Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, today I introduce the ``Sites Reservoir Project Act,'' which would provide federal support for the 1.8 million acre-feet Sites Reservoir and related water infrastructure in Colusa and Glenn Counties.

Specifically, the ``Sites Reservoir Project Act'' would direct the Bureau of Reclamation to complete the feasibility study for the project and, if deemed feasible, authorize federal funding and technical support for its construction. The reservoir would be owned and operated by the Sites Joint Powers Authority, a regional consortium of local water agencies and counties formed in 2010.

Our state must make forward-looking investments to capture and store water during wet years for use during drought. The Sites Reservoir is one such critical infrastructure project needed to meet California's future water needs, given climate change. The project is essential to integrated water management in the Sacramento Valley and would maximize storage of excess Sacramento River flows during winter storms for use later in the year. The Sites Reservoir Project would increase storage capacity north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, improving resiliency in our statewide water system, and helping to advance California's renewable energy goals with the pumped-storage component planned for phase II of the project.

To date, more than $1.2 billion in public funding has been committed to the Sites Reservoir Project, including $816 million from California's State Water Bond (2014 Proposition 1) and federal funding from the Bureau of Reclamation for the feasibility study and related work. In November 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture committed $449 million in low-interest financing from the Rural Development Program, recognizing the project's importance to California's farming communities.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and northern California neighbor Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) for his support as the bill's original cosponsor and for sponsoring similar legislation in previous Congresses.

I look forward to working with all members of the California delegation to advance this bipartisan bill and see this critical reservoir project completed.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the House overwhelmingly passed the Natural Resources Management Act, including a provision sponsored by Senator Feinstein and me that would establish California's first National Heritage Area, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area.

I want to thank my House colleagues from California, Representatives Matsui, DeSaulnier, McNerney, Thompson, Harder, Lofgren, and Bera, for their support as cosponsors of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act, H.R. 357.

I also want to thank Chairman Grijalva of the Natural Resources Committee for bringing the bipartisan public lands bill to the floor of the House following Senate passage earlier this month.

I sponsored this legislation to establish the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area since 2011 along with my colleague Senator Feinstein.

A National Heritage Area designation will help conserve the California Delta, which I have had the great pleasure of calling my home for the last 40 years.

This iconic working landscape is central to California's life and is the most productive watershed and delta in the Western United States and, indeed, from the coast of Alaska to Chile.

Specifically, this legislation authorizes $10 million in Federal grants for

local development of cultural heritage issues, historic preservation, and working lands conservation projects.

This Federal grant funding will be available for the next 15 years to support local governments, historical societies, and nonprofit organizations throughout the delta.

Our National Heritage Area Act proposal is endorsed by the Delta Stewardship Council and the Delta Counties Coalition, consisting of Sacramento, Solano, Contra Costa, Yolo, and San Joaquin Counties, all of which represent the delta. It is also supported by the Delta Chambers of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, Restore the Delta, and the National Parks Conservation Association.

California's Delta Protection Commission is charged with developing the management plan for the new national heritage area.

Lastly, I want to address some of the persistent misconceptions about national heritage area designations, not only this new one but also those throughout the United States. Such designations do not affect individual property rights, water rights, landownership, or local land use decisions, nor does the designation affect hunting and fishing. Rather, the national heritage area program simply makes Federal grant funds administered by the National Park Service available for local projects.

The national heritage area program and planning process is collaborative and voluntary, meaning that local groups, businesses, and landowners can choose to participate or not. I look forward to continuing to work with local governments, county governments, local businesses, communities, local action groups, and all others interested during the public management planning process.

After nearly a decade of work, the President is expected to sign the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act into law. We thank all who supported the legislation and the local entities that have done so.

This is truly a historic achievement for the entire delta, including the farming communities, the families, and the immigrant communities who have settled in the area over the last 150 years and generated the rich cultural and agricultural heritage.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to commemorate February 19th as a Day of Remembrance for the country and especially for the Japanese American community. On that day in 1942, the President of the United States signed and issued Executive Order 9066, an action which ordered the Secretary of War, ``to prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.''

Following this executive order, one of the darkest chapters in American history began as over 120,000 Japanese Americans throughout Washington, Oregon and California were summarily interned in prison camps. Those communities, uprooted until the end of World War II, were forced to abandon their lives as they left behind homes, jobs, friends and loved ones. No due process was granted and throughout the years of imprisonment, no one was charged or even convicted of any action that would have betrayed the country that they called home. Their only ``crime'' was that they were of Japanese descent.

As the Representative of California's 3rd District I am proud to recognize our local Japanese American Citizens League Chapter of Marysville, California. Over the past few days they have taken the opportunity to honor the memory of the hardship that was forced on Japanese Americans by engaging the community-at-large to educate their neighbors on the importance of defending the civil rights that are due every American citizen. I commend their work and aim to carry forward that very message.

Especially at a time when our nation is so divided, it is important to spend this time remembering what happened on that day in 1942 and the dangers that come from ignoring our most basic civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution. I call on my fellow Americans to reflect on what took place during those terrible years and to fight to protect the rights of all Americans, no matter their heritage or race.

Madam Speaker, today I introduce legislation to prevent the President from diverting disaster-recovery funds from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' civil works projects.

I want to thank my colleagues--Representatives Cisneros, Velazquez, Bera, Gomez, Takano, Lowenthal, Rouda, Carbajal, Huffman, Eshoo, Vargas, Roybal-Allard, Soto, Lofgren, Matsui, Serrano, Napolitano, Plaskett, and Harder--for their support as original cosponsors.

Last month, I received alarming reports that the President had reviewed a list of Army Corps civil works projects in California and Puerto Rico, totaling nearly $5 billion, from which to divert disaster- recovery funding for border wall construction.

Madam Speaker, it is morally reprehensible that any President would take recovery funds from disaster victims as ransom for a campaign promise. Targeting funds for Californians to make a craven political point and residents of Puerto Rico, who are denied voting rights in national elections and full representation in Congress, is equally low.

One of the Army Corps levee projects the Trump Administration may defund protects 12,000 residents of Marysville, California from hypothermia-inducing floodwaters that could inundate the town in a matter of hours. This is a matter of saving lives in my Congressional district and helping California communities rebuild.

My bill would eliminate a provision from the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-662), authorizing Presidents to divert funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' civil works directorate in exigent cases for national defense and emergencies. This obscure 1986 provision is the legal authority President Trump could invoke to divert disaster-recovery funding for his promised border wall.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, no President has ever invoked this 1986 legal authority, which was originally requested by the Reagan Administration for cases of Congressionally declared wars and presidentially declared national emergencies requiring civil defense during the Cold War.

In acting on my bill, the House can reassert its Constitutional authority to direct federal funding for national priorities that help communities rebuild and become more resilient to future natural disasters. Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join us in cosponsoring this important legislation. I also expect my bill will be included in the next Water Resources Development Act.

Madam Speaker, today I reintroduce the ``American Food for American Schools Act.'' I want to thank my colleague and northern California neighbor Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) for his support as the original cosponsor.

The ``American Food for American Schools Act'' would strengthen ``Buy American'' requirements under the National School Lunch Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This will ensure that school districts use federal taxpayer dollars to purchase domestically sourced food products for in-school meals. Our bipartisan bill would also increase transparency so that parents are notified when their schoolchildren are served foreign-produced foods.

Even in northern California and Central Valley farming communities, some school districts use taxpayer dollars to buy imported foods, unnecessarily, without informing parents. In numerous cases, these same imported foods have been recalled due to safety concerns and outbreaks of foodborne diseases, when those same foods could have been sourced locally in the first place.

Under our bill, school districts would be required to obtain a waiver from the USDA to use any federal taxpayer dollars to purchase foreign- sourced food products. Any such USDA waivers would only be granted if the domestically produced food was cost prohibitive or simply unavailable.

Our bill would also require that school districts notify parents of all foreign-sourced foods served to students, by posting any such waivers obtained from the USDA on the school's website. This would increase public transparency and provide American farmers an opportunity to seek out school districts that need affordable, domestically grown foods. Our nation's schoolchildren should be served nutritious, American-grown foods produced under the strictest food safety standards in the world. That is exactly what our bill would do.

Last year, Congress included ``Buy American'' language for the National School Lunch Program in the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (Public Law 115-334). This is a good first step in addressing this critical issue for American farmers and school parents. Now Congress needs to finish the job by passing our ``American Food for American Schools Act'' into law.

Madam Speaker, I hope all members of the House will join me and Congressman LaMalfa in cosponsoring the ``American Food for American Schools Act of 2019.'' I also hope that our bipartisan bill will be included in any future Child Nutrition Reauthorization taken up by the House and Senate.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the importance of donating plasma and to applaud those individuals that make the commitment to be a plasma donor.

Many Americans are impacted by rare, serious, and sometimes life- threatening medical conditions that are effectively managed by therapies derived from donated plasma. Patients affected by alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, hemophilia, hereditary angioedema, platelet disorders, primary immunodeficiency diseases, as well as other communities rely on plasma-derived therapies. For many of these patients, plasma-derived therapies represent life-sustaining or life-improving medicine that is only available and accessible as a result of plasma donors. Moreover, these therapies represent the cutting-edge of medicine and it often takes dozens of donations to prepare one course of treatment for a single patient.

These communities are collectively represented by the American Plasma Users Coalition, which works on policy issues to protect the safety of plasma donors and plasma products, and to ensure an adequate supply of plasma donations to meet the medical needs of patients. As science advances and we are better able to diagnose these conditions and treat additional conditions due to breakthroughs with plasma- derived therapies, we will need more Americans to make the important choice to donate plasma to ensure all patients continue to have access to essential treatments.

Many of us have already made the commitment to be either an occasional or regular plasma donor. Often times, this decision stems from knowing a patient who relies on plasma-derived therapies and understanding the tremendous impact a simple donation has on their health and the well-being of their family. Plasma donors come from all walks-of-life and all backgrounds, but to the patient community they are everyday heroes.

Madam Speaker, let us recognize the contributions of plasma donors while calling attention to the importance of plasma donation.

Madam Speaker, today I reintroduce the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act with Congressman Don Young (R- AK), the Dean of the House.

I thank Congressman Young (R-AK) for his support as my co-lead and original cosponsor on this important legislation, as well as our former colleague Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo (D-GU), who sponsored this legislation in the previous Congress.

Around the world, poachers, traffickers, and transnational criminal organizations responsible for human rights abuses are driving iconic wildlife to extinction. The Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act advances American leadership in tackling this global crisis. Our bipartisan bill would strengthen federal enforcement against the global trade in illegal wildlife and seafood products, while also providing dedicated funding for conservation efforts, at no expense to taxpayers.

Specifically, our bill would make serious wildlife trafficking violations predicate offenses under federal racketeering and anti- organized crime laws (RICO and Travel Acts). The bill would also engage whistleblowers, through monetary incentives, in providing actionable intelligence needed to bring down global wildlife trafficking rings. Under our bill, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would be authorized to station law enforcement officials and agency personnel abroad in high-intensity wildlife trafficking areas, as embeds in American embassies and consulates.

Any penalties, fines, forfeitures, and restitution paid to the U.S. government for criminal violations of the federal organized crime, racketeering, and money laundering statutes for wildlife trafficking offenses would support conservation efforts. This provides dedicated funding for in-country conservation efforts for highly trafficked and endangered wildlife species, at no expense to taxpayers under our bill.

Lastly, our bill includes provisions to crack down on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by foreign vessels or fraudulent seafood imports into the United States. According to the U.S. State Department, IUU

fishing often goes hand-in-hand with transnational organized crime, human trafficking and forced labor, and weapons and drug trafficking. American fishermen should never be expected to compete against fraudulent seafood imports harvested with slave labor, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.

Madam Speaker, again I thank Congressman Young (R-AK) for his partnership as the original cosponsor on this important, bipartisan bill. I urge all Members to join us in cosponsoring the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act.

Madam Speaker, today I introduce the ``Flood Insurance for Farmers Act of 2019,'' with my colleague Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-CA). This bipartisan bill builds upon the ``Flood and Agriculture Risk Management (FARM) Cost Reduction Act of 2017'' and legislation I sponsored in the 114th Congress.

The ``Flood Insurance for Farmers Act of 2019'' would provide access to discounted rates under the National Flood Insurance Program to families who have farmed the Sacramento Valley floodplain for generations. This will help keep agricultural land in production, which is the best way to push back against irresponsible subdivisions in the floodplain that place lives at risk and force farms onto the auction block.

Under current law, areas designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as ``Special Flood Hazard Areas'' require that all new, expanded, or repaired structures be raised above potential flood level. In much of the Sacramento Valley, this would require raising barns and silos upwards of 10 feet, which is cost prohibitive for many farmers or simply inconsistent with continued agricultural land use.

Currently, FEMA assumes there is zero protection if a levee does not meet the federally mandated 100-year level of flood protection and charges full-cost rates under the National Flood Insurance Program. This effectively precludes Sacramento Valley farmers from making capital improvements on their operations or securing the necessary financing for such capital improvements. Our bipartisan bill would lift this de facto federal prohibition on new construction and repairs of agricultural structures in high flood-risk areas designated by FEMA.

Specifically, the ``Flood Insurance for Farmers Act'' would direct FEMA to develop a new flood mapping zone for basins in the Sacramento Valley and elsewhere nationwide protected by levees that do not currently meet the federally mandated 100-year level of flood protection. Rates charged under the National Flood Insurance Program in this new flood zone would be based on actuarial risk. This means that if levees provide a 50-year level of flood protection, FEMA would charge rates based on that discounted risk level. This ensures that farming families can get more affordable flood insurance that reflects the levees they pay to upkeep.

The ``Flood Insurance for Farmers Act'' is endorsed by the California Rice Commission, USA Rice Federation, American Farm Bureau Federation, California Farm Bureau Federation, Sacramento County Farm Bureau, Yuba- Sutter Farm Bureau, Yolo County Farm Bureau, California Cattlemen's Association, Dairy Institute of California, and the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency.

I thank Congressman LaMalfa for his support as the bill's original cosponsor and look forward to continuing to work together on this critical issue for Sacramento Valley farmers. I also want to thank all the California-based and national organizations that have endorsed the bill, to date.

Madam Speaker, I hope that Congress will include the ``Flood Insurance for Farmers Act'' in any reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program. I urge all Members to join me and Congressman LaMalfa in cosponsoring this important legislation for American farmers.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for us to, once again, ponder the inevitable: that the government of the United States is important in this world; that the strongest country in the entire world ought to have the strongest operating government; that all across this globe people once looked to America as the symbol of leadership, as the symbol of opportunity, as the country where things got done, and a government that functioned, sort of functioned. We have had our ups and downs, but really the United States was always a symbol that other countries would point to and say: Well, there is a democracy. It has its ups and downs, but it has worked. It has been a place where we could look to for leadership.

We are now 32 days into the shutdown of the government of the most important country in the world.

What in the world is our President thinking? What is going on here? How did we come to this situation?

Before we get into all of the harm that is being done by this government shutdown, let's understand how we got here.

Every January, early February, the administration--the President-- puts forward his proposed budget for the coming year. The House and the Senate take that under submission and begin the process of preparing the appropriations and the laws, the changes to enact, or not enact, the proposals that the President has put forth.

In that submission, President Trump proposed $1.6 billion for border security. The House looked at it, the Senate looked at it, and, ultimately, the Senate passed an appropriation of $1.6 billion.

Unfortunately, that appropriation was caught up in other debates and other arguments, and the Department of Homeland Security that was supposed to receive the $1.6 billion, together with the Department of the Interior, the EPA, Department of Transportation, Department of Justice, and several other agencies, was not funded for the whole year but, rather, funded from October 1 until the following Thanksgiving.

Then an additional CR, continuing resolution, was passed until December 11, and that $1.6 billion was part of that discussion. On December 10, maybe December 11, the Senate unanimously passed another continuing resolution that had $1.6 billion in it, and that continuing resolution was to go until February 8.

The next morning, when that bill arrived over here in the House of Representatives to be taken up and to pass through to keep the government open until February, in the intervening 13 hours, something happened. The President changed his mind and said, not $1.6 billion. He demanded $5 billion. And in a conference at the White House with the leaders, he said: ``If we don't get what we want . . . I am proud to shut down the government . . . I will take the mantle. . . . ''

So on that morning of the 11th, the House of Representatives amended the bill and said, nope, it is not $1.6 billion. It is $5 billion, because that is what the President wanted, and the government shut down.

I thank the President. At the very last moment, he changed the game: not $1.6 billion, which we were prepared to accept and keep the government open, but $5 billion, and the government shut.

In the intervening days, as the debate went on, the $5 billion grew to $5.7 billion for a border wall.

Now, don't misunderstand. Changes during the course of a year are common, and it is common for the administration to make a change in its budget. That is called a budget change proposal.

It comes to the Congress, the House and the Senate, with all of the reasons--a big stack of paper--all of the reasons why the change should take place: some new; something happened and we have got to deal with it; or, we need more money for this. And a budget change proposal comes to us with all of the justification.

To this day, 32 days into this shutdown, Congress has not received a formal budget change proposal, nor has Congress received any detail about where the $5.7 billion wall will be built--somewhere on the Mexican-American border. That is 1,900 miles.

Will it be used to repair fences?

Will it be added in some areas?

What are the reasons why it would be added?

None of that has been provided here. So here we are 32 days into it, and the most important government in this world is shut down.

This border wall is supposed to bring security to America. Wow, wait a minute. You are talking about security? You are talking about safety? You are talking about making the lives of America more secure? How do you do that when the government is shut down?

All of the military is working. Thank God that appropriation passed. But the Department of Homeland Security is not, except for those frontline officers who are considered to be essential. All of the backroom operation isn't operating.

The Coast Guard is out there on the water, in the ports, but those men and women are not being paid, 40,000 of them, a few more, not being paid. Many of them cannot pay for gas to get to their jobs.

TSA is operating, but the rest of that backroom operation is not. Transportation is not operating. The parks are closed. The Smithsonian is closed. The kind of safety that the American public depends upon from its government is not operating.

There were headlines a week ago about the President somehow being compromised by Russia. What would be the best that Putin could ever want?

You go to war to take over a government, to shut down a government. You don't have to go to war to shut down the American Government. You go to the President, who gladly says that he is proud to shut down the American Government.

Putin has to be incredibly happy that his nemesis, America, the government is shut down.

I have got a lot to talk about tonight, and joining me are some of my colleagues who will be talking about the effect of the shutdown in their area.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), my colleague and dear friend of many years.

Mr. Speaker, I believe so.

Over and over.

Mr. Speaker, if I might, I say to Mr. Costa that is exactly what he did. In the negotiations, before inviting the leaders in, agreement had been reached with both Houses. We were going to move forward. The President changed his mind, demanded $5 billion, and took credit. He said: I will shut the government down, and I will take credit for it.

Indeed, the credit goes to him.

The gentleman said things that are very interesting. The gentleman went back to the Gingrich shutdown. That reminded me, at that time, I was actually at the Department of the Interior. There was nobody in the Department of the Interior except three of us in that entire department who were working.

Then there was the Ted Cruz shutdown, and then there were two other short shutdowns having to do with one or the other of the fiscal cliffs. In every case, our Republican colleagues--Gingrich, Ted Cruz, other leadership, and now the President--have used the American Government as a hostage to get something that they wanted. Senator Cruz wanted to kill the Affordable Care Act. I don't recall, but I think Gingrich was over some tax issues or some financial issues, fiscal issues. But in every case, they used the government as the hostage.

Now, over in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader McConnell is cobbling together a piece of legislation that would affect the rest of Americans.

Let me just show you some things here. He is taking a piece of legislation that we passed last week--it was the supplemental Disaster Relief Act to provide additional money. In this case, this is Paradise, California, where some 18,000 homes were destroyed and 87 people killed. The President was there, together with Governor Brown and our new Governor, Mr. Newsom. It is a supplemental disaster recovery program that we passed last week. It is over in the Senate.

I understand that Senator McConnell is going to take that bill and literally hold not just Paradise, California, but also Puerto Rico.

Does the gentleman remember the hurricane in Puerto Rico?

Mr. Speaker, he intends to hold Puerto Rico hostage, along with South Carolina; Houston, Texas; and southern California, the Ventura area, all of which have incurred a natural disaster and, in this case, a dam breaking in Puerto Rico.

In the case of Paradise, California--the great fire that occurred there and the wipeout of a community of 30,000 people--it is now being held hostage for the border wall. So not only do we have the U.S. Government hostage--and the American economy with 800,000 employees who are not getting paid--we are now using the supplemental disaster recovery, some $12 billion that would go to recover these communities that have been wiped out that are now being held hostage.

So the gentleman said earlier that there is something immoral about this, that to use people's lives and their ability to recover, their ability to sustain their family, to get a paycheck, to work for the American Government to keep this economy moving, to be held hostage somehow is terribly, terribly wrong. But that is what the President is doing. And, apparently, that is what Senator McConnell wants to do with this new bill that he intends to introduce that would hold the disaster recovery program hostage for a $5.7 billion wall somewhere on the border, undefined. Something is terribly, terribly wrong here.

Now, there is an alternative, and I think Mr. Costa mentioned it. We passed legislation repeatedly beginning on January 3, the first day of the new Congress, and every day thereafter. I think it is about 8 days now that we passed legislation to open the government. That is, the new Democratic majority has done that to open the government. All of those bills are over on the Senate side.

There is a clean bill that is also open for discussion on the Senate side this week. It is the bill that we passed last week. It would fund the government at the appropriations level that the Senate agreed to, $1.6 billion for border security and all the other programs all worked out in a great compromise. That bill passed the House last week. It is sitting over in the Senate.

There would be one exception to full funding for the remainder of this year--that is until September 30--and that is the Department of Homeland Security, which controls the border. That would be a temporary continuing resolution until February. I think it is the 28th of February.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Costa mentioned the Subway sandwich shop. When I was back in my district over the weekend, I was contacted by a small company operating in Davis, California, that has technology that the TSA would employ at the airports to keep us all safer. They will go out of business. They have 13 employees. Their contract is sitting, not finished. They are not getting paid for past work that they have done. They just said: We don't know how we will continue here.

It is a good program. It is necessary for security at the airports. That is just one example.

The gentleman mentioned the farmers. I have farmers in my district with the same problem. I have universities with research contracts that are being held up. All of that is being held up.

The reality is that the most important government of the world is not operating. When they say it is just 25 percent, that is 25 percent of the money. It happens to be 80 to 85 percent of the activities of the government.

And the ripple effect all the way through.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so very much for joining us and bringing to our attention the issues in his district, as well as his experience.

The final words that he has said ring in my ears, and I am sure they ring in the ears of people around this world who are looking at the United States and saying: What is going on there? What is this all about?

There is much, much more to say. I will go through a couple things very, very quickly here.

There are 800,000 government employees across the Nation--in California, there are 37,542--who are not being paid but still working. They are furloughed, and they are wondering how they will meet their mortgages and how they will meet their bills.

We also know that this shutdown is approaching the 1-month mark. And very, very soon, if we don't act and we don't get this government back up and working, there are 45,714,688 people in the United States who will lose their SNAP benefits--these are the food stamps--in other words, their ability to have food on their tables--45,714,000 people.

The day of reckoning for these people is coming very soon. The exact day is not exactly known, but it is toward the end of this month or the first weeks of February. So let's keep in mind those 45 million people who depend upon food stamps.

In my own district, just upstream from the district is the Oroville Dam, which came close to collapsing and put at risk nearly 200,000 people downstream from it. Part of the disaster recovery is to shore up the levees downstream from the Oroville Dam, but that is now being used as a hostage by Senator McConnell.

It is unconscionable what is going on here in America, and it is not necessary.

Democrats have always supported border security--always supported border security--and we have supported walls along the border. In 2006, almost 700 miles of border fencing and walls were built. In California, in the Tijuana-San Diego border area, those walls have been there for nearly 30 years, maybe even longer than that.

The point here is border security is more than a wall, and if the President wants a wall, he needs to tell us where and why.

Why is it more important than upgrading the ports of entry, as Mr. Costa talked about, where we know 80 to 90 percent of the drugs come through the ports of entry, the legal ports of entry? One out of five cars is checked; four are not.

The containers, the trains, the planes, the ships all coming through legal ports of entry, but we don't have the technology to check all of them, nor do we have the operations to be able to check all of the cars, all of the planes, all of the containers. So the drugs come in-- even through the post office.

Wouldn't it be wise that we spend money where 80 to 90 percent of the drugs enter the United States? It is not in a bunch of children carrying backpacks who are bringing drugs into the United States. That is not where the problem is. The problem is at the ports of entry.

Mr. President, you have the authority and you have the budget today, the appropriation today, to fill 3,000 positions that have remained unfilled for more than a year, positions at the ports of entry, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol positions--3,000. Why are they not filled? If there is such an emergency, why are you not out hiring?

You were given $1.2 billion a year ago to enhance the border security. Less than 20 percent of that money has been spent. Why? Why?

If we have a national emergency, why are you not hiring the necessary people who are authorized? Why have you not spent the money that was appropriated previously?

Why did you shut down the American Government for an ill-defined border wall that seems, in the minds of most of us, to simply be a fulfillment of a campaign pledge? What is that all about?

What is going through your mind that you ignore things that we know create security: better devices to observe what is going on, unmanned aerial vehicles to observe what is happening, sensing devices to know what is in those containers, men and women to conduct the inspections, all of those things? Why are you not doing it? Why?

Why, Mr. President, did you say that, unless you get your way, you are going to shut down the American Government; in your own words, you will take the mantle of the shutdown? In so doing, you created a real serious national security threat. Yes, you did.

You shut down the government, and, in doing so, you have created a real--a real--national security threat.

Honoring Harris Wofford, Jr.

Mr. Speaker, before I terminate this, I want to change subjects.

A very, very dear friend died, and I want to bring to the attention of the House Harris Wofford.

Harris Llewellyn Wofford, Jr., was born in New York City on April 9, 1926. At the age of 11, he had the opportunity to travel around the world with his grandmother, in 1938. He experienced many defining events during that time, including what was going on in Italy with Benito Mussolini and in Germany with Hitler, the Japanese aggression in Shanghai, and Gandhi's movement in India.

His passion for creating change and fighting for progress began in earnest during those years. As the civil rights movement began, Mr. Wofford quickly became a fervent supporter of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we remembered yesterday.

He marched alongside Reverend King for civil rights and voting rights in Selma. And during John F. Kennedy's campaign for President, Mr. Wofford played a key role in Kennedy's efforts that freed Reverend King from prison, a move that galvanized the civil rights movement and helped carry President Kennedy to the White House a year later.

Following that election, he served as President Kennedy's special assistant for civil rights and later served as the head of two colleges. And during his time with the Kennedy administration, he helped launch the Peace Corps, which my wife and I joined shortly thereafter; and that inspired Patti and me as we served 2 years in Ethiopia.

In 1991, Mr. Wofford became Pennsylvania's first Democratic Senator in more than 20 years, unseating the former Republican Governor and U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.

As Senator, he led the effort that established the community service program, AmeriCorps. My wife, Patti, had the opportunity to work with Mr. Wofford as they, together, created the AmeriCorps program in the 1990s.

In 2008, he introduced then-Senator Barack Obama before his defining ``A More Perfect Union'' speech that is often credited as the origin of Obama's successful campaign for President.

In 1995, Mr. Wofford left the Senate and began serving as the chief executive at AmeriCorps, where my wife was able to work with him.

In a 2005 speech commemorating the work of French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, Mr. Wofford, in considering the impact of the invention of nuclear weapons during World War II, said this: `` . . . the burning question, above all other questions in the political world, is: How do we crack the atom of civic power and start a chain reaction of constructive force to do for peace what man has shown can be done for war? You may say that is the old question that vexed the 20th century in its occasional search for the moral equivalent of war. For the 21st century, let's accept Teilhard's challenge and set out to discover the moral and political equivalent of fire.''

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record all of Mr. Wofford's speech on that day, April 11, 2005.

[From the Woodstock Forum, Apr. 11, 2005]

The Global Legacy of Teilhard de Chardin--Georgetown University

(By Harris Wofford)

It's a special honor to participate in this 50th

Anniversary commemoration of Teilhard's death--but really

this is much more a celebration of his birth, his new birth

that came to pass after his death when his words began to be

published and spring to public life.

I would have been here earlier today listening and learning

but for our family's memorial service in Philadelphia this

morning for my 96-year-old stepmother, who died this week.

Phyllis Taylor Wofford was the first woman Minister of the

Riverside Church of New York, ordained at age 50 in 1959,

just as Teilhard's books were spreading around the world.

Remembering our many discussions in the 43 years since she

married my father and reading her sermons and poems this

weekend, I know she was a reader of Teilhard--and I think he

would have liked one of her most recurring metaphors that she

attributes to her mentor, the great preacher Harry Emerson

Fosdick: The Sunset of Spirit that people fear as death.

``Sunset,'' she believed, ``is only our limited human way of

looking at things. Nothing has happened to the sun.''

You can say that about Teilhard. The limited human way of

looking at his writings led to perhaps the greatest

intellectual mistake made by the Church since Galileo. The

earth does move around the sun, and the sunlight of Teilhard

is still there for us, even if he did not live to see it

shine on the world during his lifetime.

Teilhard would have understood what my mother the

Congregational minister meant when she said in her ordination

statement that her studies at Union Theological Seminary

started ``an adventure in faith'': ``Doors which had been

closed opened and beyond them were tremendous vistas.'' She

said that ``All the little scattered fragments of existence

as I know it were at last caught up and knit together in one

comprehensible whole.''

In the late 1950's that is what seemed to be happening to

me, in a more amateur fashion, as my heart leaped up when I

first started to read Teilhard. I was ready for Teilhard--for

his vision that knit together in one comprehensible whole,

not only a view of the world and human destiny but a view of

the ever-expanding universe of universes--the existence we

are all trying to comprehend. Before there was anything of

Teilhard's to read, I had committed my mind and heart to his

proposition: ``The Age of Nations is past. The task before us

now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth.''

At age 12, in the spring of 1938, while Teilhard was in

China or briefly back in France, I was looting Shanghai.

Literally looting. Except for the international quarter

protected by the French and British forces and the United

States Marines, Shanghai had been bombed almost out of

existence, and then occupied by the Japanese army. They sold

looting permits to tourists and my grandmother and I were

driven into the deserted Chinese city to the roofless remains

of a teahouse. I went in to find some loot. Other tourists

came out with china, silver and works of art. To my

grandmother's dismay, I emerged with a 4-foot stuffed

ostrich--which later I tossed overboard when we sailed into

Yokohama harbor.

That six-month trip around the world on the eve of World

War II is no doubt what led to my later readiness for

Teilhard. It sparked a lasting love affair with the world--

with the Earth, Teilhard would say--and a deep-seated sense

that the world is truly our stage and the frame in which all

the burning questions of our time must be seen.

I returned to 7th grade as an ardent interventionist; a

presumptuous, know-it-all, politically active boy who wanted

America to join the war to stop Hitler and the Japanese

militarists from conquering the world.

After Pearl Harbor, before entering the Army Air Corps, I

started what grew into the nation-wide Student Federalist

organization that became an enthusiastic part of the campaign

for a union of democracies to win the war and be a nucleus of

a post-war world federation with power to keep the peace.

When the United Nations was established without the power

to control the atomic bomb we campaigned to strengthen it and

to establish nuclear control backed by a world police force.

But by then the Cold War was closing in, and the vision

without which we thought people would perish became distant

and dim.

Then came Teilhard's books, one by one, re-lighting the

vision of world unity in the broader context of the Human

Phenomenon--and of a Divine Milieu. To our realistic

discouragement from the vicious circle of international power

politics, he offered a different possibility: ``the

passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the

thinking part of life ever further onward. The only truly

natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth.''

This ``sense of the Earth'', he prophesied, would become

``the irresistible pressure which will come at the right

moment to unite humanity in a common passion.''

And as a scientist, he spoke to the skeptics: ``To the

common sense of the `man in the street' and even to a certain

philosophy of the world to which nothing is possible save

what has always been, perspectives such as these will seem

highly improbable. But to a mind become familiar with the

fantastic dimensions of the universe they will, on the

contrary, seem quite natural, because they are simply

proportionate with the astronomical immensities.''

One last personal account of Teilhard's impact. In the

presidential campaign of 1960 and for years afterward, I had

the privilege of working with Sargent Shriver, the most

creative social inventor of the 20th century and a lover of

the words of Teilhard. A brother-in-law of President Kennedy,

Shriver organized the Peace Corps and later led President

Johnson's War on Poverty, along the way launching the

domestic Peace Corps, the Volunteers in Service to America

(VISTA), the forerunner of AmeriCorps; the Job Corps: Foster

Grandparents, Community Action agencies, and Legal Services

for the Poor. On nights when we worked late I often found

myself staying in Shriver's suite at the Mayflower Hotel or

in some hotel while traveling to other countries. Each night

before he turned out the lights he would read in his bed for

a while, usually a book of spiritual import. Often it would

be Teilhard de Chardin and the next morning he would talk

about it on the way to an early mass.

Then in the Presidential campaign of 1972, after George

McGovern asked Shriver to become his running mate, I was

helping Sarge work on his acceptance address. As we were due

to leave and the police motorcade was revving up, he was

still unsatisfied with its ending. ``I know how to end it,''

he said, ``It's Teilhard de Chardin! I'm going to find the

quote on a plaque in a pile upstairs.'' We

physically tried to stop him but he bounded out and in two

minutes, came back with the plaque. He ended the address with

these words of Teilhard that brought the delegates to their

feet:

``The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, the

tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies

of Love. And on that day, for the second time in the history

of the world, man will have discovered fire.''

No one on that day is likely to have forgotten the fire

with which Shriver said that word ``fire''. Teilhard's

watchwords became the theme of his Vice Presidential campaign

and recurred again when he ran for the Democratic

presidential nomination in 1976. And Sargent Shriver

practiced what Teilhard preached, as he went on to help his

wife Eunice and son Tim spread Special Olympics to the far

corners of the world.

Let me note that those and many other words of Teilhard

played a significant part in my own little journey from the

Angelican Episcopal Church of my father to the wider Catholic

Church centered in Rome (as the world well-observed this week

of the Pope's funeral)--the church of Teilhard and the

Society of Jesus. As an advocate of civil disobedience of the

Gandhian and Martin Luther King kind on fundamental matters

of conscience I should confess that I find it hard to fathom

the faith it took for Teilhard to accept the silencing of his

most important thoughts. But we can respect his agonizing

decision to choose what he may have viewed as ``divine

obedience.''

What does Teilhard's vision say to politics today--and to

the burning questions of our times? To the world-wide

poverty, including the poverty of spirit? To the epidemics

sweeping Africa and other places that seem to be behind God's

back? To the maybe a billion children who are not learning to

read and go to sleep hungry at night? To all those suffering

violence in the streets or in their homes, from crime or

terrorism or war?

Teilhard's vision tells us to do everything in our power to

find the ways and means to harness the energies of love in

order to end as soon as possible the scandal that such

conditions exist anywhere in the world. This requires We the

People of this earth to do in the political world what

wartime America did with the physical atom; to win the war

scientists, backed by all the necessary resources of our

society, worked with fierce urgency to produce the quantum

leap and chain reaction that put in man's mortal hands the

power to end human life on earth.

Therefore, the burning question, above all other questions

in the political world, is: How do we crack the atom of civic

power and start a chain reaction of constructive force to do

for peace what man has shown can be done for war. You may say

that is the old question that vexed the 20th century in its

occasional search for the moral equivalent of war. For the

21st century, let's accept Teilhard's challenge and set out

to discover the moral and political equivalent of fire.

This Woodstock Forum's other question: What is Teilhard's

literary legacy? is not a burning one, but it brings to mind

Gertrude Stein's explanation for her famous line: ``A rose is

a rose is a rose.'' When Gertrude was asked what in the world

was the reason for such repetition, she said that for

thousands of years poets have been writing about roses, so

often and so sentimentally that the rose had lost its

redness. Her intent, she said, was to restore redness to the

rose.

Teilhard was a far better poet than Gertrude Stein, but as

I've been re-reading him after many years, it seems to me

that his most repeated metaphor, which he delivered in a

hundred different ways, is indeed Fire--the fire that will

blaze forth when we do discover how to harness for God and

for all human beings the power of love, and achieve the unity

of man that Teilhard foresaw.

The poet in Teilhard, I think, is seeking, in politics as

in science, philosophy and religion, to restore to the

ancient idea of creative fire the energy, heat and light that

our divided world so sorely needs. So we can hope the sparks

that Teilhard's words sent out will catch fire in the dry

tinder of these times.

``The world is very different now,'' John Kennedy began in

stating the first proposition of his Inaugural Address. ``For

man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms

of human poverty and all forms of human life.'' To follow

that proposition where it leads, we can do no better than to

lift our sights to the perspective and the passionate concern

for our common human destiny that pervades the writings of

Teilhard de Chardin. But we let's not leave it to hope, to

time, or to Teilhard to discover this fire, ``knowing,'' as

Kennedy said in closing his summons to a New Frontier, ``that

here on earth God's work must truly be our own.''

Mr. Speaker, it is with considerable sorrow that Patti and I bid farewell to a very dear friend and an incredible leader who spent his life fighting for justice, civil justice, civil rights, and world peace.

Harris Llewellyn Wofford Jr. was born in New York City on April 9, 1926 and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. with his 2 younger siblings. Growing up in an upper-middle class family, at age 11 he had the opportunity to travel the world with his grandmother in 1938. During this formative trip, he experienced many of the defining events of that time including Benito Mussolini speaking about the League of Nations, the results of Japanese aggression in Shanghai and the movement of Mohandas Ghandi in India.

His passion for creating change and fighting for progress began in earnest. After his return to the United States, he quickly established the first chapter of the Student Federalists, which would later become a central pillar of what is now Citizens for Global Solutions. After serving in the Army Airforce, he graduated from the University of Chicago in 1948 and married his fellow student Clare Lindgren.

As the civil rights movement began, Mr. Wofford quickly became a fervent supporter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He marched alongside Rev. King for civil and voting rights in Selma and, during John F. Kennedy's campaign for President, Mr. Wofford played a key role in Kennedy's efforts that freed Rev. King from prison--a move that galvanized the civil rights movement and helped to carry President Kennedy to the White House later that year.

Following the election, he served as President Kennedy's special assistant for civil rights and later served as the head of 2 colleges. During his time with the Kennedy administration, he helped to launch the Peace Corp, which helped to inspire me to enter the realm of public service as one of the first Peace Corp officers serving in Ethiopia.

In 1991, Harris became Pennsylvania's first Democratic Senator in more that 20 years, by unseating the former Republican governor and U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. As Senator he led the effort that established the community service program, AmeriCorp and in 2008 introduce then-Senator Barack Obama before his defining ``A More Perfect Union Speech'' that is often credited as the origin of Obama's successful campaign for President.

In 1995, he left the Senate and began serving as Chief Executive at AmeriCorp. Harris Wofford, a Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania, a university president and a defining colleague of President John F. Kennedy died yesterday on the Federal Holiday commemorating the work and vision of Martin Luther King, a vision that as a lifelong champion of civil rights he shared. He was 92.

In a 2005 speech commemorating the work of French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, Mr. Wofford in considering the impact of the invention of nuclear weapons during World War II said this:

``. . . the burning question, above all other questions in the political world, is: how do we crack the atom of civic power and start a chain reaction of constructive force to do for peace what man has shown can be done with war. You may say that is the old question that vexed the 20th century in its occasional search for the moral equivalent of war. For the 21st century, let's accept Teilhard's challenge and set out to discover the moral political equivalent of fire.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to talk about the necessity of reopening our government, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I think I just heard that we are in the 25th day of the shutdown. I see some of my good Republican friends over there, and perhaps we ought to engage in a debate about the wisdom of this shutdown.

Can anybody find any good reason for the shutdown?

At the moment, Mr. Meadows, perhaps I would yield and you can give me a 30-second explanation of why the shutdown makes sense, but let's talk about the shutdown.

Let's talk about the reality that the President proposed in his budget for 2019 that we should spend somewhere around $1.6 billion for border security, not specifying walls or all of it, but just border security.

We, of course, do what we always do. We took that, and we put it through the ringer. We came out with $1.6 billion for border security, including some wall in there.

But we didn't finish the task, so we did a continuing resolution last September and kicked the ball down the road, which is what we really do best, boom, boom, boom, bounce down the road until right after Thanksgiving.

Then we hadn't quite completed it, so in a day when none of us were here, by unanimous consent, again, we kicked the ball down the road until December 11.

Then the Senate sent over a piece of legislation that was unanimously passed in the Senate by voice vote, and it wound up over here the next day. Sometime between that evening when it passed the Senate and it wound up over here, the President decided that he needed $5 billion for a border wall.

Now, perhaps there was a discussion of appropriations sometime during that process. I don't know. But in any case, it was in none of the bills. Suddenly, we had a $5 billion addition to border security. All of that happened overnight.

At the same time, the President calls into his Oval Office the leadership, and he says that he will shut down the government, and he will take the mantle of the shutdown.

So, my good friends from the Republican side of this aisle, here we are on day 25.

A lot of things are going on out there. There is not much going on around here, unfortunately. But what is going on out there?

I got a phone call from a mayor of one of the small cities that I represent down in the agricultural part north of Sacramento. He said: Can you help us? One of the veterans in my district, a World War II veteran, is in hospice, and, over the years, he lost his Purple Heart for injuries that he suffered in World War II. We would like to get that back for him before he dies, but we can't. We can't help him.

We can't get that Purple Heart back before this veteran dies because the National Archives is shut down. Normally, we could. We would make our request, and we would go to the National Archives. Somehow we would find the record, and we would get a replacement Purple Heart. We can't do that now. The National Archives is shut down.

Another one of my constituents wants to start a new business in one of the towns that I represent west of Sacramento. It is a little restaurant coffee shop. He needs an SBA loan. He worked it all through the bank. The bank is ready to make the loan. The papers can't be signed. SBA is shut down.

How long can he hang on? How long will that escrow remain open before this deal tanks? Well, it is 25 days thus far. Apparently, the deal is still in place. But businesses all across this Nation are not moving forward.

Recent estimates show that two-tenths of a percent of the economic growth of this Nation in this 25-day shutdown has been removed from this economy. We are looking somewhere just north of 2\1/2\, 3 percent, in that range, but two-tenths of that is now gone as a result of this shutdown.

Let us remind ourselves: This is entirely the making of the President who parachuted--no, bombed into our negotiation process here, $5 billion in the 12 hours between the passage of a compromised, unanimous vote by the Senate to keep government going and the arrival and the vote on that bill here on this floor.

Madam Speaker, I will also state that our Republican colleagues accommodated the President and put the $5 billion into the legislation and sent it back to the Senate, and there it sat, sine die. That legislation is gone.

However, we want to open government. We think it is really important that those veterans across this Nation who want to get their records are able to do so, and those men and women who want to start a small business are able to get their Small Business Administration loans approved.

How about Foreign Service officers? Oh, yes, the State Department isn't funded. Foreign Service officers are not able to get the training that they need. They go through a whole course before they are sent off to some part of the world--language, culture courses. None of that is happening, to say nothing of the fact that about a third of the appointments in the State Department have never been filled to begin with.

Department of the Interior? Some of us stuck around here over the weekend. Normally, we would go down to the Smithsonian and take a look, or the National Museum of African American History and Culture, or maybe the National Museum of American History. Maybe we would go watch one of the presentations that are made at the national parks. No, that doesn't happen either. Woe on us here in Washington, but all across this Nation, the national parks are shut down.

Fish and wildlife, now, we have a real problem here. The fish and wildlife refuges in California are shu down, and we are approaching the end of duck season. Oh, my goodness. You mean we can't go duck hunting, as we might want to do, at the fish and wildlife refuges? That is right. You are not going to go duck hunting at the fish and wildlife refuges, as you have normally done, even though you put your bid in and you had January 15 for your date to hunt ducks at the refuge. Nope, can't do that.

Transportation, the Department of Transportation is shut down.

You tell me it is a small portion of the Federal Government. Well, it is a

small portion of the budget, but it is 85 percent of the activities of the Federal Government that are shut down: Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation, and the Internal Revenue Service.

Don't worry, we can't collect taxes. That is a good thing, right? My conservative friend says you can't collect taxes, and that is all right. No, I want my tax refund, and I can't get that either.

EPA, there are those who would argue that that is all good. Well, I don't think so, not if you are concerned about air and water, the ability to swim in the rivers or to drink the water.

Let's just say you are going out for your first tranche of funding. You need SEC approval. Well, you are not going to get it. The Securities and Exchange Commission is shut down also.

Eighty percent or more of the activities of the Federal Government are shut down.

There was a big headline in The New York Times, the failing New York Times, about the President and whether he is compromised. Well, I don't know. That will prove itself out one way or the other with the Mueller investigation and all that is going on.

But I do know this, that if Putin wanted to harm America, he would shut down the American Government. That is precisely what the President did. He shut down the American Government for 25 days. What greater gift would Putin want than an American Government that is not functioning?

Oh, the military is still there, but the fifth branch of the military is the Coast Guard with 40,000-plus Coast Guard members who are out there on the water protecting the borders of America. By the way, the Coast Guard has confiscated 10 times the amount of drugs that are confiscated on the Mexican border. They are working without pay. Essential services, yes, they are.

But the back-office services are not working. They are laid off. Contractors who have contracts to get a paycheck from the Department of Transportation on the road that they are supposed to be building or have built, it is not going to happen.

It is time for us to open this government. It is time for us to open the government and put America back to work. Put the essential services back to work.

The Food and Drug Administration is shut down. Who is checking? Many of my colleagues here have young grandchildren, infants. Who is checking the quality, the safety, of infant formula? The answer: No one.

Here we are. We are for border security. We Democrats are for border security. We have been for more than 20 years now. We voted for walls in the past. We voted for improving the security of the border in every way possible, and we will continue to do so.

But to hold America hostage, to hold our government hostage, to hold 800,000 government employees and 40,000-plus coastguardsmen and -women without pay? No way.

To simply come in at the very last moment in a negotiation that had been settled and drop a $5 billion--excuse me, it is $5.7 billion now; there seems to have been an escalation--a $5.7 billion border wall on our process, it is unconscionable.

We can open the government. Bills have been passed here, not with the help of our Republican friends, but with the new majority. We have passed legislation day after day after day to fund the government. Some of it is short term, as we did just an hour ago here on the floor, a short-term CR to open government until February 1 to get people back to work and negotiate, negotiate border security.

The President wants a wall. Where does he want the wall? What kind of a wall does he want: cyclone fence, steel spikes, concrete? Where? For what purpose? What is its effectiveness? What is he trying to stop? Where is he trying to stop that incursion into America? None of that is available today.

I have been on the Armed Services Committee for 8 years, 9 years now. We would not build a hangar for the Air Force unless we knew what its purpose was, unless we knew where it was, what it would cost, why it was necessary. But the President wants a $5.7 billion slush fund to build a wall somewhere along the 1,900 miles of the border.

Now, a couple of my colleagues were here a few moments ago talking about the President's desire to have a national emergency. Well, he sure as hell created one. But I think he is talking about those young children who are climbing over the fences in diapers. I suppose those are the terrorists he is talking about.

Madam Speaker, let's talk about what he proposes to do about it. He would call for a national emergency which gives him--he believes, we don't--but he believes the power to appropriate funds. The Constitution is very, very clear. There is only one part of our government that has the power to appropriate funds. It is us. It is the Congress. But apparently the President thinks he can declare a national emergency and acquire the appropriation power of Congress.

What does he intend to appropriate for his purposes of the border wall?

America has had some flooding in some of the districts of some of my colleagues that I see here on the floor. We passed the emergency legislation to deal with that. California has its droughts, but it also has its rain. This is the Oroville Dam. It is not subject to the emergency appropriations for disaster recovery. But the levees downstream from the Oroville Dam are subject to one of the appropriations in the disaster recovery bill. If Oroville Dam had broken, within 1 hour a city of 40,000, Oroville, would be under 30 feet of water.

The levees downstream from Oroville on the Feather River are in the process of being repaired. Further downstream as you get to Sacramento, Madam Speaker, the American River and the Sacramento River, major levee projects, is the most flood-prone part of America. I know there are some friends from the Southeast here who would debate that point. But let's just say there is a lot of America that is subject to flooding.

This is a dangerous one. Money in these supplemental appropriation bills for disaster relief is designed to shore up the levees of America.

Now, some folks would argue, yeah, but it is not going to rain this year. Maybe. Maybe it makes no difference. But if it does rain, the repair of that levee makes all the difference.

Here is a place that a lot of our friends don't care much about: Puerto Rico. In the emergency disaster relief legislation that the President wants to raid is the repair of dams just upstream from San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is what happened during the hurricanes, and that dam spillway needs to be repaired.

The communities in Texas, California, the Carolinas, Florida, and the Gulf Coast don't want this to happen again.

How do we save them from this ever happening again?

It is to use the money that we have appropriated for disaster relief to repair the levees so that flooding is less likely to happen. But the President decides that he is going to create an emergency declaration, and he is going to go into the Army Corps of Civil Works programs that were allocated as a result of the appropriations from last spring's disaster relief legislation and rip $2\1/2\ billion out of those appropriations.

Some of us have reason to suspect with some evidence that he intends to go after Puerto Rico and California. It turns out that the projects in California may be of interest to some of my Republican friends, particularly the minority leader, because one of the projects is Lake Isabella just upstream from Bakersfield, California.

So, Madam Speaker, we say to the President: A, there is no emergency; B, the shutdown of government is one of your own making; and C, you don't have the power to appropriate money yourself. Particularly, it is shameful to take money that we have allocated to protect Americans in Florida, Texas, California, Puerto Rico, the Carolinas, and even Missouri so that their levees and so that their flood control projects can be updated and improved and so the safety of those communities can be enhanced.

Here is what we want: we want government opened. It is inexplicable that after 25 days this government is shut

down because the President is demanding $5.7 billion for a border wall without even telling us where that is going to be built. Oh, excuse me. That is a misstatement. It is going to be built on the Mexican-American border.

Where?

Is it going to be built where there is a real need?

What kind of a wall will it be?

That seems to change every 12 hours because there are no plans worthy of our--we are presumably responsible for the taxpayer dollars-- consideration as to where, what the effectiveness would be, what the usefulness would be, what the cost would be, or even what the color will be.

Open our government. Pass the legislation in the Senate. The President said he will veto it. Okay. Put it on his desk. Let him veto it. He already says he is wearing the mantle of the shutdown. Let him put on another coat, another mantle of a veto, so that the American public knows precisely who is responsible for this shutdown.

We have done our job here. We have passed the legislation to fund this government--all but one department--for the remainder of this fiscal year until September 30, 2019. We have done that multiple times now, and we have left the issue of the Department of Homeland Security in which the issue of the border fence resides on a short-term leash so that all of us would be forced to come back to negotiate border security.

Democrats would undoubtedly go for improvements in the ports of entry. One out of five cars is not checked at the border. Maybe we ought to deal with that. Only a few of the containers arriving at our ports are checked. Most are not. Maybe we ought to deal with that. Maybe we ought to look at our airports where we know most presumed terrorists arrive.

So what are we doing here?

We are shutting down--we. Excuse me. We are not shutting down. The President is shutting down this government for 25 days.

I can only imagine the joy in the Kremlin. Consider for a moment Mr. Putin, saying: Oh, my God. The American Government is shut down.

He couldn't do it by himself. Only our President would do it to us.

We have got things to do here.

I notice one of my colleagues, Mr. Levin, has arrived, and I know he wants to join us on this issue in a few moments. In the meantime, I have got a few more things to say.

To my Republican colleagues who will soon follow me on this floor when this hour is done, I can get pretty heated about some things, and maybe I have been, but I want them to think about what is actually happening here in America and why we are in this situation.

My Republican colleagues had the power over the last 2 years to build any wall they wanted to build anywhere they wanted to build it-- Canadian border, Mexican border. They had the power. They didn't do it. Excuse me. That is not right. I think 22 miles of new wall have been built in the last 3 years. That is okay. I think the appropriation was somewhere less than $50 million for that. Now here we are.

I would love to hear my Republican colleagues explain to the American public how it came about that we are in this situation when they had 2 years to build whatever wall they thought the President might want to build. It didn't happen.

I heard a wonderful and foolish--a wonderful argument, because it was so foolish--that gee whiz, $5.7 billion is just a very small part of the total American budget for expenditures.

That is true. It is a small part. That is $5.7 billion.

Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion would provide a year and a half of funding for all of the tuition for every student at the University of California and the 23 State universities in California--more than 1 million students. Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion is no small amount of money.

How many kids could you educate?

How much relief could we supply to people who are hungry here in America or some part of the world?

By the way, my Republican friends did create a massive deficit when they passed the tax bill last December--a massive deficit. It will approach over $900 billion this year. It just about doubled the annual deficit with that piece of legislation. I used to say the deficit hawks migrate in December. My guess is they are going to come back as we deal with the new appropriation bill, and as we do that, I would hope they would keep in mind the $5.7 billion for an unspecified wall in an unspecified location of an unspecified height to carry on an unspecified purpose--5.7 billion.

So let us continue for a moment. I want to deal with one other thing. This is the kind of thing that probably, Madam Speaker, you have to see this picture. This picture is worth maybe 500 words, but nevertheless I am going to use 250 of them.

This is a picture of the President of the United States and the Governor of California at the Paradise fire. Somewhere around 16, 17,000 homes were destroyed. Eighty-seven American citizens were killed in that fire. An entire community of some 25, 30,000 people is gone. It just doesn't exist anymore. It is gone. It is ash. It is rubble.

Fortunately, Madam Speaker, the American Government, you and I and others and those who preceded us, developed a program called the Stafford Act which provides the generosity of Americans to help rebuild families and communities such as Paradise, California; or Redding, California which also suffered a few thousand homes burned and destroyed, not nearly as many deaths fortunately.

So the Stafford Act is what we know as FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the declaration at the county level and at the State level of a disaster, then at the Federal level of a disaster, and then a presidential declaration of a disaster.

The Federal Government then steps in and begins to provide funding to rebuild, to help the individuals who have lost everything, through the Small Business Administration and some direct grants, and to help communities put back in place their infrastructure. It is a wonderful expression of America's empathy and generosity.

Two weeks ago my colleague Mr. LaMalfa's constituents, who has the district just north of me, many of whom now live and have found housing in my area just south of Paradise, were greeted with a tweet from the President.

I am going to paraphrase what the tweet said; I don't have it with me right now. It basically said: I will stop all FEMA funding until the State of California properly manages its forests.

Madam Speaker, I must tell you, we have seen tweet after tweet, and they range from disgusting to awful and occasionally one that you go: ``Okay.'' But with this one we said: What in the world are you talking about, Mr. President? What are you tweeting about?

You are going to deny these people--you were there, Mr. President. You were there. You saw the devastation.

We counted the 87 people who died, and they are still sifting through the remains of these houses and may find even more. You were there. And you say you are going to cut off support until California manages its forests properly. You know not what you talk about or tweet about, Mr. President.

The fact of the matter is that the Federal forests which you oversee, Mr. President, are the ones that are mismanaged, for a whole variety of historic reasons, many of which we have actually made steps to improve here in legislation.

So what is with this man that he would wake up one morning and say: No more help from the Federal Government.

Does he think everything is about leverage? Is that what he thinks, that he could use his power, awesome as it is, to leverage something?

That is precisely what he is doing with the wall. That is precisely what he is doing with 25 days of this Nation's government shutdown. He is using the citizens of America as leverage. He is using the 800,000 employees, the Department of Interior, the Department of the Treasury, the IRS, the EPA, the Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard, as leverage for his border wall promise.

It is despicable. It has got to end.

I need time to cool off.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), my colleague, who comes from an extraordinary family.

And another generation has joined us.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing our attention to the real-life problems that these employees have personally and that are being created for Americans, whether it is the weather or a broken pipeline or an airplane that wasn't inspected. It is very important that we all know those things. I thank the gentleman for joining us.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle), my colleague, and ask him to please share with us his thoughts on the government shutdown.

The gentleman is quite correct about the nature of the shutdown and the impact that it has on Americans.

Can I be optimistic and encourage him to figure out how to stop these from ever happening again? And when he grows a very gray head of hair and a gray beard, perhaps he will have figured it out. It just hasn't happened.

I was around for the 1995 shutdown. I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior, number two, and that massive Department which I spoke of earlier, the parks, the Fish and Wildlife services, all of those organizations--gone.

At that time, we did not have the requirement that essential services would be provided; there was just nobody working. And that went on for, I think, 23 days, which until this week was the longest. It was a long time ago, and here we are once again and in between. I think there are ways.

I notice many of my colleagues on the Republican side are here, will soon have the opportunity to take the floor and will probably debate many of the points or disagree with many of the points that I have made earlier today. I saw a few jaws clenching, biting down on their teeth, just wanting to get in the mix of it.

Mr. MEADOWS asked for time, and I didn't really want to hear that, but the gentleman will have time in just a moment. I am not sure what he is going to argue, but I would be pleased to hear why this shutdown is good, why it is necessary to keep the government of America, the essential parts of the government--not the military. The Medicare checks continue to go out, and that is happening. The military, Department of Defense, we funded that earlier, and that continues, and thankfully so.

But the Treasury Department, SEC, EPA, Agriculture--I didn't even get into agriculture, although I have a $4.5 billion farm gate agricultural district. They are hurting.

The crop checks that they need and the assurance they need to their lenders that they will be able to plant their crops when the rainy season is over in a few weeks, it is not happening now, so that is delayed. And it may be, if it goes much longer, they will miss their planting opportunities.

Food stamps will soon be unavailable, and millions of Americans may, under that circumstance, be very, very hungry. Why is it worth it? Why is it worth it?

Why don't we start up government, pass the legislation that is over in the Senate, encourage, cajole, browbeat a few Senators to pass the legislation, put it on the President's desk, and then he can have that mantle of shutting down the government once again very clearly?

We will deal with border security. We have over the years, and recently we have done that and we will do it again. But that is a negotiating process. We negotiate on virtually everything around here.

I have yet to get my way; but then, I am one of seven children. I learned very, very early, I don't get my way very often. I would like to participate in that process of give-and-take.

And for proper comprehensive border security, we know--I won't speak names. Perhaps that will get me in trouble here. But more than one of you sitting there and I have had conversations about border security, about immigration and how we could solve that problem. That is going to take some time, and surely there are places for a fence or a wall or concrete or steel or whatever, those places for improved ports of entry, more personnel.

I haven't even started to talk about the children that were separated. That will get me off on another thing that wouldn't be helpful now. But that takes time, and you and I know that we need to solve that problem.

So let's start our government today, tomorrow. Let's prove to the world that it really is an American Government--not shut down but operating, all of its good and all of its extraordinary work and, occasionally, the mistakes that it makes. But it is not operating now.

And then let's take the time over the next 30 days, 60 days, whatever you want to put on it, to negotiate real border security, dealing with the immigration issues, dealing with DACA, dealing with fences and border ports of entry, the kind of technology that is necessary to know what is inside that container, the kind of technology that is necessary, and the kind of personnel necessary to check not one of five cars but every car and every truck and every plane and every ship. We ought to do that. But right now we are in the heat of this, and we are not getting anywhere.

So as he takes the floor in the next hour, I will listen and our team will listen. I would ask him to encourage his colleagues, our colleagues in the Senate, to pass the legislation that has been sent to them, which is actually the Republican appropriations bills, take a very significant major step towards reopening government, and then let's take the time to thoughtfully, properly address a very complex, very long-lasting problem in America: immigration, border security. I know most of them, and I think that is what they would really like to do.

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

Madam Speaker, today I reintroduced the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act. I want to thank my colleagues, Representatives Jerry McNerney, Mark DeSaulnier, Mike Thompson, and Doris Matsui from California, for their support as original cosponsors.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is central to California life and perhaps the most productive and ecologically important watershed in the United States. Designating the Delta as a new Natural Heritage Area would unlock needed federal funding to conserve the cultural heritage and natural character of this iconic working landscape.

Specifically, our bill would authorize $10 million to provide federal matching grants to local governments, historical societies, and nonprofit organizations throughout the Delta. This grant funding, administered by the National Park Service, would be available for 15 years to support community-based cultural and historical preservation and environmental conservation projects.

California's Delta Protection Commission would be responsible for coordinating the locally developed management plan for the Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area, once established. Importantly, National Heritage Area designations do not impact water rights, landownership, or hunting and fishing within the designated Heritage Area. As confirmed by the National Park Service, which administers the program, National Heritage Area designations do not affect individual property rights nor do they restrict local land use decisions.

Last year, for the first time in 5 years, the Natural Resources Committee reported out bipartisan bills to establish new National Heritage Areas. Now under the new Democratic majority and the leadership of Chairman Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ), I hope that the Committee will take up our Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act.

Again, I thank my original cosponsors from the California delegation for their support. Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join us in cosponsoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act.

Mr. Speaker, northern California lost a great leader, visionary, family man and true patriot in Ron Bartoli.

Ron's success as a businessman included building a thriving international company. His passion for the U.S. Air Force and its critical missions, and the men and women serving at BEALE AFB was relentless and sincere. Much of the success and growth of missions at BEALE AFB since 1986 can be attributed to Ron's efforts.

Ron loved people and he spent quality time with everyone he came to know. He was an accomplished pilot, sport fisherman and he loved to play golf. He was a longtime Board Member and past Board Chair at Sierra Central Credit Union.

Mr. Speaker, well known farmer, beloved family patriarch and loyal friend, Charles C. Messick, born in Yuba City, CA, on April 28, 1935, passed away November 25, 2018. Chuck was active in many farm and community organizations. He was instrumental in organizing the California Prune Bargaining Association, as well as the Walnut Bargaining Association and was a Director on the California Peach Association Board. He was elected to the Farm Credit Board of Directors, and served as Chairman of the Board for a term. Governor Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Yuba Sutter Fair Board in 1972. He was a charter member of Sutter Buttes Sunrise Rotary, a Paul Harris Fellow and served as President in 2004 through 2006. He looked forward each year to acting as marshal of the Fairway to Health golf tournament benefiting the Rideout Hospital Foundation.

As his five children were growing up, Chuck was an active volunteer and leader in the Hallwood 4-H Club, Marysville Little League and Marysville High School Boosters' Club.

He is survived by his wife Shiela; sisters, Marilyn Kirby (Sparky) of Yuba City and Carol Howell of Sparks, Nevada; daughters Sharyl Messick-Menconi (Jim) and Beth Aldridge (Chuck) of Yuba City; sons, Charles Messick of LaPorte, Michael Messick (Lore) and Jon Messick (Amy) of Marysville; grandchildren, Andrea Brown, David Brown, Shayla West, Kelly Messick, Mattea Spradling, Jim Messick, Matthew Messick, Ben Neighbors, Rachel Dawson, Kayla Legaspi, Charlie Messick, Hailey Messick, Thomas Messick, Jackson Messick, Owen Messick, Noah Messick, Sydnia Aldridge, Kate Aldridge and Sarah Aldridge. He had twelve great- grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, Larry ``Pete'' Peterson of Yuba City, CA, was born on April 23, 1936, and passed away on October 11, 2018 at Rideout Hospital in Marysville. Pete retired from the United States Air Force as a Tech Sergeant after serving 43 years and served in the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. Pete continued to serve his community as an officer with the Yuba City Police Department and after retiring, served 25 years as a Reserve Officer.

Pete was a member of the Episcopal Church and participated in the activities of the VFW Post 2563, Yuba City American Legion post 705, Disabled American Veteran Chapter 6 Sacramento, CA, and the Thomas T Smith Masonic Lodge No. 78 in Marysville, CA. Pete was an active participant in the Kiwanis Club. He served as past president and past Lt. Governor. Pete was the founder of The Hope Of America Scholarship Program. He was also a George F. Hixson Fellow. He received numerous awards and recognition from retired Police Chief Richard Doscher and retired Deputy Chief George Carey.

Pete is preceded in death by Debra Peterson and Sandra Pankey- Peterson, wives; his daughter, Nicole Peterson; his son, Lawrence F. Peterson, Jr.; and his brother, Paul Peterson.

He leaves to grieve a stepson, Aaron Pankey; his stepmother, Vivian Peterson; his sisters, Florence Dent-Hunter and Loretta Johnson; his brother, Vincent Peterson; daughters-in-law, Alfreda Peterson and Connie Peterson; five grandchildren; three great-granddaughters; one great-grandson; and numerous sisters and brothers-in-law, cousins and friends.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity. There are so many things that we need to consider.

Today, the President announced that he is going to do his best to shut down the Government of the United States, and he wants to call it the Trump shutdown.

I wonder if he really understands what that means to Americans. The Department of Homeland Security--about which there is so much discussion as to the security of the border, the Coast Guard, all of the ICE agents and so forth--presumably would stand down. I guess that is what a shutdown means, that we would have no border security.

So I am curious exactly what the President has in mind when he says it will be the Trump shutdown.

We don't really want to do that. I have been there before in the mid- 1990s, when Speaker Gingrich decided to shut down the government. I was over at the Department of the Interior as the Deputy Secretary, and I think that the Department of National Parks and the Bureau of Land Management and on and on simply shut down. The National Parks shut down, the Washington Monument.

So the Department of the Interior would apparently shut down--not apparently, would definitely shut down--under a Trump shutdown. I suppose the Washington Monument, the memorial to World War I, World War II memorials, Yosemite--that would be a problem actually. We usually go to Yosemite on the 18th of December. That is my anniversary.

So, Mr. President, do you have any idea what you are going to cause here in America? The Department of Agriculture would shut down. Food safety, presumably, would shut down. It goes on and on, and all of that over a border wall that nobody other than the President thinks would be useful.

We do need border security, no doubt about it. We just heard our colleague from Texas talk about this a little bit. Yes, we do need border security. But nobody thinks a big, massive, beautiful wall from here to there, from the Caribbean to the Pacific Coast, would solve the issue of border security.

By the way, if you shut down the government, it is the Coast Guard that shuts down, and the Coast Guard has confiscated 10 times more drugs than the Border Patrol. So I guess we will have the President shut down that part of border security also.

Nobody says a wall is the answer. They said use technology. Use observation devices of various kinds that sense and watch remotely, drones and unmanned aerial vehicles and things of that sort.

By the way, why don't we beef up and provide the kind of security and the

kind of access that our ports of entry really need, whether those ports of entry are along the Mexican border or the ports?

We really are justifiably concerned about port security. I mean ocean port security.

So, come on, Mr. President. Realistically, you don't have the votes here in the House of Representatives for your $5 billion border wall, which now you would say Mexico is going to pay for.

Show me the money. We can negotiate this out. And Democrats--the leader of the House and of the minority in the Senate, Ms. Pelosi and Senator Schumer, went over and said: We put more than $1 billion--I think it was about $1.3, $1.4 billion from last year's appropriations-- and you have only spent 6 percent of that for border security. So you have got that billion or so available now. And now you want $5 billion. How do you want to spend it?

No plans on how to spend the money. It is just fulfilling a campaign promise, which now, apparently, Mexico is going to pay for. We will see.

I wasn't really going to talk about that. What I wanted to talk about is what Americans are really concerned about, which is healthcare. That was an issue in the campaign. I know from the Democratic Party side, we made healthcare a major central issue of our campaign for the people: affordable healthcare for the people. That is what we campaigned on. That is what we promised.

On January 3, when the Democrats take control of this House of Representatives, we will put forth solutions to the healthcare crisis.

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, and it brought more than 22 million Americans into the insurance market and gave them a quality insurance product. They had to pay for it. It wasn't all free. The price varied. It created exchanges, a marketplace in which individuals and families can go and select policies from various insurance companies. Unfortunately, the public option was not adopted, but nonetheless, there was an opportunity for 22 million Americans.

No sooner did that bill pass than the Republicans used that Affordable Care Act, with what they then called ``ObamaCare,'' to beat up the Democrats. They did a very, very good job at it. They took control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election, and in 2011, they began a process of eviscerating the Affordable Care Act.

More than 60 times on this floor our Republican colleagues voted to eviscerate, gut, kill, terminate, but never to replace, just to eliminate that, with 22 million Americans losing their insurance. The expansion of the Medicaid program across this Nation is gone, reduced, gutted.

So we go into the 2018 campaign, and we said: No. No. Healthcare is a fundamental issue, a fundamental right. The wealthiest country in the world ought to be able to provide healthcare to all its citizens.

That was our campaign. So we are going to move forward on this. One of the things we want to take up right away is why we want to do it.

Those of you who follow my occasional 1-hour Special Orders here on the floor have seen this. This is kind of to center me, to center what it is we want to accomplish, why we want to do these things.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it very, very well back in the late 1930s. 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 is where I am coming from, and I think that is where my Democratic colleagues are coming from.

The wealthy are doing quite well. They certainly are. The tax bill that was passed by the Republicans without one Democratic vote last year in December 2017 ripped nearly $2 trillion out of the Federal Treasury and gave 85 percent of that $2 trillion to the wealthy American corporations and to the top 10 percent of the wealthy Americans.

So we come back to values. We are not here to make the rich richer-- although they certainly would like that, and they certainly did get that in the tax bill, or scam, I think is what we would call it--but, rather, for people who really need help, the men and women and families of America who go to their kitchen table, are unable to figure out how they are going to get healthcare, how they are going to get a job.

There is talk there is a tax break, but that tax break was eaten up by inflation for the working men and women of America.

So let's go to the healthcare issue. One of the things we spent a lot of time talking about and intend to deal with is the cost of prescription drugs. Let's spend some time on that.

This little chart is a comparison of prescription drugs versus generic drugs. Ninety percent of the prescriptions are filled with generic drugs and 23 percent of the prescriptions are filled with other, nongeneric drugs. Seventy-seven percent of the total cost of drugs is on the nongeneric side; and on the generic side down here, it is about 10 percent.

So one solution here is to advance the availability of generic drugs. Clearly, a generic drug is significantly cheaper than a prescription drug. You may ask: Why is that?

The pharmaceutical industry will say: The reason is, we have got to do all this research, and we have got to do all this marketing.

They certainly do a lot of marketing. You turn the television on; they are marketing like crazy one drug or another. That is a prescription drug. They are not marketing the generic drugs.

So there you have it: Generics, 90 percent of the prescriptions are generic, and 70 percent of the cost is on 23 percent, the prescription drugs.

What has happened to the cost of prescription drugs?

Well, if you take the average price of the specialty drugs, these are prescriptions, they have tripled over the last--2006 to 2015, that is what?--10 years. So the prescription drugs, the specialty prescription drugs, same drugs, over a 10-year period, the cost has tripled.

You might ask: Well, why? Is it suddenly more expensive to make the same drug that you made before?

Well, possibly. But maybe it has to do with market power. If your prescription drug has a patent or many, many patents, then the generic drug cannot be made. So you control the market for that particular drug. That particular drug might be rather important.

Now, for those of you who watch television, you may actually have heard of a couple of these drugs. Let's just take a look here at key metrics for the three major brand drugs: Humira, Revlimid, and Lantus. I don't take them, so I really don't know how to pronounce them that well.

But let's take a look here at Humira: the number of patents, 247; the price change since 2006, 144 percent--using patents to protect the drug from competition, allowing a 144 percent price increase--years blocking competition, 39 years before there will be any competition for the most expensive and most used drug, Humira.

This one for multiple myeloma; I think that is a cancer: number of patent applications, 106; number of patents pending, 96; price increase since 2012, 79 percent price increase; years blocking competition, if you happen to have this particular cancer, there is one drug that seems to work really, really well, but it will be 40 years before there is competition, in other words, a generic that could be used, similarly with the other drug.

So what is happening here is the pharmaceutical industry is using multiple patents and not a brand-new drug, but just a little minor tweaking of the existing drug, giving an opportunity to extend way beyond whatever the patent law originally intended, in some cases 30, 40 years before a generic drug can come onto the market and replace what is going on.

How can we deal with that?

Well, let's take another example. Here is one. You have heard of insulin. I bet you have. Insulin prices have tripled over the last 15 years. One of the most expensive insulin products in Medicare part D, only one out of the six most expensive insulin products faces competition. So, in the absence of competition, now the cost per year is $2,300.

Another example is using patents on a drug to deal with diabetes. Let's take a look at this one.

As if the patent policies and the ability of the drug companies to tweak

their product to use multiple patents over time, one after another, to gain market domination and to eliminate competitors for these very essential drugs, as if it is not bad enough now, our good President recently, I think about 10 days ago, sat down with the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada and signed a new really big, wonderful trade deal to somehow replace NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Act.

Well, way down in the guts of that agreement was a little clause, subsection C, measures relating to pharmaceutical products, biologicals, et cetera, extended by 10 years the existing patent law for biologicals. This is the hot new area of pharmaceutical drugs: biologicals.

So, in the patent law, as if the patent law wasn't already being abused sufficiently to drive up the price of medical costs in the United States, the President goes out with his team of negotiators and adds an additional 10 years to the existing patents for this particular type of pharmaceutical product.

Together with the ability to tweak small, little changes in the processing or in the drug itself, using that to gain control of that particular solution to a very serious health problem that Americans face, the President decides to add 10 years to the foundation patent.

So, what does it mean to Americans?

Well, it means you are going to pay a whole, whole lot of money for your drug prices.

There are solutions. I assure you that we are already, on the Democratic side of this coin, looking at solutions, first and foremost, to allow the Federal Government, which is the single biggest purchaser, payer for these drugs, to negotiate the price, that is, to use the purchasing power of government to overcome the patent lock that the drug companies have been able to secure using patents and other technologies and techniques.

That is the first thing, to allow the Federal Government to negotiate.

So, you remember when Medicare part D was installed back in 2003? The pharmaceutical industry weaseled into that law--that is, the prescription drug benefit in Medicare--a provision that said the Federal Government could not negotiate for the prices of drugs. So taxpayers and those who have a deductible or a copay, you are being harmed.

Now, generics, yes; generics are an answer. But just to complete this system of harming Americans by charging more than necessary for drugs using the patents, as we just discussed, the savior to the problem, which many would say is the generics, well, there is a little problem there too. And the problem was laid out in a recent article in The Washington Post.

You have heard of antitrust laws, which basically say that competitors in an economic sector cannot conspire to control the price. Antitrust. It turns out that the generic, according to The Washington Post and to 47 State attorneys general around the Nation and a whole lot of--CVS, I believe, and a few others who buy drugs and sell them-- retailers have launched an antitrust complaint against a cabal of generic drug companies who are alleged to have conspired to control the cost of the generic drugs--that is, to maintain a higher cost--and to divide up the market.

A generic drugmaker decides: I am going to make drug A, starts making it, controls 100 percent of the generic market for that drug. Good. Generic drugmaker B comes along, says: I can make that drug, and I can probably make it a little bit cheaper, so I am going to compete with company A.

Company A said: Whoa, wait a minute. We can make this good for both of us. It can be a win-win. You take 25, 30 percent of the market; I'll take 75, 60 percent of the market; and we will both be doing very well. That is the allegation.

So this is something we need to deal with also. We need to encourage the Department of Justice, the State departments, to use the antitrust laws to make sure that these kinds of conspiracies are not happening.

Clearly, if the generic drugmakers are engaged in a conspiracy to control the cost or to divide up the market for their drugs, it is illegal. There are serious penalties associated with that.

These cases, as reported by The Washington Post, are proceeding. Wonderful.

What we need to do is to make sure that the Department of Justice, the Federal Department of Justice as well as the State departments of justice and the Commerce Department and others who are responsible for enforcing the antitrust laws are doing so.

So, with regard to pharmaceuticals, with regard to drugs, I want you to know that the Democratic Congress is going to attack this problem, first by making certain that the United States Government can use its market power to break the monopoly that the drug companies presently have as a result of their ability to hold their specific drug forever, at least 30 to 40 years, under the patent schemes that they are now doing.

There are other things that I would like to take up, and I will do so quickly.

We said that we would also want to deal with the issues of preexisting conditions. Now, in the Affordable Care Act there was a requirement that insurance companies do not discriminate in the sale of insurance and the pricing of insurance based upon preexisting conditions.

Now, what is a preexisting condition? Well, we just had one example up here: diabetes, childhood diabetes, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, other childhood illnesses.

I was the insurance commissioner in California twice, in the early `90s, `91 to `95, and again from 2003 to 2007.

This issue of insurance companies discriminating based upon preexisting conditions was rampant in California, despite our efforts to try to pass a law in California to prohibit the insurance companies from discriminating based upon preexisting conditions. We were unsuccessful.

What we did find is that in the application process for insurance there was a form, and it listed every conceivable thing that a human being could be afflicted with--headaches, colds, sinus problems, sore throats, on and on and on--a list of maybe 20 or 30, and you had to check off each and every one of those.

If you checked them off, they would go: Ah, you have got a preexisting condition. We will insure you, but we are going to charge you 10 times more than a person that didn't have that condition. And they would then provide the insurance.

If you went through and you said: No, I don't have a sinus problem; no, I don't have a sore throat; blah, blah; and then you come down with a sore throat, they say: Ah, you didn't honestly fill out the form, and therefore we are not going to cover you for that illness.

This was a common problem. So when the Affordable Care Act passed, in that law was a provision that said the insurance companies could not do that, they could not discriminate either in the cost of it or not providing insurance at all. Couldn't do it.

However, in legislation that passed the House of Representatives, passed the Senate, and was signed into law--not a healthcare bill, but an addition to a must-pass piece of legislation--the Republicans, without Democratic support here, passed legislation that wiped out that portion of the Affordable Care Act, basically putting Americans at risk once again to insurance discrimination, health insurance discrimination.

And suddenly America woke up and goes: Whoa, wait a minute. You mean to tell me that if I have diabetes I can't get insurance or I am going to have to pay 10, 20, 30 times more than somebody else? Even to the point of a woman being discriminated against because she is a woman and she might have a baby. Anyway, America woke up and goes: Whoa, wait. We don't like that.

So, yes, we made that an issue. We made it a really big issue in the campaign: No discrimination based upon preexisting conditions. Can't do it. We are going to eliminate that problem for America.

It wasn't too long before my Republican colleagues go: Oops, we had better get on board that ship.

And I want my Republican colleagues and the President to know they are going to have an opportunity to be on that ship. We are going to put that bill

before the House of Representatives in the early days of the 116th Congress in 2019. We are going to do that.

We will see if they are willing to stay with the promises that they made--most of them unsuccessful, but nonetheless the promises they made--to deal with the problem of insurance discrimination.

So those are two things that are on the agenda right up front. There are many other things that we intend to do with healthcare because we believe that healthcare is a right. In the richest country in the world, you ought to be able to have quality healthcare available to you. That is our pledge. That is what we intend to do.

A final point. A week ago I was here talking about climate change with my colleagues, and we were talking about the Federal Government's report on climate changes that are occurring. It was an eye-opener. It basically said we are--by ``we,'' not my generation, but the next generation out, 10, 20 years out--going to face a monumental problem of sea level rise, massive storms, massive fires, the epidemic of tropical diseases moving into the Northern Hemisphere in through the countries that have not experienced tropical illnesses.

All of those things were in that report, and we spoke about it here. We called upon our government, our President, and our colleagues here-- Democrat and Republican--to aggressively attack this problem by reducing carbon emissions, by moving away from a carbon-based energy system. We can do that.

As I said during that debate here on the floor, in 1978 I authored a law in California, the first in the Nation, to provide a tax credit for wind, solar, and conservation. And those kind of laws have been in place forever, and we have proved that we can do it. Over the years, significant efforts have succeeded in bringing on board clean green power.

So, a week goes by, and in the newspapers yesterday and today are two articles that deserve our attention, and actually a third that just came up this afternoon.

The first article was that the carbon emissions over the last year have grown substantially. For the United States it is around, I think, a 2\1/2\ percent increase in carbon emissions; and in China and India, the other two large emitters of carbon, significant growth.

In other words, the world is falling backwards in addressing the carbon pollution that is creating climate change. Oh, my goodness, a wake-up call.

We have the report that these bad things are going to happen unless we change the direction we are going. And then a week later we find out the direction we are going is not downward but, rather, upward.

Article one: Today in the newspapers, even in the fake newspapers, is an article that the President's emissaries to a conference in Europe on climate change are advocating--advocating--for the burning of more coal and oil.

This wasn't a coal conference. This was a conference on how does the world go to green, non-carbon energy sources. And so the United States, leading away from solving the problem.

Yes, that is what our President sent those folks over to Europe to do, not to solve the problem but to make the problem worse. It was an O-M-G moment. You have got to be kidding. The least you could have done is keep your mouth shut. But oh, no, advocating for more coal, advocating for more oil, and pushing aside all of those technologies-- solar, wind, biomass, biofuel, all of those things--pushing them aside. No, no, no, we have got to have more coal.

It is reprehensible and an absolute dereliction of duty and responsibility to this generation here and now and to future generations to come.

What would you expect from the man who wants to shut down government? I would expect better. We just want A Better Deal. We want A Better Deal for the American people.

The rich and wealthy, they got one big beautiful deal in the tax cut. Working men and women and families, we have got our work cut out for us.

A Better Deal for the people--that is what we want to do. Many different ways to do it. We are going to work at it. We ask you to work with us.