We must ask the question of the President and any of his sympathizers: Why would you do that?

It is not just those people who have been able to get coverage in the Affordable Care Act, but it is every senior who is on Medicare who will lose coverage. Every senior on Medicare has an annual visit to a doctor to determine if they have any medical problems, a free annual check-up. That, too, would disappear.

For seniors who had hundreds of dollars, if not thousands of dollars, in annual expenses for drugs because of the Medicare drug doughnut hole--yes, the infamous doughnut hole that was created in the expansion of the Medicare program in 2003--that doughnut hole is literally closed as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

Eliminate the Affordable Care Act, Mr. President, and seniors who rely upon expensive drugs are going to, once again, pay billions of dollars of additional costs right out of their pocket.

Here it is: ``Whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

Think of seniors who are in nursing homes. Most of the Medicaid dollars are for nursing home care. The expansion will affect them, if it is repealed.

Remember the bad old days when your insurance policy had a cap, a $50,000 lifetime cap, maybe a $100,000 lifetime cap? If you had a bad car accident, you would blow right through that. If you had cancer, guaranteed within the first month of treatment, you would blow through that cap, and it would come right out of your pocket.

Remember the bad old days when the great majority of personal bankruptcies were a direct result of medical expenses?

Mr. Speaker, does the President remember those days, that now he wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act? Is that where we are in this country? How mean-spirited.

Maybe his test of progress is whether we add more to those who have much.

Look at this. The Affordable Care Act actually raised taxes on the superwealthy. Maybe that is what the President wants, to, once again, give a massive tax cut to the superwealthy. If the Affordable Care Act is repealed, the average tax cut for the superwealthy, the top one- tenth of 1 percent of Americans, will be nearly $200,000 a year. Is that what our President wants?

Apparently, he took the first half of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's statement about values and said: Oh, yes, we want more for the wealthy.

That is precisely what will happen if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, to the tune of more than $197,000 for the top one-tenth of 1 percent of America's wealthy.

What in the world? What is going on here in America that the President of the United States, in league with many of our Republican colleagues, would rip out of the hands of Americans a healthcare program that is working?

That is not where we are on the Democratic side of this aisle. We have fought this fight for 8, 9, 10 years. The Affordable Care Act passed in 2009 and 2010, and here we are. Our Republican colleagues gained control of this House and the Senate, and we fought the fight over those years to stop the repeal.

Now, the President, once again, is going around Congress, this time to the courts, asking the Supreme Court of the United States to rip out of the hands of Americans the healthcare that they have come to rely upon.

We will continue this fight. Not only will we continue this fight, but we are stepping up to improve the Affordable Care Act, and we intend to do it with a piece of legislation. We call it the Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions and Making Health Care More Affordable Act of 2019, H.R. 1884, protecting preexisting conditions.

You heard my colleague, just before I stood up here, talking about preexisting conditions. 130 million Americans have preexisting conditions: high blood pressure, being a woman who might get pregnant, you name it. We all, at least 130 million of us, have preexisting conditions.

Here is what we intend to do: improve the Affordable Care Act and reduce premium costs for consumers by expanding the eligibility for the premium tax credit, expanding affordability for working families, protecting comprehensive coverage for small businesses and workers, and eliminating junk insurance policies.

I was the insurance commissioner in California for 8 years, and I can talk for hours and hours about insurance companies that sold junk to people. They worked until they had an illness, and then it failed to work. We would

make those junk insurance policies unavailable in America.

We would ensure that there would be comprehensive benefits, like maternity care. If you talk about family values, you better talk about maternity care.

We would make sure that the programs to make people aware that they can get insurance would be in place.

We would help the States as they carry out their coverages. We would make sure that the exchanges were not eliminated, that they would be strong. Unlike the President who would eliminate the exchanges, we would strengthen them.

We have work to do. We are here to make things better for America, for the people, and we intend to do so.

Joining me tonight are a couple of my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), a fellow who has worked on this for years.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman (Mr. Clyburn) so very much. He has been working for those qualities and values all of his life, and I really appreciate his coming to us and bringing us the awareness of what Dr. Martin Luther King said about America and about where the role of healthcare fits into justice in America.

I see Mr. Cicilline from Rhode Island here, the chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communication Group.

Would you like to communicate with us?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman (Mr. Cicilline).

It is extremely important that we continue this fight we fought successfully for 8 years, 9 years. And here we are once again.

The general public, keep in mind, Protecting Preexisting Conditions and Making Healthcare More Affordable Act of 2019, H.R. 1884.

I turn to the gentleman from the State of New York (Mr. Morelle). If you would like to join us and tell us how all of this affects your constituency in New York.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman could stand by for a few seconds.

I knew that he had been in the New York legislature as a leader in the assembly there. And I had some recollection of the work he did on insurance matters.

If he could just talk about the experiences he had when he tried to protect people with preexisting conditions, and those issues that he dealt with in the early nineties, some of the work that was done and the experiences that he had there.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Morelle so much. Actually, I didn't know that the gentleman had lost his daughter. That tragic illness is an example of why the Affordable Care Act is so important, because people will have coverage. There are no lifetime limits.

Although your daughter was unsuccessful in the treatment, many thousands upon thousands of Americans are able to get treatment and survive cancer or some other debilitating illness.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much for his experience, and I thank him for being here and bringing all those years of knowledge and experience to this House and helping us fight this fight.

Let me now turn to my colleague from New Jersey who often is here with

me on the floor, Mr. Payne. He and I talk about a lot of different subjects. Here, we are talking about one that affects every American. I thank the gentleman for joining us.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Payne for his consistent work here on the floor on multiple issues.

Healthcare issues have always been at the front of his agenda for him and his constituents, and he has fought fiercely since 2012 to see to it that the Affordable Care Act remains in place.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to put up one more chart that I think graphically displays what we have been talking about here. This is 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. The Affordable Care Act really took hold in 2013. It took a couple years to set up the administrative systems and the like.

You can see in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, the number of uninsured in America went from 44 million down to 27 million, which is just, in large numbers, a clear description of what the Affordable Care Act was able to do in bringing insurance to Americans.

Here we have a President who was unable to get his wall and decided to go around Congress and the Constitution to try to fund the wall by moving money from one military account to another so that he could build his wall.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution clearly states that it is the Congress that appropriates money. It says no money shall be appropriated from the Treasury without law. Congress passed a law that said $1.2 billion was for border security. That is it. Now the President wants $8 billion, literally going around Congress and the Constitution.

He is doing it once again with the Affordable Care Act. He was unable to get Congress to repeal the law, so now he is going to the court system to try to get the court to repeal the law.

Hopefully, the court won't do that. But if it does, those 20 million Americans who will lose their insurance and those 130 million Americans who have preexisting conditions and will once again be open to insurance discrimination--not able to get insurance, paying vastly more because they have a preexisting condition, like being a woman, or blood pressure, or diabetes, or any number of things--those people will remember that it was the President who went around Congress to the courts to ask the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act.

There is so much at risk. Every senior on Medicare will see the doughnut hole come back, and their drug expenses will skyrocket billions of dollars. The free annual checkup that seniors are able to get now will no longer be available. It goes on and on, all gone.

I am going to end with this before I turn this over to my colleagues.

I don't know that I could ever put this up enough, when FDR said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''

In this case, probably close to 27 million Americans have too little. They didn't have healthcare, and today, they do. Those are the Americans who had too little.

Where do we stand? What are our values? How do we approach this fundamental question of America as we go into the 2020s? Are we for those who have much, like the President? Or are we for those who have too little, like the Americans who were uninsured prior to the Affordable Care Act?

I will tell you where we Democrats stand. We, without any Republican support, created the Affordable Care Act. We fought over the last decade, not only to implement it, but to fight the defensive battle to see that it would continue.

Now we are going to continue that fight. We are not going to give up because our values, our purpose, are with those Americans who now rely upon the Affordable Care Act, and, indeed, with those seniors and with this country so that we can provide for those in need.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have got a couple of things I want to do today, and I would like to start with a very special celebration that occurs every spring, and this is the Sikh community's annual historic, cultural, and religious celebration of Vaisakhi.

It is a celebration in the Punjab region of south Asia. It has been going on for centuries, and today it is also celebrated in communities throughout India, the United States, and, really, around the world.

Vaisakhi is an annual festival celebrating the spring season, and it is of great significance to the Sikh religion. It commemorates the creation of Khalsa, a fellowship of devoted Sikhs, and was founded in 1699 by Guru Singh and celebrates the community, prosperity, and continued progress in the year ahead.

It is springtime, and so we celebrate this very important event in the Sikh community.

I also want to talk about another event of the spring, one that you just heard mentioned a moment ago from our colleague, Mrs. Axne of Iowa, when she talked about the flooding that is occurring.

As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Readiness of the Armed Services Committee, the question for the U.S. military is very, very clear: Is the U.S. military ready for climate change?

Recent events indicate that there is considerable doubt. Just this last year, Hurricanes Florence and Michael caused billions of dollars of damage to Camp Lejeune and leveled much of Tyndall Air Force Base.

Perhaps a photo might be better than my words in describing the destruction at Tyndall Air Force Base. Essentially, this key Air Force base located on the Panhandle of Florida, on the Gulf Coast, was wiped out.

We don't yet know how much it is going to cost to rebuild it. We do know that the Air Force is trying to sustain operations there, and I am told that by May they will be out of money to be able to sustain operations.

We know that there is probably $3 to $4 billion of damage at this Air Force base alone. Keep in mind that this base is located, literally, on a sand spit adjacent to the Gulf, and, when hurricanes come through, destruction is sure to occur.

Every marine knows this place, Camp Lejeune. It, too, was hit by a hurricane, not the winds but the deluge that came with the hurricane.

Flooding wiped out a large portion of the base. As you can see, a tree did something that no marine would ever want to have happen, and that is to take out their barracks. This base, too, sustained substantial damage as a result of the hurricane and the flood that was precipitated by the hurricane.

This is also a $3 to $4 billion event. The rebuilding of Camp Lejeune and Tyndall raises a serious question for those of us who must decide on the appropriations: Should we even return to these locations which we know are going to be hit once again and perhaps multiple times in the future?

And if we decide to return and spend the $3 to $4 billion to repair each of the bases, how will it be done? Will it be done in the recognition that there is climate change, that the hurricanes will be stronger, the deluge even more?

We must always build for resiliency.

Now, this isn't the only place that the military has sustained significant risk this year. I am from California, and I know wildfires. Camp Pendleton, on the far side of this continent, another marine base, faced evacuation of the family housing units when fires occurred in the hills above Camp Pendleton.

Naval Air Station Point Mugu and the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in the Sierra Nevada mountains also had to be evacuated as wildfires came down into those areas.

In addition, beyond Camp Lejeune, beyond Tyndall Air Force Base, we know that our coastal installations and their surrounding communities are already experiencing significant flooding as sea levels rise.

The Army's Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific is threatened by sea level rise and is not expected to exist in 20 years.

The Navy's principal Atlantic base, Norfolk/Hampton Roads, and the Naval Academy are already experiencing flooding.

We know that melting polar ice in Arctic regions has already opened up new sea lanes and new routes and competition for resources in the Arctic Ocean.

Yet, today, it appears that the Department of Defense has not developed a systematic strategy for ensuring that our U.S. national interests in the Arctic and, indeed, the protection of our bases, key military bases, here in the United States and around the world are prepared for climate change.

I want to give you one more example. It was actually opened in a discussion a moment ago by my friend from Iowa.

Now, this is not Iowa. This is Offutt Air Force Base, just across the river from the photo you saw just a few moments ago of the flooding in Iowa. It is on the Missouri River. This happens to be the Strategic Air Command's Basic Center. This is our nuclear weapons system.

More than half of the base was underwater, and more than half of the base today is not operable. Six years ago, the U.S. Air Force knew that this Strategic Air Command base was subject to flooding. Indeed, the flooding 6 years ago had come up to the edge of the runway. Last week, it inundated the runway and half the base.

Back to my question: Is the U.S. military ready for climate change? It would indicate, from these few examples, that the answer is no. So what are we to do about it?

The United States military is one of the largest employers in the world. It is also one of the largest consumers of energy. The Department of Defense owns millions of acres of global real property, including over 550,000 facilities valued at well over $1 trillion. The Department is uniquely situated to enhance its readiness and resiliency through effective energy policies, programs, and structures that are resilient in the face of climate change.

Installations, bases, are where we generate the force, where we train and sustain them and, in many cases, house critical operational missions, such as the Strategic Air Command.

One way to enhance readiness is to consume less. In fiscal year 2017, the Department of Defense consumed over 85 million barrels of fuel to power ships, aircraft, combat vehicles, and contingency bases, at a cost of nearly $8.2 billion. In many cases, through contract vehicles such as energy-saving

performance contracts, these energy-saving and resiliency enhancements can be made at no upfront cost to the Department of Defense.

In contested environments, such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, better fuel consumption extends the range of, and mitigates the risk to, our military. The resupply of energy is one of the most dangerous things that occurs in military operations, and resupply convoys are targeted. Naval vessels are vulnerable during at-sea replenishment. For austere land-based sites in remote locations supporting contingency operations around the world, lower fuel and water consumption rates are an essential readiness enabler, helping that facility to maintain a lower profile at far less risk.

It is essential that our bases and our facilities recover quickly from extreme weather events and from energy disruptions that impact mission capability.

Section 335 of the fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense to report on the effects of climate change on the Department and propose mitigation plans. We have that report in hand. Only days after we received it, Camp Lejeune was flooded; Tyndall was wiped out; and now Offutt is flooded.

We are not happy with the report that the military sent to the House Armed Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Readiness because that report did not meet the congressional reporting requirement that we sent to the Department to describe future focused mitigations necessary to ensure mission resiliency.

We are not going to stop. The military is going to come back to the committee, and we are going to hammer home the necessity of resiliency and the necessity, as every Boy Scout knows, to be prepared.

What do they need to be prepared for? Certainly, for the missions, whatever those might be, whether it is the Strategic Air Command or the Marines or the Air Force, but also to be prepared for the inevitable effects of climate change.

To ensure that the military can perform its national defense mandate, the Department of Defense must--must--plan for the vagaries and exigencies that exist as a result of climate change.

The ``2014 Climate Change Adaptation Road Map'' that the Department put out noted that rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability. Hunger, poverty, and conflict are the inevitable results of climate change and its effects on communities all around the world.

In the Department's words, climate change ``will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters . . . across the globe.''

Not only are these climate-related events impacting installations and base readiness, but they are also creating more frequent requests for military support for disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. Active Duty servicemembers, National Guard personnel, and Reserve personnel are increasingly responding to assist communities in impacted events here in the United States and around the world.

Climate change presents a myriad of readiness challenges, both here at home and abroad. It is not only a future threat. By the events of this year and last week, it is an event here and now. It is a threat today; it is impacting the resiliency of our installations and our operations; and it is seriously impacting the readiness of the Department of Defense to meet its challenges all around the world.

We have our hands full, making sure that our military is ready in the era of climate change.

Healthcare in America

Now, if I might, Mr. Speaker, change subjects and pick up another issue that is before us today. Joining me in this discussion will be Mr. Payne from the beautiful State of New Jersey.

Just a moment, Mr. Payne. Let me lay out what we are going to talk about here.

Today, the House Democrats unveiled new legislation to protect people with preexisting conditions and also to lower healthcare costs. We know that, over the last 2 years, President Trump has declared war on healthcare, and the Democrats here in this House and in the Senate intend to address that by lowering healthcare costs.

Last night, in a Federal court, President Trump radically expanded his monstrous war on America's healthcare, asking the court not only to strike down protections for people with preexisting conditions--not only asking the court to strike down protections for people with preexisting conditions--but also to eliminate the very last protections and benefits provided in the Affordable Care Act.

If President Trump gets his way in the Texas v. U.S. lawsuit, he would destroy the ban on lifetime and annual limits of care. He would destroy the Medicare expansion and the tax subsidies that make health insurance affordable for millions of America.

On the very first day of the 116th Congress, the House Democrats voted to throw the full legal weight of the House of Representatives against what President Trump is attempting to do in the Texas v. U.S. lawsuit. Thanks to that vote, the House counsel has been able to intervene as a party in the lawsuit to argue on behalf of the healthcare of the American people. But more than 190 of my Republican colleagues stood behind the President in his brutal assault on American healthcare.

Unlike my colleagues on the Republican side, today, the Democrats of Congress are introducing legislation to protect preexisting conditions and make healthcare more affordable. We are taking another step forward to deliver on our promises to reverse the last 10 years of our Republican colleagues' effort to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, and to lower the healthcare costs that American families need.

There are three parts to the legislation: lowering healthcare insurance premiums with strengthened and expanded affordable assistance; expanding the tax credits that make healthcare insurance more affordable to more middle-income families; and making them more sustainable to all those who are eligible.

Point 2 strengthens protections for people with preexisting conditions, curtailing the Trump administration's effort to give States waivers to undermine protections for people with preexisting conditions and weaken the standards for essential health benefits.

Third, stop the insurance companies from selling junk health insurance policies.

Finally, reverse the GOP's health sabotage that has needlessly driven up premiums and uninsured rates.

We know we are going to have our hands full to get this past the Senate and to the desk of the President, but we would hope, as this debate develops, as time goes by and Americans realize what they are losing as a result of the efforts of the Trump administration and many of my Republican colleagues to deny them the healthcare that they deserve as Americans, that we will ultimately be successful in this legislation and that we will get the President to see clearly what he is doing to the American people as he promotes, defends, and attacks Americans through the Texas v. U.S. lawsuit that is currently underway.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague, Mr. Payne, if he could join us with his comments. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so very much; he is far too generous in his comments with regard to me. He is constantly here joining in these discussions and putting forth the interests of the constituents in his district in New Jersey and across wider America. I thank the gentleman for raising those issues, and particularly for pointing out the issue of preexisting conditions as it affects women.

Before the Affordable Care Act, every woman was considered to have a preexisting condition, and, indeed, they were charged higher premiums. That is not the case with the Affordable Care Act in law, but if the Texas case is successful, if the President is successful in his arguments before the court and it is carried on, then those protections for women, more than 50 percent of the American population, will be gone.

Beyond that, the expansion of the Medicaid programs, those, too, will be gone. For people with preexisting conditions, people who have diabetes or high blood pressure, their protections will be gone.

So the effect on preexisting conditions, and particularly this case that the President has put his full support behind, is an egregious attack on the healthcare and the well-being of Americans, as Mr. Payne so well pointed out. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much for doing that.

Armed Forces Readiness

Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of other things that I do want to speak to today.

Today, the House Armed Services Committee had before it the Acting Secretary of Defense as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Issues were raised during that committee hearing about readiness, specifically about the efforts of the President to circumvent the Constitution of the United States and to take unto himself the appropriation power, which is clearly laid out in the Constitution as the power of Congress.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution clearly says that there shall be no money taken from the Treasury except by appropriation law. That is the power of the purse that is given to Congress.

The Founders were very clear that, if the President would have not only the power of carrying out the law, but also the power of appropriation--that is, money to carry out the law--we would have a completely different system. In fact, we would have an imperial presidency. They didn't want that, and they wrote very clearly into the Constitution that no money shall be taken from the Treasury without an appropriation.

Now, the Congress acted on this issue, acted on the issue with an appropriation bill, and Congress did not agree with the President. Instead of the $5 billion, $6 billion that the President wanted for his border wall, Congress said no and provided $1.3 billion for border security, including some fences in some locations. Very clearly, Congress said no to the President, and Congress appropriated money for a specific purpose.

No sooner was that legislation signed by the President than the President attempted to usurp the power of Congress and to appropriate for himself some $8 billion by manipulating the existing emergency laws that allow the declaration of emergency and money to be spent for that emergency.

Okay. That is what he wanted to do. Be clear in understanding that this is the attempt by the President to appropriate money in an unconstitutional and, I believe, an illegal way.

Now, it is not just a constitutional issue; it is also an issue of readiness for the military. We are talking about tens of millions of dollars to rebuild Offutt Air Force Base, the home of the Strategic Air Command.

We are talking about $3 billion to $4 billion to rebuild Camp Lejeune, one of the two major domestic bases for the U.S. Marine Corps.

We are talking about $3 billion to $4 billion to rebuild Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, the home of the F-22 fighter jets and the new and presumed home of the new F-35 multitask fighter.

So we should ask: If the President is able to divert $6 billion to $8 billion from the military construction account, which we call MILCON, and use it for his border wall, where are we to find the money, the $3 billion to $4 billion to rebuild Tyndall, the $3 billion to $4 billion to rebuild Camp Lejeune, and all of the other bases across the United States and around the world that face climate change? Where are we going to get the money?

Well, if you happen to be a deficit hawk, you are going to get excited about the prospect it is going to be borrowed money.

The way in which the budget and the appropriation process works here, critical programs that the military has deemed essential for the readiness of our military and Congress has agreed to, authorized and appropriated money for that purpose, those programs will be delayed, and we will simply increase the deficit to do it so that the President can fulfill his campaign promise of a big, beautiful border wall.

Last week, I was in Jordan on a military mission to look at our troops there, to look at the situation in Syria and Iraq. Also, I was in Iraq and specifically went to look at a program that the U.S. Government had funded to build a modern 21st century border security program for Jordan's military and Jordan's Government.

Over 300 miles between Jordan and Syria, in the most violent part of the world, with ISIS, with refugees, with

military weapons, with drugs, all of that, we spent $345 million of taxpayer money building a 21st century border security system, a system that involves observation techniques of many kinds, a system that involves observation towers at appropriate locations along that 300- plus-mile border, and quick response teams to go where there was an incursion across the border. And by all accounts from our own military, from Jordan's military, it is effective.

Now, the President wants $8 billion for 150 miles of fence and walls. There is a better way, and as Democrats, we have been calling for this better way for months and months. In fact, in the legislation that the President signed, it is the better way.

It is not a big, beautiful wall with ``Trump'' written on it. It is, in fact, a virtual system similar to what we built in Jordan, in the most dangerous place in the world, and it works.

So we need to be very careful here, because that is $8 billion that will not be available to make our American military installations all around the world ready for the tasks that they have before them.

So as we ponder this issue, as we go through the appropriation process this spring, and as we fight this constitutional battle with the President over the founding mothers' and fathers' understanding of what an imperial presidency could become if they have both the appropriation power as well as the power to execute the law, they said, no, the President cannot have that power.

As we fight this fundamental constitutional issue, we should also keep in mind that there is a better way to protect our southern border, or any border for that matter, and it is essential that we spend the money that we have appropriated for the military to protect their readiness and, in so doing, protect the security and safety of America.

So we will have this debate, and this debate will hopefully result in the American public understanding what they should have learned in grammar school about civics and about the separation of powers. Unfortunately, our President seems to have missed that class.

But we are not going to let it go. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. This is an American constitutional issue.

So let us proceed. Let us proceed in full understanding of what is at stake here: the rebuilding of the bases, yes, but, more importantly, the very fundamental notion of the separation of powers that is inherent in the Constitution. And, by the way, every Member of the House of Representatives, every Senator, and every general, including acting Secretaries of State, have taken an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. We would all do well to read Article I, Section 9.

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

Madam Speaker, because of unavoidable conflict, I unfortunately missed votes on February 27. Had I been in attendance, I would have made the following votes:

On roll call No. 100, I would have voted aye.

On roll call No. 101, I would have voted aye.

On roll call No. 102, I would have voted nay.

On roll call No. 103, I would have voted aye.

The Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019, H.R. 1112, addresses a loophole in federal gun background check laws. Currently, a gun buyer only needs to wait 3 business days to acquire a gun without a background check. This bill fixes a lapse in oversight, by allowing the FBI 20 business days to conduct their check.