Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I remember well the investigations that Congress undertook in the Nixon period--the Watergate investigations.

Frankly, I am appalled at the way in which this House is conducting its investigations. It is high time that we have an independent investigation.

The reality has changed since the sixties and seventies. We now have 24-7 cable TV, and everything seems to be momentarily disclosed. We can't continue. We need an independent investigation of this extremely important issue of Russia's involvement in our national elections.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to talk about our health, not about last week's legislation and the effort to change the Affordable Care Act but rather about another part of the health of the American public.

The most remarkable proposal came from the President recently in his budget proposals.

I know that when I saw what he was proposing, I am thinking: You have got to be kidding. He is proposing a $5.6 billion reduction in the National Institutes of Health's research programs.

I want to just take a second here and draw your attention to what research really means.

The National Institutes of Health is the principal research arm for healthcare issues throughout the United States. Over the years, we have spent very large amounts of taxpayer dollars dealing with health issues in the United States. The result of those research efforts, together with the implementation, has resulted in breast cancer deaths dropping, between 2000 and 2013, by 2 percent, prostate cancer deaths down 11 percent, heart disease down 14 percent, stroke down 23 percent, HIV/ AIDS down 52 percent.

Research pays in better lives, in people living longer and the quality of their life. And yet this 18 percent reduction that has been proposed by the President in the basic funding for medical research here in the United States goes directly against these very important and very impressive changes in the statistics about mortality--HIV/ AIDS, 52 percent.

Now, it is not all research, but it begins with research. It is unconscionable that such a proposal would be brought to the House of Representatives.

We are going to go beyond these success stories, and we are going to talk about this purple line here. The deaths from Alzheimer's have actually increased by 71 percent in the same 13-year period, in part due to the fact that the population, the baby boomers and those that preceded them, grow old; and that is where Alzheimer's occurs, in the older age groups.

So what is the research funding here on Alzheimer's? Well, not so good.

But before I go to that, I just want to take one moment and draw your attention to this little chart. This is the funding level for the National Institutes of Health's projected budget: $31.7 billion. The scientists, the researchers out there said that that is underfunding not from their wish list, but from viable, credible research programs that can't be paid for because they have run out of money. So they have suggested that the budget should be somewhere around $35 billion.

So what does the President propose? Well, he proposes, instead of going up, going down to $25 billion or just close to $26 billion, $5.6 billion less.

The result is that this is not going to come down. We are going to talk about this for the next hour, about research, about the National Institutes of Health, about what it means to your life, to my life, to my colleagues' lives, to be able to extend our lives, whether it might be prostate cancer, heart disease, stroke, HIV, or Alzheimer's. It is a fact that, if we are to increase the research in this area, which, until just last year, was just over $500 million, we can see this begin to change.

Joining me today are my colleagues from around the United States. I was looking for a more senior Member from California, Maxine Waters, who is the co-chair of the Alzheimer's Caucus. She is not here, so I am going to go to our next more senior Member, Mr. Cohen from the great State of Tennessee.

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Thank you so very much, Mr. Cohen, for your personal story and the effect of research not being available to you in your early childhood and the result of that. We know that all across the United States there are issues that are out there. Certainly Alzheimer's, which is our principal subject matter today, together with the cuts in the National Institutes of Health budget, but also there is this thing called Zika. That is out there, and the research for that, is that going to be forthcoming or is that also going to be cut?

I noticed that our co-chair of the Alzheimer's Caucus is here. Ms. Waters, if you would like to join us, the gentlewoman from the State of California with whom I have been able to work now for, well, just a few years, dating back to our time in the California Legislature. I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the leadership of Ms. Waters. It goes on for many years in this particular area and beyond.

Progress can be made. I am just going to take 2 seconds here to show the funding levels for cancer, almost $5\1/2\ billion; HIV/AIDS, almost $3 billion; cardiovascular, $2 billion. This is 1 year out of date.

Because of the work of Congress and the leadership of Chris Smith from the Republican side and Ms. Waters from the Democratic side, plus many Members, this number is not 560; it is just under a billion dollars now. We need more, and we need to get at it soon.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the southern part of California (Mr. Peters).

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Peters for his comments. His knowledge and expertise in this field is appreciated and, I am sure when shared with the other Members of this House, will have a positive result.

Mr. Peters said something toward the end of his conversation that I think we need to drive home. I said earlier that the scientists suggested that instead of a $31.7 billion budget for the NIH, they needed an additional $3.3 billion. It is for those projects that Mr. Peters described as peer-reviewed by peers in the area of science-- whether it is heart disease, cancer, or HIV or Alzheimer's--that are worthy projects for which there is no money.

If we could fund those--not reduce the level of funding, as suggested by the President, but, rather, increase it--what would be the result?

I am going to toss this up one more time. This is what happens when research is applied to diseases. Breast cancer down, prostate cancer down, heart disease deaths, strokes, and HIV, all down as a result of research, and then the application of that research through the medical community. This is progress. This is what can happen. This is what we want to get to.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, let's move to the other side of the continent. Let's talk about the view from New Jersey. I yield to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman).

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from New Jersey pointed out a very important thing here, and that is: When will we get real about this?

It is my understanding that many of these budget cuts, the National Institutes of Health and others, were made so that a wall on the Mexican border could be funded.

Ponder that for a few moments. Is that really a priority? Do we cut the funding for this basic research--whether it is for cancer, diabetes, even people that are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder--so that we can fund a wall on the border?

That may be what this is all about, in which case it is a terrible, terrible choice. I don't think we are going to make that.

I thank the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman) for her views. I really appreciate her understanding of this and her participation today.

I see next to you our colleague from the great State of Maryland (Mr. Raskin) listening very intently to you and now prepared to jump into the fray here.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Raskin so very much. And, indeed, the National Institutes of Health has a stellar representative, as do the American people, and certainly the people of Maryland.

As he told his own personal story of one of the dreaded diseases, I am delighted to see him stand here in such good health. Apparently, he has recovered completely from that.

I suspect that recovery was, at least in part, due to, first, his good health at the outset, but also to the research that was done in the preceding years through the National Institutes of Health on cancer research. We have seen the decline in cancer deaths as a result of that research. What we would like to do is to deal with this Alzheimer's.

I want to take a moment just to talk about where we are. We had a huge debate last week on repealing the Affordable Care Act and what it would mean to Americans, and a lot of that debate centered around the cost of medical services. Tragically, one of the ways that the proponents of repealing the Affordable Care Act would save money is to reduce the Medicaid program in different ways, but the end result was to reduce the Medicaid program.

Sixty percent of the Medicaid program is for people in long-term care facilities. A good percentage of those, probably the majority of those, with some sort of dementia or Alzheimer's. What we need to do is to address this issue straightforward.

I will tell my own story.

My mother-in-law lived the last 3 years of her life in our home. We were in a position where we were able to take care of her, so she didn't go to a long-term care facility. Nonetheless, it was one of the obligations that we felt we had, and many, many other Americans share that obligation.

This is 2015. The number $2.026 billion came up during the discussion that we had. That is what we spent in 2016. Some of that was spent by other payors. That would be insurance companies. Some was spent by family. Medicare and Medicaid spent the great majority.

As we go through the years, in 2020, we expect to spend $267 billion. And again, Medicare and Medicaid make up the great majority of it. As we move through time, we will see that there will be greater and greater expenses, rising year by year, so that in the year 2050, which is not that far away--that is one generation away--we will be spending over $1 trillion, and Medicare and Medicaid will, throughout this entire period, be the single largest source of money to pay for Alzheimer's.

So, if we want to reduce the cost of premiums, if we want to reduce the cost of government, if we want to deal

with the quality of life of Americans, then we have to get to this research because there is hope. Alzheimer's is not a hopeless disease. It is not a disease for which there is no cure. It is a disease for which we have not spent money on finding the cure.

If we can delay by a year, we will save tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money in care that has been pushed off into the future. And the quality of life for the individual that has one more year of quality of life ahead of them is enormous and invaluable.

Here is just a way of depicting the backward nature of how we are dealing with the research for Alzheimer's. This was originally the 2015. We have been at this a couple of years, and we have seen progress.

In 2016, we spent $941 million, just under $1 billion, on Alzheimer's research. At the same time, we spent $153 billion in the care of Alzheimer's in Medicare and Medicaid. It is Federal taxpayer money.

Look, $1 billion, less than $1 billion in research, $153 billion in out-of-pocket expense caring for these individuals that have come down with Alzheimer's. A pretty neat equation here, isn't it?

If we were to ramp that up, as we would like to see, from $941 million to $1.4 billion, the researchers all across this country--some in San Diego, as we heard from Mr. Scott Peters; others in New Jersey, as we heard from Mrs. Watson Coleman; or in other parts of California, Boston, wherever. If we were to ramp that up by an additional $500 million, the researchers believe that they will untangle the tangles in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's and understand what is going on and, from that point, be able to find a path towards a solution.

It is not hopeless. We have seen progress. We have seen research that was done a decade ago. The analysis indicated that it really didn't work too well when they came up with a solution. Another researcher, 7 or 8 years later, went back to that very research, looked at the statistical analysis, and noticed that, for those who had early onset, that particular treatment modality had an enormous effect, not on those that were in later Alzheimer's but those who were in early onset.

Whoa. What does that mean?

That means that there is a path. That means that there is an avenue towards a solution. However, this Congress, the 435 of us who will be here voting on the appropriations to fund the Federal Government, to fund the military, to fund the highways, to fund the National Institutes of Health, will be given a choice. We will have a choice. Do we increase the funding for the National Institutes of Health and Alzheimer's research, or do we fund a wall on the Mexican border to the tune of $20 billion?

We just received that supplemental appropriation request from the administration today to spend $20 billion on a wall.

I can talk to you about a wall. I represent 180,000 people just downstream from the Oroville Dam, and I have got a 30-foot wall that needs to be repaired. We are talking about imminent danger, and the rainy season is not over in California.

Or, another $5.6 billion for the military for programs that nobody has told us yet should be funded.

We are going to make choices here. The President has made his choice. He has shown what is of value in his mind.

I challenge that value. I challenge that value statement. I will tell you what is important. What is important are those millions of Americans who face Alzheimer's in the days, the months, and the years ahead. I am looking to the generations that are 40 and 50 years of age today who know, like my wife and I, they will be caring for their parents who are suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's. That is a value that I think is important.

Mr. Cohen spoke to the real enemy. Is the real enemy somewhere out there around the world, or is the real enemy the disease that will take us down--in his case, childhood polio?

We are going to make choices here, very important choices to the everyday lives of Americans. My choice is to increase, to increase the budget, the appropriation for the National Institutes of Health so that the $35 billion that the scientists--who have already done the peer review on all types of diseases, ranging from Zika, to cancer, and HIV, and Alzheimer's--say are worthy research projects that should be funded.

I reject the value that the President has said to strip $5.6 billion out of the National Institutes of Health and transfer it for a wall on the Mexican border or for some spending in the military--some unspecified spending. These are choices.

I know where, in my mind, the choice should be, and I reject the choice that has been made by our President.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Speaker for this opportunity to continue the discussion. My colleague from Texas really left here a moment ago with a plea about bringing down the cost of health care in America. Actually, it was the cost of premiums in America. That is a plea that I think all 435 of us would echo. It would certainly be our goal, as representatives of the American people, to find some way to accomplish that, some way to bring down the cost of premiums.

I would like just to make a point right at the outset. When discussing health care, there are really two connected, but very separate, parts to the healthcare system.

One part is the delivery of medical services. These are the doctors, some of whom are in organizations of doctors of various specialties. Some are in large practices, such as the Kaiser practice. Some are in hospitals disconnected from doctors. But there is just a plethora of different ways in which medical services are delivered. That is the delivery of medical services. That is one part of it.

The other part of the healthcare system in America, and really anywhere in the world, is the collection of money to pay for the services. Now, in the United States, we have many different ways to collect the money. One of them is through taxes. And this is how we pay for Medicare and Medicaid, what we call MediCal in California. We pay for the veterans' medical services through the collection of taxes, children's health services, and some other programs that are much smaller. So that is one way in which we collect the money to pay for services. You might call those single-payer taxpayer services, taxpayers' money being spent on services delivered by that whole range of providers, some of which happen to be government providers, for example, the Veterans Administration and military medical services.

Now, the other way in which we collect money to pay for services are premiums, health insurance premiums that are charged by health insurance companies. The largest single part of that is from corporations, businesses, that buy health insurance and pay the premiums. And the others are individuals, and this is the individual insurance market. There are some small group markets out there, also. But these two systems, we need to understand that they are different. They are connected, obviously.

Now, if we are going to deal with the cost of premiums, you have to go over and deal with the cost of health care, because the health care drives the premiums and also drives the amount of money that we need to raise to pay for the services that are provided by the various governmental programs.

Now, in the Affordable Care Act, which is now some 7 years old Thursday of this week, the seventh anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, there are some very powerful mechanisms to reduce the cost of health care--doctors, hospitals, and the rest. Some of these are electronic medical records so that there is a continuity of knowledge as to what happened, what was provided, what services were provided to the individual.

Another one happens to be a penalty assessed on hospitals for hospital readmissions on hospital-acquired infections--profound in driving down the cost; also extremely important for individuals because hospital infection rates dramatically dropped.

There are also ways in which we pay for the services. It is very clear that the utilization of fee-for-service drove up the cost.

Anyway, as we go through this discussion today on the Affordable Care Act, and I see I am being joined by my colleagues here, I just want us to keep in mind that in order to deal with the cost of premiums, you have got to deal with the cost of services that are provided.

Now, in the Affordable Care Act, we actually saw, over the last 5 years as the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, went into effect, a decrease in the rate of increase. We haven't seen a decrease in the cost of medical services, but what we have seen is that the inflation rate has significantly reduced, so much so that the financial security of the Medicare program, which is the single biggest expenditure, has been extended by some 11 years because the inflation rate has declined--not decreased, but the rate of inflation has declined almost 50 percent from what it was before the Affordable Care Act.

That is a direct result of the many reforms that went into the way in which medical services were delivered. That allowed for a lower inflation rate for premiums and an extension of the financial viability of Medicare and other medical programs.

Now, unfortunately, we are now faced with a repeal or a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and the promise has been made by my Republican colleagues that somehow this will reduce the premiums. Well, that is interesting. Now, exactly how are you going to reduce the premiums unless you are dealing with the cost of medical care?

In their reforms, there is--as best I can determine and everybody else--no effective way to reduce the cost of medical services and, in fact, the high probability that the cost of medical services will increase, specifically, because, in their proposed reform, men and women that are 45, 50 to 65 are going to find it virtually impossible to continue to buy insurance. They will drop their insurance. That is part of those 14 million Americans that will lose their insurance next year and part of the 24 million Americans that will not have insurance 9 years from now.

That population, before they get to Medicare, when they begin to get ill, 40, 50, 60, they will not be able to afford insurance. It is something like a $12,000 increase in cost to them. It is what is known as the senior tax.

Now, that will drive up the cost of medical services. Because they will not be able to have continuity of care, their diabetes, their heart issues, their high blood pressure, and on and on will not be treated.

Similarly, in the proposed reform, there is a significant reduction in the number of men and women across this Nation--and we are talking probably in the range of 4 to 6 million in the next 2 years that will not be covered under the Medicaid program. Those people, not having access to continuous medical services, will not seek treatment for those illnesses that can be treated effectively or held in abeyance, such as diabetes, heart disease, and the like. That means that the cost of medical care for them will rise.

Where will they go to get medical care? Not to worry, say our Republican colleagues. They can go to the emergency room. We have been there. We have seen what that means.

The expansion of the Medicaid program is unraveled by the proposed TrumpCare. I am going to come back to this.

I would like to ask my colleague from Texas to carry on here, if you would. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

I want to thank the gentlewoman from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, for her consistent and constant caring for men and women in this Nation that are on the outside, that are not among the wealthy, that are struggling with their families to improve their situation. You are always there. And here you are once again this evening laying out the problems that we are going to see with TrumpCare.

Let me just very quickly run through this, and then I would like to turn back to my colleague from Rhode Island, Mr. Cicilline.

The proposal that is on the floor, we could just lay out five very succinct arguments on why it doesn't work.

I was going through a rather complete explanation of how the healthcare system works because it is kind of a basic understanding, but clearly, under the legislation that is going to be taken up this Thursday, Americans are going to pay more for less. And it is not just a few.

The senior citizens in Medicare are going to see a diminution in their benefits. We are looking at the 40-to 50-years-olds, which I have already discussed. We are looking at other individuals.

Pay more for less, we are looking, over the next 9 years, that 24 million Americans will lose their insurance or their opportunity to get insurance. And just this next year, just 18 months from now--excuse me, not 18 months from now. Nine months from now, we are going to see 14 million people begin to lose their insurance.

I talked earlier about this age tax, which speaks to those people that are 50 to 65 years of age. They are, under this legislation, going to pay up to five times more than someone who is between 20 and 30 years of age.

Present law says they can be charged no more than three times what a 20- to 30-year-old pays, and so this is what is known as an age tax. It simply shifts the cost to those 40-, 50-, 60-year-old people who happen to be the most expensive. And I talked about the $12,000 that they will have to pay in addition to that.

It guts Medicaid. We call it Medi-Cal in California and Medicaid across the Nation. The expansion of Medicaid was an extraordinarily important event that provided insurance not only to men and women who had no income, but to 85 percent of the people on Medicaid across this Nation who are elderly, in nursing homes, or elderly poor, unable to provide sufficient income from just their Social Security--those are called the dual eligible--or children.

Now, in the Affordable Care Act, there was what was known as Medicaid expansion; and those are the working men and women, families, who have less than 138 percent of the poverty rate. So those are the low-income working men and women who are able to get Medicaid, or Medi-Cal insurance in California. It simply guts it in a variety of ways, which we will come back and discuss a little later.

You can bet and you can count on there being less support for the elderly that are in nursing homes. There will be less support for the young families; the single-mother families who are struggling to get along, probably going to school, trying to learn skills; and for

the working families who are at $10 an hour minimum wage.

Finally, this is the one that ought to drive Americans right off the rails. This is a whopping $270 billion tax reduction for the top 1 percent of Americans. It is for 400 families in America, the richest 400, four of which are in the current Trump administration, including the President himself. They will see a $7 million a year decrease in their taxes.

Now, that is great. I am sure the President will enjoy that $7 million tax reduction, along with the $3 million or $4 million he is getting from the taxpayers every year so he can go to his home in Florida.

This is obscene. This is obscene because the way in which this thing works, working men and women and families across America at every income level are going to get less. They are going to pay for more, and yet the superwealthy in America are going to get a whopping tax reduction. This is the income distribution that we should never have, to take from the poor, to take from the middle class, and give to the superwealthy. I will come back and discuss this.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. Speaker, there is no better fighter than the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline) in the representation that he gives to the people of Rhode Island and beyond. The gentleman couldn't be more accurate about all that he said.

I was listening carefully to the story the gentleman from Rhode Island told of the individual who wrote him an email. I, too, have received many, many emails.

I was thinking, as he was describing the situation, of a woman who runs her own small farm near Marysville, California, in my district. For years, she could not afford insurance. She had a small orchard farm. She couldn't afford insurance. When she got sick, she went to the emergency room. She was able to get along.

But she knew that, as she approached 50 years of age, she would be facing a bad medical situation, and she did. She had cancer. She couldn't get a policy prior to the Affordable Care Act because she had a preexisting condition: she had cancer. Emergency rooms are not treating that. She wasn't able to get on a program, and she was going to die.

About that time, we established, in California, a covered California program that is an exchange based upon the Affordable Care Act. She, because of her income, was able to get a comprehensive insurance policy and a subsidy for her premium. She then had quality insurance, and she was able to get the cancer treatment because her insurance had no preexisting conditions and she was able to afford it. She had to pay a little bit, but she had a subsidy that made up the difference.

She is now looking at a situation, because she is in that age 50 to 65, where she will not be able to afford a $12,000- or $14,000-a-year premium because the subsidies were taken out and because of this age tax, the 1-to-5 ratio rather than the 1-to-3 ratio. It is horrific. She knows what she is facing. She is facing the loss of her insurance and, quite possibly, the loss of her life.

This is wrong. This is wrong.

I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island for joining us tonight. I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. Speaker, I see that my colleague from the great State of Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) has arrived. Often we have shared time on the floor. Ms. Kaptur, if you would care to share with us your thoughts on the Affordable Care Act as it exists. I know in your area it is a very important attribute in an area that has been known as the Rust Belt, and the effect of TrumpCare, RyanCare, on your citizens.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

I thank the gentlewoman so very much for joining us. She asked a little bit about the health care. I am going to do this very quickly, then I want to turn to my colleague from the State of Arizona (Mr. O'Halleran).

Under TrumpCare, or Ryan-TrumpCare, as I would like to call it, these huge tax cuts for millions of families, let's just focus on that for a second. It is the largest shift of wealth from the working men and women of America, poor and up through the middle class, to the wealthiest that has ever occurred in any tax break. The Reagan taxes, you name the taxes, including the Bush W. taxes, this is the largest single shift of wealth. It is well over $300 billion in the next 9 years.

As I have said before, the 400 wealthiest families, as I said, four of whom are now the President and three in the Trump cabinet, will get over $7 million a year in reductions in their taxes. In addition to that, the top one-tenth of 1 percent will receive over--well, nearly a $200,000 reduction in their taxes. That is the top one-tenth of 1 percent.

Beyond that, $300 billion will go to the wealthy. The top 20 percent of Americans will get 75 percent of the tax breaks. The remaining 80 percent of Americans will then share the remaining very small percentage.

So it is part of this enormous shift of wealth, and this does not take into account the fact that Americans are going to pay a whole lot more for their insurance. So, in addition to the tax cuts, there is also this issue of having higher rates, less benefits going forward.

So just to repeat again, the top one-tenth of 1 percent will receive nearly $200,000 a year in tax breaks. The top 1 percent will get 57 percent. The top 20 percent get 75 percent of the 300-plus billion dollar tax cut, and everybody else, in this case, the lower 90 percent, will then share in the remaining 43 percent. Different ways of looking at these numbers.

The fact of the matter is, it is a tax cut that guts the money necessary for Medicare expansion and for the tax subsidies that people count on in order to survive. It is obscene.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

I thank the gentlewoman for bringing us the view from Ohio. Let's now talk about the view from Arizona. Mr. O'Halleran, this being your first year in Congress, welcome. I am delighted to have you join us on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. O'Halleran).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. O'Halleran) so very much. The stories from the gentleman's constituents echoed across all of our constituencies, all across America.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), who is from the Central Valley.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa) very much for his excellent presentation. The gentleman covered many of the issues.

I want to wrap up with just a couple of thoughts.

One of my Republican friends came up to me earlier today. He said: I don't understand. I don't understand what our team is doing. All we are doing is changing the name and hurting people.

I thought about that for a few moments, and, yes, it is Ryan or TrumpCare, but people are going to be hurt all across this Nation.

One more story, and I think we will probably wrap up here, and that is of my wife's hairstylist. She is a young lady, married, private businessowner, trying to get along, and not enough money to buy insurance. The Affordable Care Act goes into place. She looks at the exchange, and she is able to get comprehensive insurance, maternity care, and at an affordable price because of the subsidies that are built into it. She was so happy when she talked to my wife.

She said: I have insurance. For the first time in my life, I am able to buy insurance, and I am going to get pregnant. I am going to have the baby that my husband and I have always wanted because now we have insurance--not just for myself, but for my child and my husband.

The next visit, she is asking: They are not going to take it away, are they? They are not going to take it away, are they?

Well, yes, for 14 million Americans--next year, 2018, 9 months from now, 14 million Americans will begin to lose their insurance. I am not sure if this young lady will be among them or the farm lady that I talked about earlier, but they are at risk all across America--14 million people in less than 1 year, and then, beyond that, over the ensuing years, 24 million Americans.

It has been argued that the Affordable Care Act is in a death spiral. I was an insurance commissioner in California for 8 years, and that is not true. It is an alternate fact. The fact of the matter is that the Affordable Care Act is working--not without some problems here and there, but it is working. It is not in a death spiral.

That is probably a good place to leave it, except this TrumpCare-- RyanCare--is a problem. You are going to pay more and you are going to get less--24 million people, an age tax on seniors, and a huge tax break for the superwealthy in America.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 27 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 22, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to cover several very, very important points.

Tomorrow is International Women's Day, and I was going to talk about the role of women in our society, talk about my five daughters and what they have been doing in their life of service, and my wife, but events intervened. And yesterday, our good friends on the Republican side introduced a piece of legislation that will dramatically affect women, young and old; children. They introduced a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

We are still trying to figure out all of the details involved in it. It is going to be a little hard, since it was changed late in the night. But there are some things we do know. I would like to start off with what we do know about the Affordable Care Act so that when we come to debate on the floor in the days ahead the Republican repeal and replacement of the existing Affordable Care Act, we have a foundation.

If you will indulge me, I will try to lay out some facts, not alternative facts, but facts. For example, 20 million Americans have gained coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act. The percentage of uninsured in America is the lowest it has ever been. Mr. Speaker, 6.1 million young adults between the age of 19 and 25 have gained insurance coverage by being able to stay on their parents' insurance program--6.1 million. Of the Americans who have preexisting conditions, and that is 27 percent of us who have some sort of preexisting condition--heart issues, diabetes, broken legs, bad backs, whatever--27 percent of those Americans are guaranteed coverage even though they have a preexisting condition.

I was insurance commissioner in California for 8 years, and I must tell you the battles--well, it would take several days to talk about the battles that I had with the insurance companies who were denying coverage because of preexisting conditions. No longer the case in America. The Affordable Care Act said no. And by the way, the lifetime limits, they are gone, also.

California, which I have had the pleasure of being a citizen of, 3.7 million Californians are now insured under the Medi-Cal program, and 1.4 million have gained coverage through the exchange, called Covered California. About 1.2 million of those have received subsidies, averaging over $300 a month. Over 5 million Californians will be directly affected by a direct repeal.

And in the expansion of Medicaid, or Medi-Cal as we call it in California, if that is eliminated, that is a $16 billion hit to the State of California, and, obviously, an enormous hit to those 3.7 million Californians who have been covered under the Medi-Cal expansion.

Secondary impacts: employment. Maybe 200,000 jobs would be lost in California.

Individual stories: boy, they abound. Just this evening, I got a call from my wife, and she said: You really ought to talk about that young family in Woodland, California, whose 2-year-old son was diagnosed with some sort of a medical illness. They were able to get coverage before that under the covered California program. They went back a year later, and the kid had a brain tumor.

Fortunately, it was resolved because they had insurance. They were able to get the early diagnosis. And under the current law, the Affordable Care Act, they will be able to keep their coverage, even though previous to the Affordable Care Act, this young child and, quite probably, the family would be uninsurable.

It is working. The Affordable Care Act is working. Are there ways to improve it? Undoubtably, there are, and we could sit down and talk about ways to improve it.

But yesterday, our Republican colleagues introduced legislation that is going to have a profound negative impact on men and women all across this Nation. We will spend time in the days ahead to talk about the details, but we do know that, in general terms, there will be less coverage at a higher cost for literally everybody, except for a few special folks. And I would like to just put up a chart about that. Let's start with this one.

You see, in the repeal bill that was introduced, there are very serious tax cuts. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts over the next 2 years. Well, we all want a tax cut. But under the repeal, there are some very special people who are going to get a really big tax cut. Take a look at this.

The top 20 percent of taxpayers will receive 74.2 percent of the multihundred-billion-dollar tax cut, which is estimated to be somewhere in the range of $700 billion to maybe as much as $1 trillion, depending upon the final calculations.

By the way, the Congressional Budget Office has not had time to score, that is to tell us what the cost, what the benefits are, of the Republican proposal. But we do know from earlier studies of this, 75 percent of the multihundred-billion-dollar tax cuts go to the wealthy. Wow. And where does the money come from? It comes from the poor, it comes from the working families, the men and women who are struggling here in America. Maybe they are making a good living--$50,000 to $60,000 a year. They are going to see their benefit package reduced.

One more way to look at this is the famous pie chart. So who gets the tax breaks? Not the top 20 percent. Let's just focus more clearly here on the top one-tenth of 1 percent. What do they get? They are not a percentage. This is not the top 1 percent. This is the top one-tenth of a percent. What do they get? Well, they get nearly $200,000 a year in tax reductions. That is not bad. So the top 1 percent gets 57 percent of that 6-, 7-, $800-billion tax cut, and everyone else will get 43 percent.

So what we have here is a massive shift of wealth from the working men and women of America, from American families, to the very top--you know, the 1 percenters. That is who is getting the benefit in this massive tax cut that has been proposed. I don't know if that is good policy. It is not in my district. I don't think it is good policy for America.

We spent a lot of this last year in the Presidential campaign talking about the shift of wealth to the superwealthy and away from the great majority of Americans. But, here we go. In the very first big legislation of this year, we see the Republicans in a massive effort to increase the wealth of the superwealthy at the expense of the rest of Americans.

There are many, many more things to talk about here. But I want to just take a deep breath, which I need, because I guess I am getting rather excited about what is happening--or maybe angry is a better word--and turn to my colleague from the great State of Virginia to carry on while I take a deep breath and cool off a bit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Scott, thank you so very much. You bring to this discussion a very important perspective as the ranking member of the Education and the Workforce Committee. You have that perspective of understanding the effect of this legislation on the working men and women and families of the United States.

I was just looking at some of the early comments that have come out about the bill, which is less than--well, it is almost 24 hours old now. Families USA said: ``The GOP healthcare proposal would be laughable if its consequences weren't so devastating. This bill will strip coverage for millions of people and drive up consumer costs.''

The Catholic Health Association of the United States said: ``This proposal would also take many backward steps in the continual effort to improve our healthcare system. . . .''

It goes on and on, and as more and more people come to understand the issues that the gentleman was discussing, I think they are going to find that, no, we will take the Affordable Care Act as it presently exists, and we will make some modifications to it to improve it.

The gentleman raised a very interesting point. It reminds me of another conversation I had earlier this week with my wife. She had gone to her hairstylist, who is about 29 years old, has run her own business for the last 7, 8 years, and she told me wife: It can't be true. They can't do it, can they? They can't kill the Affordable Care Act, the ObamaCare?

She said: For the first time in my life, I was able to get insurance; and now that I have insurance, there is this maternity benefit that is in my package, and now my husband and I, we can afford to have a child.

It was directly to the point the gentleman was making. If there is an option here on maternity coverage or any coverage for women's health, then we are going to find a situation where people will pick and choose; they will wait to get their insurance, and then the insurance pool is left with very expensive cases and the cost is not spread out.

The gentleman may have some other examples that may have come along or some other comments that he would like to make. I would be delighted to have the gentleman share those on the floor, and I will yield to the gentleman.

The gentleman is correct on that. I was just looking at some statistics here a moment ago about the shifting of cost.

Under the Affordable Care Act, there are many, many benefits for Medicare. Leaving aside the Medicaid population for a moment, the Medicare population, available to every individual 65 and older, there have been significant improvements.

You mentioned the doughnut hole earlier, the drug benefit. If you run up heavy expenditures on your drugs, you would come to a point where you had to pay 100 percent. Medicare didn't cover it. Well, that doughnut hole is collapsing, and in another 2 years, the Medicare program will cover all of the drug costs without limitation.

Also, there is the free annual checkup that is available to everybody that is on Medicare. The result of these kinds of things, where drugs are available, blood pressure drugs, diabetes and the like, has led to--together with the additional taxes that the superwealthy are paying--has increased the solvency of Medicare by 11 years.

Now, the fiddling that is going on with the proposal that our Republicans have put through, it is not clear exactly what the result would be; but we do know that one of the major tax cuts is the elimination of this Medicare tax that the superwealthy have been paying, and that is over--together with one other tax is almost $340 billion. So the support for Medicare and the solvency of Medicare becomes a question mark as a result of the proposals.

We don't have all of the answers to this, but we do know that a 60- year-old presently getting an insurance policy from the Affordable Care Act, from ObamaCare, and making somewhere around $40,000 a year-- perhaps working at Walmart--they are going to see a 57 percent reduction in the tax credit that is currently available versus what the Republican bill has.

So a 60-year-old making $40,000 a year under the ACA, ObamaCare, will receive somewhere around a $9,000 tax credit to support the purchase of insurance. Under the Republican bill, they are looking at $4,000--not $9,000, but $4,000--so 57 percent reduction in the support that they receive, probably leading to them not being able to afford insurance and winding up in your emergency room example.

Well, let me make sure I understand. I was 60 a while ago, but let's say I am 60 and I am getting a health insurance policy under ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act. I may have to pay three times what a 25-year-old pays, but under the proposal that has been brought to us by the Republicans, I would pay five times?

The fundamental nature of insurance is you gather a large population of healthy, not-so-healthy, and perhaps some very sick people into a large population, and the cost is spread across the entire population.

What we may be ceding here in this particular proposal is the unravelling of that fundamental insurance concept with young people, healthy, not bothering to buy insurance, staying out of the market; and then, eventually, when they become ill, they will get back into the market, leaving everybody else to pay for it.

There is another piece of this shifting of cost that did occur prior to the Affordable Care Act--significantly reduced, as a result of it-- and that is the uninsured still get sick.

The gentleman mentioned the emergency room a while ago, and for the most part, in America, a person can get to an emergency room with or without insurance; but if they don't have insurance, there is still a cost associated with the visit to the emergency room and any other thing they may need. They may need to have their leg repaired, a broken leg, or maybe they need an appendectomy or whatever. That is still a cost. The question is: Who picks up that cost? That is called uncompensated care, and it was a huge problem prior to the Affordable Care Act.

I had hospitals throughout my district and throughout California coming to me and saying: We can't afford this because we are not able to cover that uncompensated care for people that didn't have insurance that showed up at the emergency room.

Now, we know that from the early analysis done of the proposed legislation by our Republican friends that the number of uninsured is likely to increase, perhaps as much as 11 million people--maybe more, maybe somewhat less. Those people will still get sick. They may have money of their own to cover their costs, but the chances are they don't. That uncompensated cost will then be borne by the people who do buy insurance. It is a cost shift to those who have insurance.

There are so many pieces to this healthcare system.

One thing that I want to put on the table here from my experience as insurance commissioner in California is that there are two fundamental parts

to the healthcare system in the United States, and really around the world. One of those two parts is how we collect the money and then pay for the services. We call that insurance. It is also Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' programs, and the like. These are the way in which we collect money and pay for the services.

The other part of the healthcare system is the delivery of services; these are the doctors, the clinics, the hospitals, and other providers, mental health providers, and the like. We often get confused by putting these two things together.

There has been a lot of talk about what we are doing with the Affordable Care Act. It is essentially a mechanism to pay for services. It is an insurance mechanism. Using the private insurance system, these various exchanges are set up to pool the population of people who do not have insurance from their employer, the individual people, individual coverage. It pools them so that you have that large population so that the cost is spread out across that large pool and the insurance becomes affordable. That is an insurance mechanism. That is a pooling. It has nothing to do directly with the provision of medical services.

The medical services are then provided out of that pooling arrangement by the individual doctors, maybe clinics, maybe hospitals, maybe group practices. Some of that will be capitated pay, and others will be a fee-for-service.

We haven't changed directly the way in which services are provided, that is, the delivery of services. And this is found in hospitals. In the Affordable Care Act, there was a penalty for hospitals that had readmissions for infections. What we have seen, as a result of that provision dealing directly with the way in which services are delivered in hospitals, is a dramatic decline in readmissions for hospital- acquired infections. What that means is some 60,000 people are still alive today because they didn't get a hospital-acquired infection.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly right, and I see that in my district. I have a large rural district in California. And, even today, there are areas where it is difficult to find a physician to get medical services.

This is one of the things, as you so correctly pointed out, the Affordable Care Act had a part of that. One of the titles dealt with the education of medical personnel. And so what we have seen, at least in California--and I suspect across America--with the Affordable Care Act in place, we are seeing that one of the fastest growing areas for new jobs is the healthcare sector because we are adding a lot of people--we need more--and then the educational programs that you talked about, which comes under the jurisdiction, I believe, of your committee. That is an important part.

One of the things that I hope the American public comes to understand is this is not just a sound bite that was used in a political campaign. We are going to repeal the ObamaCare and we are going to replace it is a nice sound bite. But we are talking about the lives of Americans, we are talking about their health, their ability to stay healthy, their ability to get medical services.

When you start tinkering with something that is so personal--that is what people say in my district: This is about my ability to stay healthy, my ability to get medical care. That is what I hear.

They are saying they are frightened. They are concerned that the legislation and all of the discussion in the political campaigns has been so heated that they are afraid they are going to lose what they presently have.

A quick look at what has been presented to Congress just in the last 24 hours indicates that a couple of facts are clear. First of all, there is an enormous tax break for the very, very wealthy, probably to the tune of 3- to $400 billion over 10 years. That is an incredible tax break for the superwealthy and for the health insurance industry. That, we are pretty sure, is in this legislation. We don't know the exact numbers; but we do know that early indications are that there is a shift, tax breaks for the wealthy, and cost increases for everybody else. That we know.

We also know that there are certain elements of support for individuals that will be removed. As we go about debating this and understanding the full import and get the Congressional Budget Office information, I think we are going to find that Americans are going to say: Well, wait. Wait, wait, wait. You are doing what to me? What are you doing to me? You are taking away my health insurance?

I suspect that will lead to a rebellion of some sort. Certainly it has agitated a lot of people in my communities about the justifiable fear of what may be coming to Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Virginia is absolutely correct about that. Unfortunately, my understanding is that as early as tomorrow--that would be Wednesday--that the committees intend to mark up the legislation. Normally, that means the version of the legislation that will pass out of committee is completed. And, I suspect, usually it is associated with a vote that takes place in committee. We don't know for sure if it is tomorrow or the next day, but we do know that if it is this week, we will not have the Congressional Budget Office information.

The gentleman mentioned something that I probably should have jumped on immediately because of my rural district, and those are the clinics. As a result of the Affordable Care Act, there are now seven significant clinic organizations that provide services to about 23 specific sites around my district. They are providing, really for the first time in many of the communities that I represent, immediately available healthcare services to a variety of people, some of whom have had an employer-sponsored health plan and others of whom are on Medi-Cal in California.

The apparent reduction in the Medicaid, Medi-Cal for California, support from the Federal Government that will occur over the next 2\1/ 2\ to 3 years will eliminate one of the principal ways in which those clinics have been able to continue to operate and, that is, the expansion of the Medicaid population in California.

It appears that the legislation that is proposed will shrink the Medicaid program across the Nation and severely curtail in California the support available for people who are currently on Medi-Cal. That will be devastating to these clinics in these rural areas.

We have had discussions about this. They say: Watch carefully. If this is what happens, we are going to be out of business. We are going to shut down our doors.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for joining us this evening. This is a fundamental part of American life, that is, our health care. It is about 18 percent of the total GDP, gross domestic product. It is extremely important in terms of the total well-being of our society and our economy.

Changes to the Affordable Care Act that are being proposed will have a dramatic effect. And what we do know about it is that there will be a massive shift of wealth from working men, women, and families to the superwealthy. We know that from the tax proposals that have been made in the analysis of the tax.

We also know that there is a very, very high probability that perhaps 11 million people will lose their insurance coverage, either in the private insurance market through the exchanges or through the Medicaid programs across the Nation. And the effect on the providers, the hospitals, the clinics will be profound.

So when we have something as important as this, it is just wrong. It is wrong for the majority in this House to put this legislation before the committees without a full hearing on what the effect will be. But it appears that tomorrow, Wednesday, we will have the first markup in this process.

What I want--and I think the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) does, too--is for the American public to hear the debate, to understand the implications where we are today with the Affordable Care Act and what it has brought to us in terms of quality and accessibility to health care and what it would mean with the proposed changes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for expressing Virginia's view. From California, it is, whoa, wait a minute, let's be careful.

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

Mr. Speaker, I see a couple of my colleagues have arrived and would like to speak, so I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).

Commitment to Civility

Those are wonderful comments, and I am sure they are going to last through the entire 115th Congress because our colleague from Kentucky would like to echo many of those.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the State of Kentucky (Mr. Comer).

Mr. Speaker, I welcome Mr. Raskin and others who spoke before me as they consumed their Special Order hour in a very unique way, which is not often seen here on the floor, and that is a colloquy between our Republican freshmen and Democratic freshmen.

I want to take up issues that I know were covered by many of the freshmen as they discussed their hopes and dreams about what we might actually be able to accomplish in Congress.

Let me start with a photo. This is the largest waterfall in California, and I dare say the largest waterfall in the entire United States. It is not a natural waterfall. It is actually a manmade waterfall. With all of this turbulence and enormous churning of water below, it is a failure of a manmade spillway in California. This is the Oroville Dam that has been much in the news over the last several days.

As many probably know, California suffered through a 5-year drought. As a Representative of the great Sacramento Valley of California, my Sacramento Valley and my State of California suffered mightily. That drought tore apart communities, seriously injured the economy of California, and the health of many businesses.

So we went from famine to feast, and we are suffering serious indigestion as a result of the feast of water that we presently have.

Oroville Dam was built in the 1960s and completed in 1968. This is the spillway presumably capable of carrying well over 150,000 cubic feet of water. What you see here is the result of a failure right here in the concrete in that spillway, resulting in a massive hole in the spillway and this extraordinary churning and erosion over here on this side. This went on for some time.

The operators of the dam, the Department of Water Resources in California, said: Well, we are going to have to shut this down and take a look at the problem.

They did. And the problem was, while they were expelling 100,000- acre-feet of water, there was 200,000-acre-feet of water coming into Lake Oroville.

I am going to take a few moments to explain this and then explain how California has successfully dealt with what could have been a serious tragedy.

Oroville Dam is the highest dam in California, some 770 feet high. The concrete spillway that I just showed you the picture of the largest waterfall in the Nation--not as high as Yosemite Falls, which is over 1,200 feet--is 700 feet down here to the river. It is 770 feet, actually. Right here is where the damage occurred. This is the emergency spillway, which was never to be used.

When this dam was built in the 1960s, they said: Well, we will build the regular spillway, but we will put this emergency spillway in here. This is a 30-foot-high concrete wall. Below it is the natural Earth and dirt of the Sierra Nevada mountains and foothills.

They shut down the spillway and 200,000 cubic feet of water comes into the reservoir. The reservoir rapidly rose to the point of where it was going over the top of the emergency spillway. Lo and behold, when you run 12,000, 15,000 cubic feet of water per second over the top of that spillway, you hit the dirt on this side and it drives down the river with incredible erosion.

This entire area was eroded. But most importantly, the erosion moved back towards the base of that 30-foot-high concrete wall, jeopardizing the integrity of that 30-foot-high barrier against millions upon millions of gallons of water stored in the reservoir.

All of this occurred on Sunday, 3 days ago. The call went out from the Department of Water Resources, Oh, my, we have a potential problem, as they observed the potential erosion against the foundation of that 30-foot-high wall. They said it is possible that that erosion could cause a catastrophic failure of the 30-foot-high wall, sending down into the river channel a 30-foot tsunami, the result of which would be a catastrophe downstream.

This might be a little hard to observe, but I am going to give it a try. Here is the dam right here. Adjacent to the dam is the town of Oroville, just downstream from the dam. Then, the Feather River continues down through my district, Marysville and Yuba City. This is all farm county up here with some significant towns like Gridley in this area, and Live Oak further down, which I represent. This area is represented by my colleague, Doug LaMalfa, who represents the northern San Joaquin Valley.

The reservoir is here. The spillway is here. There is a 30-foot wall of water cascading down the emergency spillway, hitting the river and spreading out 30 miles across the Sacramento Valley, all the way to the west side of the valley where the Sacramento River is. This red area is 100 feet deep in 1 hour. The city of Oroville faces a catastrophic event: 100 feet of water above the community within 1 hour of the breaking of that 30-foot wall on the emergency spillway.

It spreads out. Over here it is still 10 feet deep, 30 miles away. Of course, the water is going to flow down the river also. Two communities down here of 150,000 people, within 7 hours, would be facing water that would be 10 feet deep.

That is why they called for an emergency evacuation Sunday afternoon around 6 o'clock. Nearly 200,000 people left this area, all the way over to the west and all the way down some 30 miles down river, moving out to high ground up north to Chico, up into the Sierra foothills, and down towards Sacramento.

The water continued to spill over the emergency spillway. The Department of Water Resources, seeing the erosion, reopened the gates on the main spillway and sent 100,000 cubic feet of water down the spillway, creating an incredible but not lovely waterfall.

Fortunately, the water flowing into the reservoir very quickly diminished, from a couple hundred thousand acre-feet on Saturday and early Sunday to around 40,000 acre-feet toward Sunday evening and on into Monday. So the mathematics began to work in favor of the communities and in favor of the entire region.

Slowly, the level of the lake began to recede and eventually the water no longer flowed over the top of that emergency spillway. Nonetheless, you still had 30 feet of water behind that spillway and you had the integrity of the spillway in question.

They continued to reduce the water level in the lake and, marshalling resources up here, began to find a solution to the problem. When the sun came up Monday morning, the engineers went out and said: Oh, my.

There were four specific areas of serious erosion against the base and the foundation of that 30-foot wall with 30 feet of water still behind it. They decided to take emergency action to bring in by helicopter 100,000-pound bags of rock to stack in those four eroded areas.

Downstream, the communities of Marysville, Yuba City, Gridley, Live Oak, and other small communities were literally ghost towns. People were sheltering in various churches, fairgrounds to the north, fairgrounds to the west, east, and south. Nearly 200,000 people had moved out.

As this water receded and the emergency response began to take hold, people looked at this situation and said: Maybe this was the great would have, could have, and should have--would have, could have, should have.

Maybe when the dam was built, a concrete apron should have been built on the downside of that emergency spillway.

Maybe in 2005, when this entire project went back for re-licensing by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the call by the environmental community to concrete the down slope should have been taken into account and should have been done in 2006, 2007, but they decided it wasn't necessary or it was too expensive or whatever reasons, and so it was not done.

It will be done now. The cost of repair to the main spillway and to the emergency spillway will probably be over $200 million.

So the question arises for all of us: Do we want to wait until there is a disaster to take cautionary steps to put it back together, or do we want to get ahead of these potential disasters?

It is a question for all of us here. It is a question for the Congress and the

Senate and the President. It is called infrastructure.

You heard some of our colleagues earlier on from the freshman class talk about their desire for infrastructure improvements. Here is a prime example. Unfortunately, not the only example, but I want to share with you what actually is happening down river by the communities of Marysville and Sutter County.

There are 70 miles of river downstream from this point that has been in the process of significant levee improvement. Some $700 million has been spent over the last 5 to 6 years by the community, by the State of California, and by the Federal Government to bring the levee on the west side of the Feather River to a 200-year status. It is nearly completed, but not completely completed. There is another piece to be done even as this flood event takes place.

But a community stepped forward. It is called SBFCA. The Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency has undertaken that work--good for them--in the city of Marysville, which is a community surrounded on all sides by 20- , 30-foot-high levees. The Feather River and the Yuba River come together at that point at Marysville, a community that has seen catastrophic flooding in the past.

That community, too, together with the State of California and the Federal Government, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Yuba County Water Agency have been in the process of rebuilding and enhancing the levees around that community. These are positive examples.

Further down, the State of California has put together a flood control program for the entire Central Valley, from Mt. Shasta on the north all the way to the Tehachapi Mountains on the south, an extraordinary 600-, almost 700-mile stretch of the most fertile land in the world and major communities like Sacramento, with millions of people at risk of flooding. Different communities putting together their own flood control programs, reaching out to the Federal Government over the years, providing Federal assistance together with the State assistance to control the flooding that has been historic in California.

We need to continue this. We are not nearly finished yet in California. We are going to spend the $200 million here, and this will be concrete in the years ahead, and this main flood control system will be rebuilt.

But this problem is not just floods. We have seen the flood of Katrina in Mississippi where we discovered that, oh, my, the levees really could not handle a major hurricane. I will share a story of my own. When I was deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior, we were studying major storms, what would happen in a period of climate change, would we see stronger hurricanes. This was in the mid-1990s when I was there as number two in the Department of the Interior. We anticipated a major hurricane coming across from Cuba into the Gulf area and hitting New Orleans. We were so concerned about this that Secretary Babbitt said: John, I want you to go down to New Orleans. I want you to talk to the local officials down there.

I remember sitting in the editorial office of the newspaper, The Times-Picayune, sitting there telling them, showing them the map and saying: Here is what we believe could happen, and we, the Federal Government, together with the community, need to enhance your levees.

A decade or so later, I was sitting in California. I looked at the television set, and I said: Oh, my God, it is precisely what we predicted in the mid-1990s, and it came to pass. These are the lessons of history.

Here is another lesson of history. This is the Interstate 5 Bridge, the last bridge before you get from the United States to Canada. Interstate 5 goes from the Mexican border all the way through California, through Oregon, Washington, and then into Vancouver, British Columbia. This is a bridge that collapsed.

How many other bridges have we seen collapse? We have seen the bridge collapse in Minnesota, and people died. We have seen rail bridges collapse. In California this last week, the main Union Pacific Railroad going north and south between Sacramento--well, all of northern California--way down to southern California over the Tehachapis, the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge just south of Sacramento collapsed. The rail cars, at least a day ago, were still sitting there in the water as they were busily trying to repair that rail bridge. A good third of all the bridges in the United States do not meet safety standards and are subject to collapse, and in some cases deadly collapse.

As we go through all of this, we need to be aware of the extraordinary need that our Nation has for infrastructure improvements. I think some of us remember the comments of our former Vice President Biden when he landed in LaGuardia, New York, and made a comment about that facility. I won't repeat it here because I am sure my New York friends might find that to be somewhat degrading. But it was a comment that was well deserved about the quality of that airport. The unfortunate part is that that is repeated in airport after airport around the United States: inadequate, old, not up to standards, and very poor in providing the efficient transportation that we require.

We can go on and on. We can talk about the highway system. The Department of Transportation estimates that we need over $836 billion just to maintain and bring up to standards the American highway system, both highways and bridges.

The public transportation system has a $90 billion backlog for public transit for the state of good repair. This isn't expansion. This is just to have good repair for what we need in our transit systems.

We can go on and on. Bridges, $20 billion. As I said, one in three of the bridges in the Nation--it is actually one in four--are structurally deficient and functionally obsolete. Sixty-five percent of our Nation's roads are in less than good condition. Our rail and bus transit systems face a $90 billion backlog, as I just said.

The 59 busiest ports in the United States only operate at 35 percent of capacity because the channels are filled with silt, and modern ships are unable to enter those ports.

The FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, has identified a need for $32 billion for improvement of our airports. It goes on and on and on.

America does not want to face this kind of devastation, with the failure of dams. I don't have the exact number of dams in the United States--I think there are some 83,000--but a good percentage of those dams are structurally deficient from many different ways. Obviously, Oroville Dam was one of them. It didn't have a sufficient spillway to handle the extraordinary flows of the river.

Another one central to California's water system is the San Luis Reservoir, a 2-million-acre-foot reservoir south of Sacramento, east of San Jose, that is central to the water supply of California, both for southern California, for the San Joaquin Valley, the farmers there, as well as for Los Angeles. The Oroville Dam is the key dam for the California water system, which supplies water to Silicon Valley, to the San Joaquin Valley, as well as to Los Angeles.

We have work to do all across this Nation, and we can do it. There is a lot of talk going on about the infrastructure program. Our new President has suggested a trillion dollar infrastructure program, somehow financed with private investment. Now, I don't know how that would work in repairing a dam such as Oroville or San Luis. I am not sure how a private investor would fit into that, but undoubtedly there are models in which there can be public-private partnerships. But that will not suffice.

There are programs that have been suggested by my colleague here in the House, by Mr. DeFazio. Mr. DeFazio has what he calls ``a penny for progress.'' It is a program that would provide nearly a trillion dollars of infrastructure investment for highways over a 10-year period. We would borrow the money, and then pay it off with a one-penny increase in the excise tax for gasoline and fuel as it would keep pace with inflation. A novel idea, one that probably would work if we could find the votes for it.

Over on the Senate side, the Senate minority leader, Mr. Schumer, has introduced a $1 trillion package of all

types of investment in infrastructure, and it is a project that deserves our attention. It is a project that would provide significant money for highways. In his proposal, he would create 15 million jobs over the next 10 years for investment in many different kinds of infrastructure.

He has something that I have talked about here on the floor now for 7 years. We call it Make It In America, Buy America, use our tax money to buy American-made products, bring our manufacturing back. If you are going to use rebar to rebuild that spillway, then use American steel. If you are going to put a pump in this dam to drain some facility, buy an American pump. After all, it is our taxpayers' money. It is my money. It is your money. Use the Buy America principle.

He has a couple of other principles that I think are very important. He wants protections for American workers, and this is both life and health and safety protections but also wage protection, the Davis-Bacon and the prevailing wage programs, all of which I think pull up the bottom with good working wages for men and women in the construction industry. Also, make sure that there is an opportunity for minority- and women-owned businesses, and of course the environmental protection. These are kind of the principles of his program, which I happen to think are appropriate.

So what would he spend the money on? He would suggest that we spend $210 billion repairing the roads and bridges. Now, remember, that is about one-quarter of what the Department of Transportation said is needed for the backlog, but, nonetheless, that is a good start. For roads and bridges, $210 billion over the 10-year period. That is 1.3 million new jobs.

He would also want to spend $110 billion for new water and sewer systems. Not bad when you talk about places like Flint, Michigan, and the contaminated water in their water supply. In our own Central Valley of California, we have numerous communities that have inadequate water and, in many cases, water that is contaminated with various chemicals, both natural and from the business environment.

Senator Schumer suggests that we spend $180 billion to expand and replace our rail and bus systems. That is more than just the transit programs. I suppose that is to make sure that the Union Pacific bridges don't collapse.

He would also have $200 billion for vital infrastructure projects. These would be the most critical, the high-priority projects across the Nation. I would suggest to the Senator, Mr. Speaker, that the Senator might consider rebuilding the spillways on the Oroville Dam.

He would also invest $75 billion on American schools so that our schools are new and modern and meet the needs of our students, another $70 billion on the ports. Remember, I was talking about this earlier, about the ports that are inadequate. This feeds back to what Mr. DeFazio has suggested, that we have the harbor maintenance fund. These are fees that are collected on every good that arrives or every container that arrives at our ports, and that money be spent on the ports, both in the water as well as on the dock.

That money, unfortunately, is not spent just there. It winds up in the Treasury for who knows what purpose. So we would bring that money back to spend on our ports, modernizing them. Keep in mind that Panama, the new Panama Canal, has been expanded, bigger ships, deeper draft, so we need to dredge these ports, we need to build the wharves, the docks that can handle them.

Senator Schumer would also recommend that $100 billion be spent in energy infrastructure to meet the needs of a modern energy system that is not dependent upon coal and oil but, rather, renewable sources of all kinds. And broadband, which is exceedingly important. In my district, which stretches 200 miles up the Sacramento Valley, broadband is not available. So these are infrastructure investments that I would think all of us should agree on, that we need to build a modern infrastructure for a modern economy and a growing economy, and along the way create as many as 13 million jobs to do that, a project that would go forward over the 10-year period ahead of us.

So we have got the President suggesting a trillion dollar program, public-private partnerships, of which I suspect there are some right there, we have got Mr. DeFazio with a financing program for highways and transit systems and ports, and we have Senator Schumer on the other side with a trillion dollar program that would deal with virtually every part of the infrastructure, from broadband communications to ports, highways, bridges, and the like.

So we have, I think, an opportunity here in this Congress to address a critical need for America's future, not only for the safety of Americans so that all Americans can avoid the kind of catastrophe that California came very, very close to having on Sunday, with the collapse of a 30-foot dam on Lake Oroville, creating not this, but something that would be several times bigger than this cascading down the river and inundating communities to the depth of 100 feet or more.

It doesn't have to happen. We should never be penny-wise and pound- foolish. We should never delay these infrastructure investments because we know that bridges will collapse, and along with it the transportation system.

We know that dams are in jeopardy. We know that our highways are filled with potholes. We know that many of our airports are ancient and, in many cases, decrepit and certainly not up to modern safety standards and certainly passenger convenience. We know that our ports need to be dredged and new wharfs and docks built. We know that we need to have intermodal systems so that we can efficiently move cargo from the ports to the trucks, to the trains, and across the country.

We know the needs. The question for all of us is: Are we ready to meet those needs?

I would suggest to you that we can. We can do creative financing, as Mr. DeFazio has suggested. There is a role for public-private partnerships in all of this, as the President has suggested. There is also a place in all of this for us to make choices about how we spend the taxpayers' money.

This is one that I want to bring to the attention of Americans. We are in the process of making a choice to spend $1 trillion over the next 20 years or so to rebuild our entire nuclear arsenal. All of it. All of our nuclear bombs, all of the ICBMs in the silos in the upper Midwest, new submarines with new intercontinental missiles with new bombs on top of those missiles, new stealth bombers such as the new B- 21, new cruise missiles with new bombs. All of these things. New, fast, stealthy, unobservable, extraordinarily dangerous because the rules of the old Cold War or the old nuclear standoff don't apply.

One trillion dollars for what purpose?

We need to ask that question and we need to make choices. There are many other choices that we will be making here. Choices about building a $30 billion wall rather than repairing the bridges, in this case to Canada. Choices about nuclear weapons.

Our job--your representatives here in Congress--is to make choices that are wise, choices that protect you, choices that give all of us an opportunity to have good, well-paying jobs, a modern infrastructure on which the private sector can then grow and prosper, and men and women can earn a good middle class living.

Or we can make choices on things that really do not provide any of those benefits. It is about choices. It is about being prepared for tomorrow. It is about avoiding collapsed bridges and reservoirs that might fail and send a cascade of water down upon the communities.

So I ask my colleagues to consider, to ponder the needs of your communities, and to make choices that are wise, that look to the future, and build a solid foundation that won't fail when that 30 feet of water presses up against that foundation. Choices. I hope and I pray we make wise choices.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the investments in flood control infrastructure made by local flood control agencies in California, as well as by the State itself. Water in California is feast or famine. For the last five years we have had a famine, and now we have a feast.

During the massive California floods of 1997, 9 lives were lost, 120,000 people were evacuated and roughly 23,000 homes and businesses were damaged across the state. The greater Sacramento area, part of which I represent, is the 2nd most flood prone region in the United States, behind only New Orleans. Mr. Speaker, my constituents take flood protection very seriously.

Because of this, there are many local agencies spearheading critical projects throughout my district that I'd like to recognize, including the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency, the Yuba County Water Agency, the Marysville Levee District, the City of Woodland, the City of West Sacramento, Reclamation District 2140, the State of California, and the Central Valley Flood Protection Board. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also played a pivotal role in all of these projects and should be commended.

Mr. Speaker, floods do not recognize the boundaries of congressional districts. Therefore, Congressman LaMalfa and Congresswoman Matsui should also be praised for their work on flood control as many of the projects undertaken by the agencies I mentioned have a footprint in all of our districts.

There is no question that investment in flood control pays dividends. In 2006, California voters passed Proposition 1E which provided $4.09 billion in flood control infrastructure. To date, almost all of that funding has been allocated. These bonds, in tandem with investment from local flood control agencies and the federal government, have funded significant improvements in many, but not all of, the levees that protect my constituents.

Those improvements were highlighted this winter, when almost all of the state's rivers and reservoirs were filled to capacity. Statewide rainfall between October and December of 2016 was 143 percent of the historical average while combined inflows to California's reservoirs were the 2nd highest in recorded history. Yet the levees held and we were able to avoid any major flooding.

Given all of this, Mr. Speaker, I stand here today to urge my colleagues and the new Administration to continue to prioritize federal investment in flood control infrastructure.

Mr. Speaker, well, let's see, I got a phone call from my district--one of several dozen today--and they all are kind of about the same thing: What is going on in Washington? What are they doing in Washington? What is happening? What is happening with ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act? What are they going to do about this wall? People are concerned. People want to know what is happening in Washington.

I suspect a good many of us are trying to figure out what the next steps are. It seems like every other moment something new is erupting from the White House, another tweet or another executive order, and we have had a lot of them. And so what I want to do today is to kind of go back and take a look at what has transpired over these last 2\1/2\ weeks. What has happened in Washington these last 2\1/2\ weeks?

Besides a lot of confusion, angst, and concern, some very, very important things are happening, and here is my take on it. I am going to kind of put a title on today, and I am going to say: What has Washington done to you, not for you. What has Washington done to you?

Let's start with the very first day that President Trump was inaugurated. Well, it was all about the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. So he set out to begin the repeal of ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act.

Oh, by the way, they are one and the same. It depends which way you are looking at this thing, but the repeal of the Affordable Care Act has dire consequences on Americans.

Some 30 million Americans could be affected, according to the Congressional Budget Office, or in my State, we are looking at maybe 5 million people could lose their health coverage, their insurance, as a result of that. There is $16 billion that immediately flows to the State of California for the expansion of the Medicaid, Medi-Cal program in California. That would be gone. And those people that are on that program would simply not be able to get care.

It goes beyond just those who are in the exchanges. The exchange in California is working quite well. Maybe a 1\1/2\ million people in California are covered through the exchange, and they have options in most every part of the State.

In my part of the State, there are some shortcomings because services are not readily available, but there are 34 clinics managed by nine organizations that provide medical services in my district. Every one of those clinics rely upon ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, for the services that they render. If the Affordable Care Act disappears, we repeal ObamaCare, those clinics are out of business.

And what does that mean? It means that thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of people in my district would no longer be receiving medical

services through the clinics, through the Affordable Care Act's expansion, or through the Medi-Cal program. This is serious business.

There is another piece to this, and I would like to put up some charts on that, but let's just go back and quickly review the benefits. The benefits are:

5.1 million seniors receive savings on prescription drugs. You know that famous drug doughnut hole; it has almost disappeared as the result of the ObamaCare Affordable Care Act.

32.5 million seniors receive free annual preventions, health checkups, every year. What does that mean? It means their blood pressure is checked out, their potential for diabetes, for other chronic illnesses, and they get the medicine for diabetes. They get better health care, and the cost of Medicare is reduced.

Also, it strengthens consumer protections for seniors in Medicare part D, and at least 85 percent of Medicare Advantage Plans' revenues go back towards providing senior services. That is just for seniors.

So there are many, many benefits in the Affordable Care Act beyond just those that are getting new insurance policies. It is a big deal for seniors. They are able to get an annual checkup. They are able to get their drugs much cheaper, able to provide them with the necessary pieces of it.

One of the very first acts that has been taken up here by Congress is the budget resolution passed by both Houses. It is now in effect, the first budget resolution, and that budget resolution tells the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee: Repeal the taxes that are associated with the Affordable Care Act. It is a lot of money, somewhere between $700 million and $1 trillion of tax cuts directly associated with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare.

Who gets the benefit of those tax reductions? Well, the top 1 percent would receive some 70 percent of the benefit.

What does that amount to? Well, it amounts to--did I say 1 percent? The top one-tenth of 1 percent would receive the great majority of the benefit, or $200,000 tax reduction for the super-superwealthy. The rest of them, the top 1 percent, get 57 percent of that $700 billion, and that is over a 10-year period. And everyone else, that would be the other 99 percent, will share in a much smaller portion, the remaining 43 percent.

For an average family, it probably amounts to maybe a tax reduction of $160. However, those are the people that are able to get their insurance through the exchanges, and so they are getting a really bad deal because the average exchange, for example, in California, is somewhere over $2,500.

So this is the tax repeal. It is a massive tax cut for the super- superwealthy.

It turns out that to pay for the Affordable Care Act, a very progressive tax was put in place, and it does provide benefits for those who are uninsured, the Medicaid population across the Nation, as well as providing the buy-down of the insurance policies that are available through the various exchanges.

Keep in mind, when people talk about repealing the Affordable Care Act taxes, what they are talking about is a massive redistribution of wealth in this Nation and a furtherance of this income inequality that has been such a problem in our society and in our economy.

So the repeal of the Affordable Care Act does many, many things, most of which would be quite a problem for working men and women, for the seniors, for the elderly.

I didn't mention here that a good portion of that Medicaid population goes to provide long-term care in nursing homes for seniors who are not wealthy. I don't have the exact percentage, but some people say it is 50, 60 percent of Medicaid benefits across the Nation wind up providing services in the long-term care facilities.

Is that important to seniors? Oh, yeah.

Is it important for children of seniors, you know, those people that are in their forties and fifties whose parents are in their seventies and eighties? They are deeply concerned about this particular issue of the Medicaid expansion being eliminated by a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and then they wind up in a situation of having to take care of Mom and Dad, trying to figure out how to do it on their insufficient income.

So we need to understand that the very first act undertaken by the President was to set in motion a very serious rejiggering, a reoperation of the entire healthcare system in this Nation, so much so that the standard insurance companies that provide policies to the great majority of Americans are going: Whoa, wait a minute. You eliminate the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, and we don't know how to price in the marketplace for the coming year.

Right now, those insurance companies are in the process of figuring out what their policies are going to be, how they would price them.

One of the things the Affordable Care Act does is to provide an opportunity for those that have preexisting conditions, serious healthcare problems, for those people to be able to get insurance; therefore, the risk is spread. Now, if the Affordable Care Act disappears, would this be part of the replacement? We don't know.

Our colleagues on the Republican side keep talking about repeal and replace. We don't have a replacement plan yet, but what we do have is a probability of a massive tax cut for the very wealthy. We are also looking at chaos in the insurance system.

So let's be aware of what is going on in Washington when we talk about repeal and replace and when you talk about ObamaCare--which, by the way, is also known as the Affordable Care Act.

I have, today, some of my colleagues joining us. I notice that two of them are here. We could go alphabetically, in which case--well, let me see, P-Q-R. That means Panetta comes first.

My new colleague from the Monterey Bay area of California will join us here. He wants to talk about some of these issues that confront Americans and explain to all of us what this Congress and what the President is doing to Americans.

I welcome Mr. Panetta to his very first Special Order hour that I have been able to work with him. I know you have spoken on the floor before, and we look forward to your comments tonight. I thank the gentleman very much for joining us.

I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Panetta).

Mr. Panetta, thank you so very much for joining us this evening. Thank you for your statement of your life and your family's work. We know your father. Leon has been a dear friend of mine and most of us here in the House. You're going to really be a tremendous addition to this House. Your experience as a prosecutor and in local government and county government positions you very well to bring the message.

Certainly, the Salinas Valley is one in which immigrants are the history, and they are the reality of today. Thank you so very much for watching out for them, for your passion, and for your extraordinary background in making all of us aware of what happens when sanctuary cities, immigration laws, and others are just tossed around without much thought about what the impact is in the community and to families, as well as to the economy of the community. I appreciate that and hope you will come back and join us on another Special Order.

From the other side of the country, we have Mr. Raskin, another new Member of the House of Representatives. Welcome. You have a fascinating background, and I look forward to your comments today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).

Mr. Raskin, thank you so very much.

Indeed, your experience as a professor teaching constitutional law will be a very valuable asset to this House, and particularly in the context of what is transpiring on the floor with the repeal of so many of the regulations that are protecting Americans in so many different ways, and certainly with the incredible array of outlandish executive orders emanating from the White House, not the least of which is the immigration issue.

So as we journey through this period of disruption and chaos, I am certain that we will count upon you to provide us with insight into the way in which all of this fits into the very clear framework of the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, there are so many other things to talk about here, and I probably have another 20 minutes to do it. I doubt that I will take all that time, unless my colleague from Iowa wants to engage in a colloquy about some issues of the day which we might find a very exciting and interesting thing to do, Mr. King. I see you await your turn here.

Over the last week, Congress--the last 2 weeks now, 3 almost--has enacted a series of repeals of regulations that had been passed in the Obama administration. On the floor today, not more than an hour and a half ago, three additional repeals of regulations took place. These were under the Congressional Review Act, a law that is some 25 years old now that allows the Congress to literally repeal regulations that are out there.

I will give you a couple of examples. Today, one of them dealt with the planning process for the Bureau of Land Management. About a quarter of a million acres of land are under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. This is public land. It belongs to all of us. This land is your land. Well, this is the land that belongs to the American people. The repeal today of a new public review process on land planning is--I don't understand it. I was once deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior, and I oversaw the Bureau of Land Management. I was operating under the law that was old in the 1990s.

But here we are with this repeal of a new process, a process that actually invited into the land planning for the Bureau of Land Management where are the roads going to go, how are they going to manage the various uses of the land, whether it is agriculture, for cattle, or for recreation, or hunting, whatever, that they invite into that process all of the local agencies. The county, the State, environmental groups, hunting, fishing, cattlemen, agricultural groups, whoever would have a stake in that, they were invited into the process. It shortened the process from 8 years down to something probably in the 2-or 3-year range to go through this entire thing, and, for reasons that I will never understand, the repeal eliminated the use of good science and economics.

So I don't understand what is going on here. This is a good process so that the public would be invited. Yet, the Congressional Review Act--should the Senate agree and the President sign this particular review--the Bureau of Land Management will never be able to go back and enter this process of land planning again.

They cannot issue a new regulation. What is happening here is nonsense. There is mountaintop removal in coal country, where mountains are simply wiped off the face of the Earth and all of that dirt is piled into the nearby streams. We have that regulation.

Providing clean water for the communities and the rivers for recreation or fishing or any other thing is gone and no longer available to protect the communities. It goes on and on.

I know one thing that the President did the very first day was an executive order to eliminate the reduction in the mortgage guarantee fee. This is a fee paid by homeowners--usually low-income homeowners-- who, because of their income, because of their financial status, cannot get a regular mortgage unless there is a guarantee. He said this was for the benefit of the homeowner. Baloney. This was for the benefit of the bankers.

We already know that he has appointed three people to his cabinet that are from Wall Street, particularly from Goldman Sachs, and another one from another agency on Wall Street. He was going to do away with Wall Street. No, he brought Wall Street into the cabinet. We are going backwards on this.

I am going to take a deep breath--I need it after all of that--and I am just beginning to get wound up and haven't gone through the other 20 things that are on my list.

I did notice that this is my day to welcome to the floor of the House of Representatives new Democratic members. Mr. Raskin is from the marvelous State of Maryland. I have two Californians here. Ro Khanna is from the Silicon Valley.

I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna) to share with us his take on his first 33 days in Congress.

If I might ask a question of the gentlemen. He represents the Silicon Valley--at least a large portion of the Silicon Valley--and the issue of net neutrality has been bouncing around here for some time.

Basically, the FCC, as I understand it, has decided that there would be net neutrality, which, as I understand it--and perhaps the gentleman can explain it better than I, so I will let him do so--may be the next thing that this new chairman intends to do away with.

Has the gentleman followed that?

Oh, the tweets.

I thank the gentleman for the explanation and the purpose of net neutrality. In a way, it is one of the things that, in a very real way, protects the individual--by having access.

What is happening with these regulations and many of these executive orders that the President puts out is to remove from the individual protections that they have. I mentioned mountaintop removal in coal country and the protections that the indigent farmer down the stream has for clean water. That protection is gone.

You look at the mortgage guarantee. It is a small amount, but it is an additional $500 a year that an individual would have to pay, assuming they had to have a mortgage guarantee. Most low-income people have to have that mortgage guarantee in order to buy a home. It is $500 out of their pockets.

So it is the protections that have been in place. There may be others. I am sure that in the gentleman's area he may know of others, if he would like to share with us, but I really thank him for bringing to us his expertise in the area of communications. I know that he has worked in this area before. He represents a part of America and California where this is a very big issue.

I will use another analogy of flying below the radar.

A lot of this is flying below the radar because we are looking at all of the tweets that come out in the morning, the various news programs focusing on the President, and missing some really important things that protect Americans.

That is so very true.

Let me just go through some of the regulations that are being repealed here in the House over the last couple of weeks.

First of all, let's remember that the Congressional Review Act being used to repeal these regulations has two parts to it. One, it has the ability of Congress to repeal regulations, which I think is a good idea. The second part of it, I think, has some real shortcomings. And that is, once that regulation has been repealed, both Houses vote before the President signs it, then the issue cannot be revisited by that administrative agency.

I gave the example of the BLM, but it applies across the board. Regulations that deal with smoking on airplanes is a regulation. If we repeal that regulation, suddenly there is smoking on airplanes. You can never go back and do a regulation again in that area.

I thank Mr. Khanna for joining us and for bringing his expertise to us.

I am going to run down a quick list here. Oil and gas companies operate around the world. Our new Secretary of State was the CEO of ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company.

Did ExxonMobil pay a fee or a gratuity or corruption to a foreign country?

We will never know now because the Congress has passed a regulation that required oil and gas companies to disclose any fees, any money that they have paid to a foreign government for the opportunity to extract oil or gas from their country.

We happen to know that many of the countries in which these American oil and gas companies operate are rife with corruption. So this is a way for us to do an anticorruption program around the world that involves our national oil companies. That is on the way to being repealed.

How about mentally ill people being able to get a firearm?

I suspect 80 percent of Americans--maybe 100 percent--think that somebody who is seriously mentally ill ought not to be able to get a firearm.

Well, there is a mechanism. It is a national database. We call it the NICS database. It is a database that gun shops have to inquire if an individual is on that database for domestic violence, criminal activity, or for mental illness.

We have had a problem with the mental illness part of this because many mentally ill people do not get on the database for a variety of reasons. The counties, cities, States don't provide that information. In some cases, it is deemed to be proprietary or confidential.

But there is a way. It exists in the regulations today that would require the Social Security Administration--when it makes a payment for disability for severe mental illness to an individual, that individual's name goes on this database. When that individual may want to go down to the gun shop and buy a weapon, the gun shop would query the database and, lo and behold, the individual comes up and he won't able to get a gun.

It makes sense. It enhances the database. It adds to the database individuals that are so severely mentally ill that they are able to get Social Security disability payments.

Who is to object to that?

Well, apparently a majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate does object to that. Probably the National Rifle Association also. So now we have a situation in which we have a protection for Americans being protected from the mentally ill individual that could not buy a gun now suddenly being able to not be on the national database for those people that are mentally ill. One more protection is gone.

There are others, and I am going to run through them as quickly as I can here.

I don't know whether you believe in climate change, global warming. I certainly do. I have worked on this for

more than 30 years now, and it is a real issue. We know--there is no debate about this--that methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. In fact, it is far more powerful than carbon dioxide.

So the emissions of methane are one of the things that we would want to reduce going into the atmosphere to add to those elements in the atmosphere that creates global warming, climate change.

Well, the House of Representatives has passed a resolution through the law that allows it to do so--to roll back a requirement that the Bureau of Land Management put in place that requires oil and gas companies that are drilling for oil, drilling for natural gas, to control the leakage of methane from the gas well.

Wow, that is a terrible thing to do. Really? To require that an oil company, a drilling company that is going after natural gas on government--excuse me, your land, the American public's land--that they, in the process of drilling for that natural gas or oil, control, capture the methane that would otherwise leak from that well?

Well, that regulation is gone. The protections of Americans are gone. Greenhouse gas emissions are emitted without regulatory control. Many of these gas wells are in communities and in neighborhoods that will also enjoy more methane emissions.

One more--or maybe more. Oh, yes, labor violations. Labor laws have been on the books for well over 80 years. The labor laws are health and safety, worker safety, requirements on hours, working conditions, hazardous circumstances. There are many different regulations that affect employers. They have to provide a safe working environment for their workers. Some do. Well, I would say most work at making sure that their workplace is safe. Some do not. Some of those who do not provide a safe workplace have been fined by the Federal Government for those labor violations. It is a good thing. It causes those companies to provide a safe working environment for their employees.

A regulation was put forward by the Obama administration that said that if a company wants to contract with the Federal Government, they must disclose their labor violations, where they have violated the various labor laws. It may be hours of work, overtime pay, working conditions, hazardous circumstances, safety. They would have to disclose it. It didn't say they couldn't get a contract, but it did say that they would have to disclose to the public that they have not provided sufficient awareness of the various labor safety and workplace laws. That is on the way to being repealed.

What I want to do tonight is to simply say to the American public: Pay attention. There are many things going on here in Congress and in the administration that are harmful to you, the American public. The kind of protections that you have counted on--worker safety, environmental protections if you live downstream from a coal mining operation, any of those things--are in the process of being repealed, and your protections along with them. So be aware of what the new administration and the Congress is doing to you, not for you.

I could talk about the wall and about the $15 billion to $30 billion that is going to be spent if Mr. Trump gets his way here and builds a 1,400-mile wall. I want to just end with this, and that is choices. Your representatives, myself, 434 of my colleagues here and 100 Senators and a President, we make choices about how your tax money is going to be spent.

Should it be spent on a wall?

Well, let's consider for a moment spending it on a wall. This is $15 billion, the minimum amount of money, and it is not going to build much of the wall. But for $15 billion, what could you do for it?

I am from California. I was once a regent of the University of California and on the board for the California State University, so I am familiar with this system. $15 billion could fund the entire California State University system for 3 years, and that is nearly a half a million students. You could replace all of the water pipes in Flint, Michigan, 270 times over for $15 billion.

Choices. Do you want safe drinking water in Flint and other communities around the United States or do you want a wall? Are you concerned about the American military, the Navy, five Virginia-class submarines, or one Ford-class aircraft carrier plus a submarine? Or how about scholarships for undergraduate programs at the University of California, which I had the privilege of graduating from a few years ago?

27,777 4-year, full-time scholarships. That is the undergraduate population at the University of California Davis, which I have the privilege of representing.

There is one more place you could spend $15 billion or even one part of $15 billion, and it is on this. These are the deadly diseases in America. Let's see. Breast cancer, over the last decade we have seen breast cancer actually decline. Prostate cancer has declined by 11 percent, heart disease by 14 percent, stroke by 23 percent, HIV/AIDS by 52 percent. Alzheimer's has not declined. It has increased by 471 percent, and it is going to go even more.

What could we do with $15 billion of research on a disease that affects every American family?

We could almost assuredly find a cure for Alzheimer's. I thank my colleagues here in the House of Representatives for increasing the budget for Alzheimer's research from around $500 million to just under $1 billion. That was done last year. If we can increase that funding another $1 billion a year, the researchers indicate to us that we have a high probability of delaying the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years. With another $1 billion after that, we probably could find a cure for this disease that is going to bust the American bank. Medicare and Medicaid, that is where the big money is going to be spent.

So my plea to our President and those who want to build a wall is: We have choices. You want to do something for the American public? Let's spend that $15 billion to $30 billion on education. You want to do something for every American family? Spend some portion of that $15 billion to $30 billion by doubling the amount of money that we are spending annually on Alzheimer's research. You want to do something for the security of our Nation? Meet those critical needs that our military has. Whether it is a new submarine or an aircraft carrier we can debate, but we do know that we have expenditures that are necessary in that area.

So, Mr. President, don't waste our money. Don't waste our tax money on a wall. By the way, we know Mexico is not going to pay for it. Don't get in a fight with our trading partner and our neighbors to the south and Australia.

Be aware, Americans. Watch closely to what is happening here in Washington. If you are concerned, so am I concerned about where we are headed and about what this government is doing to you, not for you, but rather to you.

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

Mr. Speaker, feast or famine. California, for 5 years, had a water famine, and now we have a feast.

I want to shout out to the Army Corps of Engineers, to the local flood control districts in my district, in Sacramento, the Sutter Butte District I share with Mr. LaMalfa, and also other flood control districts. Despite the heavy water flows, the levees have held.

I ask all of my colleagues here in the House and over in the Senate to keep in mind that we need more flood protection all across this Nation; otherwise, there will be great suffering.

Mr. Speaker, I rise here to protest the deaths that are occurring, protest the horrible situation that our President has put upon us.

I include in the Record a letter that I have received from the University of California at Davis, and the Mayor of the City of Davis, California, who have so clearly laid out the impact that the immigration ban and the ban on refugees has put upon the university and the community.

[From Ralph J. Hexter, Interim Chancellor, University of California

Davis, and Robb Davis, Mayor, city of Davis]

We have over 5000 international students and scholars at UC

Davis, many of whom are actively questioning what future

actions by this administration might mean for them. This is

an incredibly disorienting time for all our international

guests.

Here are some specific cases that illustrate challenges

that students and scholars all over the country are facing at

this time. These are specific to our community. (Note: as you

know, F-1 status is for students at any degree level

authorized to study in the US at accredited universities. J-1

can refer either to students or scholars in the US Visitor

Exchange Program)

1. A former J-1 scholar from Iran is in the US arranging

the move of his wife and son, while awaiting green card

processing. He was to have left the US for final interviews

and processing but is now uncertain. He has an appointment in

UC Davis' Plant Sciences Department.

2. An Iranian PhD student who was to have started at UC

Davis this spring (he was accepted), recently obtained his

visa, was to arrive in March, 2017, to start classes April 4.

His ability to start then is now in doubt. In addition, his

proposed roommate, who is already here from Iran, was

counting on him to share expenses. This person now finds

himself in a difficult situation.

3. An Iranian F-2 (spouse of F-1) is concerned about her

ability to change to F-1 status to become a student. She has

been accepted at UC Davis.

4. An Iranian student applying for a Master's program in

Engineering at UC Davis is asking about whether she should

continue her application process.

5. The spouse of an F-1 student (F-2 status) is currently

stuck outside the US and unable to be reunited with her

family.

6. An Iranian F-1 PhD student, who started in Fall 2016

quarter had invited his father to visit. This student has a

sister with two children in the US and she and they are

American citizens. The father/grandfather had a visa

interview scheduled in Yerevan, Armenia for February 8th so

he could come on a tourist visa to visit the student son and

daughter and grandchildren. His visa interview has now been

canceled. Attached are the pictures of the two grandchildren

he will not be able to see. He has not been able to see his

daughter for five years.

7. Scholar advisors at UC Davis are being asked by scholars

of these countries if it is safe to travel within the USA.

The fact that scholars must ask this shows the fear that

exists.

8. Departmental staff is questioning whether to admit

students or invite scholars from these countries for summer

and fall arrivals. There is much confusion.

9. A high profile scholar from one of the countries (his

profile might put him at risk) was set to come to UC Davis to

do research on responses to humanitarian abuses in his

country. Because of the order, UC Davis was not permitted to

provide him with documentation necessary to obtain a visa.

These stories were gathered in the past 5 hours WITHIN the

City of Davis and the University. We are a small city of

65,000.

The fact that Iranians are the main nationality represented

comes as no surprise. UC Davis and the City of Davis are home

to many Iranians and have been for a generation at least. The

fact that the Trump Administration can point to NO attacks by

Iranians on US soil or against US interests makes their

exclusion seem particularly arbitrary and cruel to us.

It is a terrible situation, but I do want to----

I will just finish this up very quickly. I think we need to look to where this problem emanates. It emanates from the President's adviser, Mr. Bannon. He has been at this for some time talking about the nature of America being a White nationalist nation. So if we look beyond the horror that this ban places, we need to look to where it emanates, Mr. Bannon, clearly this comes from him, and we need to focus our attention on what he has done to this Nation's values.

I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Madam Speaker, today is Tuesday, January 31. It has been 11 days since the inauguration of our new President; and, oh my goodness, has it been an extraordinary 11 days. I just hardly know where to begin.

Normally I come up here, and we talk about how we can grow the American economy, how we can provide jobs, how we can see a return of our manufacturing industries, but I am compelled today to pick up comments on the last 11 days.

I was at a dinner out in California on Friday evening, and a wide variety of people from multiple interest groups were there: some labor unions, some farmers, senior citizens, healthcare folks, teachers. There was an overwhelming sense of concern--deep concern--about the direction this country is going. Some of these friends of mine were Republicans and others were Democrats; some liberal, some conservative.

But to a person, they came up to me and said: Oh, my God, what is happening in Washington? Where is this going? What is he doing? What does it mean to us?

And some of them said: Will they really actually terminate the Affordable Care Act? Is ObamaCare really going to end? What about my insurance policy; will I lose it? I am on Medi-Cal. What will happen to me?

And teachers saying: How does this fit with the effort to improve our schools?

And some that had been in the military looked at some of what was going on and said: But veterans' care, this hiring freeze affects the Department of Veterans Affairs. What does it mean to me? What is happening in Washington?

Some others were concerned about, well, there is going to be this transportation bill, infrastructure bill. How are they going to fund it? Is it really going to happen?

I have been to many events in my years in public office, but I have never been to an event in which there was this overwhelming concern about what's going to happen in Washington.

I have seen changes occur. Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, there was concern, but not the kind of angst, deep emotional concern about where this country is going. I have seen George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton, and I am sure there were many Republicans concerned about where Bill Clinton would go, and then Clinton to George W. Bush, and then to Obama, but nothing like this.

It is not just last Friday night. Today, in front of my office in Davis, California, 200 people showed up to say: You have got to do something. You have got to make it clear that we can't have these shutting down our borders. You can't let them do that. Davis, California, the University of California, there are 5,000 foreign students and teachers on that campus. There are more than 200 from the countries that are affected by the immigration and by the ban on people coming in from those seven countries. What does it mean, they asked me? And what about the Affordable Care Act?

All across this Nation people are demonstrating. It is now 20 minutes to 7 here in Washington, D.C., and I suppose at 8 tonight the President is supposed to give a nationwide address on his next Supreme Court nominee. I am quite certain that tomorrow morning there will be another eruption of concern by Americans as to what does it mean if the Supreme Court throws out the role of the Federal Government in protecting voter rights? What does it mean if the Federal Government isn't there to assure that a woman's body is her own?

All across this Nation people are going: Oh, what is happening?

Executive order after executive order, starting with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and instructions to every agency of the Federal Government to stop it, see that it doesn't work. And here in Congress, a budget resolution that calls for the elimination of the financial support for the Affordable Care Act which, if you remove the money, what happens to the subsidies, the tax subsidies that people are able to use to be able to afford healthcare insurance, the additional money that goes to the States for their Medicaid programs?

And, oh, what about the seniors? If that budget resolution actually goes through, the money that is in the Affordable Care Act to provide the seniors the opportunity to have their drug benefit costs reduced, affecting millions of American seniors, the money is gone. Will the drug benefit be gone also? Most assuredly it would unless, of course, you want to just increase the deficit.

And about that free annual visit that is available to seniors that has clearly extended the life of thousands or tens of thousands of seniors because they find out they have high blood pressure. They can take a cheap pill, get that blood pressure down and not have a stroke. Or maybe diabetes, the onset of diabetes. That free annual benefit checkup, will it still be available if the budget resolution and if Mr. Trump's attack on the Affordable Care Act actually happens?

People are worried. People are frightened. And they should be. They should be. Because this goes to the very ability of Americans to carry on their tasks, protections that are necessary to protect Americans from fraud. The House of Representatives today voted to pass a rule that would lead to the elimination of protections that Americans have in their financial services. I don't know how we repeal the Affordable Care Act.

And how are we going to protect America by building a wall? What is it going to cost? 15, 20, 30 billion dollars?

Most people who look at the immigration issue rationally would say it is not going to solve the problem. And besides that, the problem is dramatically reduced as a result of the Mexican economy growing and jobs being available there as a result of the enormous build-up that has already occurred with the Border Patrol and the immigration service. We have seen a dramatic reduction.

I was told today by some people that work in this field in California that the people who are coming into the United States illegally are mothers and children from Central America who are seeking refuge from the horrible gangs and violence in Central America. They are not sneaking over the border. They are presenting themselves at the border as refugees. We will come back to the refugee issue in a few moments.

How proud he looks, signing yet another executive order, this one on a wall. We are going to build a wall, 1,400 miles of wall between the United States and Mexico. So with a look of pride, he wants to spend anywhere

from $15 billion to $30 billion. So tell me what you could do with $15 billion. That is the minimum cost of the wall. Most people say it is probably closer to $30 billion.

What could you do with $15 billion? Well, I suppose you can build part of a wall, or you could start to build a wall. You are certainly not going to finish it. But let's just say you have got $15 billion and that is your down payment on a wall that most everybody says wouldn't work. That is not a joke. If you build a 50-foot-high wall, someone will get a 51-foot-tall ladder.

I am familiar with the universities in California. California State University has 460,000 students. So for $15 billion, you could fund the entire California State University system, provide tuition-free education for 3 years for 460,000 students, and pay all the faculty and the janitors and all the others. That is for $15 billion.

Now, if it is a $30 billion wall, then it is 6 years. So a junior in high school, for $30 billion, could go free, tuition free, all expenses paid. Every professor, every janitor, fully paid for 6 years--460,000 students and thousands upon thousands of professors, teachers, janitors, et cetera.

Or you could replace every pipe in Flint, Michigan, 270 times over. Do you want to solve the problem in Flint, Michigan, the lead pipe problem? 270 times for $15 billion, or that is more than 500 times, 540 times.

Or maybe you are concerned about Alzheimer's. And what American family is not concerned about Alzheimer's? If we were to spend that $15 billion on research, we would undoubtedly be able to develop a treatment--and this is what the scientists and doctors and researchers say. And we did increase the funding from around $500 million to just under $1 billion last year. But if you were able to ramp it up and develop that treatment for Alzheimer's, you could delay the onset of Alzheimer's in your family, or mine, by 5 years. And what does that mean? It means about a $220 billion in savings to the American taxpayers because that is money that will be spent for Medicare and Medicaid.

Or maybe you are just interested in national defense. Do you like submarines, the new Virginia class submarine? Well, let's see. We could build five of them. Or maybe you like aircraft carriers. For $15 billion, you could build one of the new aircraft carriers and an additional submarine.

So President Trump, what is our choice? You don't like these choices, and you want to build a wall that nobody believes will do much good dealing with illegal immigration?

Oh, I like this next one; 27,777 4-year, full-ride scholarships for an undergraduate program at the University of California. That is about the total undergraduate population at the University of California, Davis, which I have the honor of representing.

But we are going to build a wall. We are going to build a wall. For what purpose? 435 of us here and 100 Senators and one President have a task of making choices about what America is all about, choices about how we spend your tax money. You want your tax money spent on a wall?

Oh, excuse me. Mexico is going to pay for it. Do you think so?

The President has started a trade war with Mexico, has created a serious diplomatic crisis with our neighbor and our third largest trading partner, over trying to force Mexico to pay for his wall. Oh, that was really smart. But, hey, he's the President and he thinks he can do what he wants to do. Well, the Mexican President said, no, no, it is not going to be paid for by Mexico.

So who is going to pay for it? I say we have choices. I would much rather us spend our money on education, national defense, Alzheimer's, and on things that actually help Americans in so many different ways. That is just one of the issues that is in play.

Immigration? Oh, we put out a new executive order on immigration, and seven countries around the world cannot have their citizens any longer come to America for some period of time, and refugees from those countries can't come to America. What are those countries? Well, let me see. Among the seven, I believe there is this country called Iraq.

Excuse me, Mr. Trump. Isn't Iraq our ally in fighting ISIS? I think so. It is their troops plus 6,000 of our troops that are now engaged in a bitter fight to reclaim Mosul, to wipe ISIS out of Mosul. And so you are going to put a limitation on Iraqi citizens and refugees coming to the United States? I am sorry. I don't understand what sense that makes, Mr. President. Do you? Do you understand what you just did?

There is a four-star general in Iraq who is responsible for their Special Forces that are leading the fight in Mosul right now. This man's family came to the United States for safety because of the problems that existed there in Iraq. He cannot visit his family. Unless there is some sort of a waiver that has suddenly been developed for four-star Iraqi generals, he cannot go to Central Command in Tampa, Florida, to work on a strategy for the rest of the fight.

Oh, my God. What is going on here? What is happening? What sense does any of this make? Foreign policy experts, national security experts, experts on ISIS, on radical Islam all say the same thing. The ban on people traveling from those seven majority Muslim states will have a negative effect on our ability to deal with ISIS. That is what they say. Not my view, that is the view of security experts all across the spectrum, from the most conservative to the most progressive and liberal and everybody in between. This makes no sense whatsoever, Mr. President.

We sometimes use the word ``half-baked.'' This is not even beginning the process of being baked. This was put together by somebody that didn't know what they were doing. If they had consulted with policy experts outside of that little cabal in the White House, somebody might have said: Time out, time out, time out. Let's think this through. Why Iraq?

What is going to be the second step here? Easy enough, we are going to set the ban. But what does it mean? What does it mean to Muslim countries around the world that suddenly America is seen as shutting the door--or, shall we say, slamming the door--on Muslims? What does it mean here in the United States? It means that we are not safer. It means that our country is not protected, and, in fact, the action taken is counterproductive. That is what it means.

Who did this? Who is the architect of this policy? Was it the State Department? Apparently not. Was it the Justice Department? We know from the midnight firing--well, I guess it was actually 6 o'clock firing-- yesterday of the acting Attorney General that it wasn't the Justice Department. They had an opportunity to review and look at the legality of the ban. They didn't involve themselves, and apparently the military didn't involve themselves.

So who was it that dreamed up this ban on men, women, children, refugees coming from seven countries?

None of the residents and refugees from those countries in the last 40 years has been responsible for one terrorist death in the United States. But those countries from which we know the terrorists came, from 9/11, were not included.

Saudi Arabia, not included in the ban. How is that, if we are worried about this problem of refugees who are citizens from those countries coming into the United States to carry out terrorist acts? Why didn't you look at Saudi Arabia? That is where most of the 9/11 folks came from. Or maybe Chechnya or Congo or Nigeria.

So who wrote it? Who is responsible? Well, two names have emerged. One, a Mr. Miller, and another, a Mr. Bannon, a Mr. Bannon who is the architect of the emergence of the alt-right. We are not talking about the conservative right. We are talking about the far right White nationalist movement in this Nation.

Mr. Bannon, who became Mr. Trump's campaign chairman, who is now the key person in the White House, not just on political policy, but on national security policy. He is said to have said, in 2013, that he is a Leninist and his goal is to blow up the system. He says he doesn't remember having said that. Well, I will take him at his word. But I do know that what he did with this ban for these seven countries is to make our Nation less safe. That, we know.

And just to double down on this issue of this superconservative fellow Mr. Bannon and his cohort Mr. Miller, just to make clear where we are headed, there has been a reorganization of the

National Security Council. These are the men and women that, over the years, have been responsible for making certain that our American policy maximizes our security that deals with international issues of great concern: what to do about China in the South China Sea, what to do about North Korea. How do we handle missile defense? How do we deal with Russia in the Ukraine? The National Security Council.

So what happened yesterday? Well, the President, which he has a right to do, reorganized the National Security Council. And two gentlemen, or two people, that have traditionally been on the National Security Council, who seem to know a little bit about national security, were previously in what is called the principles. These are the handful of people that meet with the President, the key national security leaders.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is one of them and the Director of the National Intelligence organization--the two of them.

The President says: I don't need you in my little inner circle. Go away. You can be part of the larger thing, and when I want you, I will call you.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the person responsible for the collection of our national intelligence--push him aside.

Who came in to take the place of the two people--the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence? Guess who? Mr. Bannon. Is he a national security expert? He spent a few years in the military decades ago, but now he is sitting as one of the principals on our National Security Council. What is his mindset? Read his history. I wouldn't recommend you go to Breitbart--I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time on that--but there is a history here. There is a history, and it is a dangerous history.

This man is now sitting as the principal voice, because he has the President's ear, on the National Security Council--the fellow, together with Mr. Miller, who is responsible for the ban on immigrants, travelers, and refugees from seven countries, which has become a major international, diplomatic crisis. ISIS is already using that ban--it is right here in the newspaper--to recruit in the Middle East, to recruit in Africa, and to encourage homegrown violence and terrorism here in the United States.

Well done, Mr. Miller.

Well done, Mr. Bannon.

And very bad for our country.

We are in the midst of executive orders, one after another--often two a day. My final concern is one that comes up 25 days from now. Five days ago, Trump went over to the Pentagon and signed yet another executive order. He came out of the meeting and said: We are going to have a new war plan. We are going to wipe ISIS from the face of the Earth, and the Pentagon will deliver to me in 30 days a war plan to wipe ISIS off the face of the Earth.

Action. Action. Action.

Go with care. Be slow to war.

We will see what that plan is. My guess is it will cost millions upon millions--if not billions--of dollars. It will put our troops--boots-- back on the ground in Iraq and Syria, and we will start the cycle one more time. We will see. We will see what the Pentagon comes up with in a war plan. We have not been told the specific instructions that the Commander in Chief has given to the Pentagon; but I will tell you that this member of the House Armed Services Committee is very concerned. Keep in mind that our effort against ISIS and al Qaeda is based on a 2001 authorization to use military force in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and related entities. It has been stretched.

One of the things that I am quite concerned about coming out of the Obama administration is that that administration stretched the 2001--a 16-year-old--authorization to use force--a declaration of war against al Qaeda--to justify the American military actions in Iraq, Syria, Liberia, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

We will see what the war plan is--we will learn soon enough--and I suspect that this Congress will be asked to finance it. We will be asked to pay for the men and women who will be sent into harm's way and for the munitions and the airplanes and the other equipment necessary.

I would hope that all of us take a long, long look at this and that we ask this question: If we do that, then what happens next? We didn't ask that question when we went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. We didn't ask that question when we invaded Iraq a couple of years later. I am not sure we have asked that question as we reengage ourselves in the current Iraqi war and Syria; but we should always ask: What is the result of our action? What is likely to happen?

We have choices. We have choices to build a wall or to educate our children or to care for our seniors. We have choices about war or not. We have choices about how we deal with people around this world, choices about what we do with refugees--people who are fleeing persecution, fleeing death--who are doing the very, very best they can to care for their families and children in the most desperate of situations. We have a choice. We can slam the door on them and say ``tough luck,'' or we can do what ought to be the American tradition, and that is to provide comfort, to provide assistance, and to show the good part of America.

Mr. President, you have given us 10 days of the most disruptive chaos I have ever seen in my many years in public life. You have a choice, too, Mr. President. You have a choice to take a deep breath, to not try to carry out every one of your campaign promises, most of which I think were ill-founded. You don't have to do it on day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. You can take a deep breath, and you can think, together with Mr. Bannon or with Mr. Miller or with, perhaps, somebody outside of your little inner circle.

Mr. President, you might ask other people what is the effect of what you are doing. Think about the second level of effect, and slow it down, and be aware that there are consequences. For every action, there is going to be another reaction. We are already seeing that. I am sure you have seen the millions of Americans in the streets protesting about which you have thus far done. Continue on, and you will see more because Americans are concerned. They are frightened.

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

I know the courtesy of this House, Mr. Speaker, and we are not supposed to direct our remarks everywhere; so let me amend my remarks.

Mr. Speaker, there are within the White House two individuals who I believe are responsible. So, Mr. Speaker----

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 9 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, February 1, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, indeed, we do have an extraordinary country. Down through the last 230 years, this Congress has met, has discussed, decided, voted upon, and set in place policies that advanced our country. And we are so very fortunate, all of us Americans, to be living here with all the promise that this incredible history has given us.

But at this period of time, we also have some profound questions about where this country is going. We wake up and we say: What is happening here? What is happening in the international scene? What is all this about Russia hacking? What is all this about trying to influence the American election? Did they really, and did it really happen, and was it effective?

Well, we know it really happened. The American public is scratching their head and they are saying: What is it?

And then all this talk about change, all this talk about we are going to change things; we are going to repeal ObamaCare, and we are going to replace it with something great. Hmmm. I wonder what that might be. And I suspect all across this Nation there are men, women, families that are also wondering: What do they mean it will be great? What is it that is great?

Well, if you were to go around the Capitol, if you were to talk to Members in the House of Representatives or over in the Senate and say: So it is gonna be great; what is it?

Well, we will tell you tomorrow or we will tell you later, but it will be great.

Maybe, maybe not.

Right now, the Senate is working on a piece of legislation that will set the stage for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act--and some would derisively call it ObamaCare. Repeal it.

Oh, yeah, get rid of that thing. But not to where it is going to be great as soon as it is gone.

Really? I don't think so.

I know that in my part of California, a lot of people--in fact, more than 20,000--don't think it is great at all. They are going to lose their health care. And there are a whole lot of seniors in my community that are going: Wow, it is going to be great.

Really?

But I will lose my annual check-up. And that awesome drug doughnut hole that was so frightening just years ago is going to come back? That is not so great.

I drove into town or into the Capitol today. I don't live so far away, but it is 20 degrees, and I decided I would rather drive than freeze. So I drove in and an advertisement came on the radio, and it said: You are going to get a trillion-dollar tax cut. Wonderful. The middle class will have a trillion-dollar tax cut. I said: Well, that is not what I saw last night when I read the statistics about the great repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, I read something quite different from the tax committees, from Americans, various people.

Let me put something up here. Here it is. Who gets that trillion- dollar tax cut? Who is it? Is it the middle class? Well, I don't think so, because when you look at the numbers, it goes to the very wealthy. They are the ones who are going to get the tax cut with the repeal of ObamaCare.

When the Affordable Care Act is repealed the way it is presently going, the bill that is over in the Senate will require that the taxes that were put in place to support the Affordable Care Act and to provide insurance for 20 million people--that is both the government insurance, the Medicaid, Medi-

Cal in California, and the subsidized insurance from the various programs that exist State by State--that money was raised from the wealthy.

When the tax cuts come into place, here is the real story. The top 1 percent--do you remember the 1 percenters? Do you remember all that discussion about the 1 percenters and the 99? The 1 percenters get 57 percent of that trillion dollars, and everyone else gets to split the remaining 43 percent. The top one-tenth of the taxpayers in California--we are talking about the superwealthy. We are talking about the folks that are actually going to be in the President-elect's Cabinet, you know, the billionaires that he is going to put in the Cabinet. We are talking about those guys--oh, roughly a $200,000-a-year tax break. But after all, they are hurting. They need a few more hundred thousand dollars along the way.

So the trillion-dollar tax break that is the foundation of the repeal, if you eliminate the money, the program is not working. There will not be annual visits for seniors so that they can stay healthy, so that they can control their blood pressure, diabetes, mammograms, and all the rest that go with it. There won't be money for the 3.7 million Californians that presently are able to get coverage under the Medi-Cal program. There won't be money for the almost 2 million Californians that are in the subsidized pool called Covered California. That money won't be there. Those folks are going to be out.

And by the way, the repeal will remove the insurance for 30 million Americans all across the country. But who gets the real benefit here? The superwealthy, the top 1 percent will get 57 percent of that trillion-dollar tax break, and the rest of us will share in the 43 percent remaining.

Another way to look at it, folks. It will be great, but for whom? Well, if you break the American public into the five sectors, the first 20 percent, next 20, next 20, next 20, and then the top 20--so these are the real poor down here in the lower 20 percent, and these are the superwealthy in the top 20 percent.

So what happens? When you repeal the Affordable Care Act, as is now happening in the Senate--and it will be over here either this week or early next week; and then this House will take it up and it, too, will vote on that very same budget bill that will create a trillion-dollar tax cut over the next decade--who will get the money? There you go. The top 20 percent will wind up with a full 74 percent of that.

Despite that little advertisement that I heard on the radio, which said, ``Oh, the poor and the middle class are going to get it,'' really?

Let's see. Of the bottom 20 percent--6.7--oh, and the next will get 5.9 percent of it--do you have any idea what they are going to lose?

They are going to lose the subsidies on their insurance programs. They won't be able to afford it. They will lose their insurance. For some of them, they are on the Medicaid or the Medi-Cal program in California, and they will be out of luck unless, of course, the State of California can find $16.8 billion to replace the money that just disappeared with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and that money is then transferred to the top 20 percent.

These folks down here, the bottom 20 percent--actually, the bottom 60 percent of the American public are the losers.

Who are the winners?

The ones who are already able to buy insurance. I love this trick. I was the Insurance Commissioner in California. I loved this little trick: ``Not to worry. We are going to give an opportunity for people to buy their own insurance and give them a tax break.''

Do you mean these people down here have enough money jingling around in their pockets that they are going to be able to go out and buy the insurance and get the tax break?

Uh-uh. It is the folks up here on top who will, once again, benefit.

This really is a massive shift of $1 trillion from those people who are now insured, for those people who are now able to get care in the clinics that have been established across America--in outlying areas and in rural areas in my district. It is a massive shift from the ability of those people to get health care, for those people who are on the exchanges and are able to get subsidized insurance so that they can afford it, for those people who are seniors and are able to get their free annual checkups and have their drug costs reduced as the doughnut hole shrinks. It is a massive shift of money being taken directly out of their benefits and their pockets and going to the wealthy of America. That is what is happening. That is what this repeal of the Affordable Care Act is.

Then you look at the implications of that. What about the hospitals that have been able to ramp up their services? What about the reforms that were in the Affordable Care Act--the insurance reforms--that said to the insurance companies: ``Oh, no, no, no, you can no longer discriminate because that person happens to be a woman or has a preexisting condition''?

This is important, Mr. Speaker. If you are scratching your head and wondering what is going on here, listen carefully because this super rapid train is about to come into the House of Representatives and sweep through here, wiping out the healthcare benefits of 30 million Americans. For those who are not directly affected, they, too, are going to wind up in a very precarious situation because the reforms will also be repealed.

Joining me tonight to discuss this and Social Security--oh, by the way, Social Security is also on the chopping block--are two of my colleagues: Marcy Kaptur from Ohio, who has been an extraordinary leader on the issues of manufacturing, of making it in America, of looking out for seniors, and for people who are in need of help and support.

Congresswoman Kaptur, would you care to join us and share with us your thoughts on what is happening in Washington?

Thank you very much, Ms. Kaptur.

I loved your talk of the history and how it came to pass that we have Social Security and Medicare and what happened when we did not. It was really profound. It reminded me of my own history.

I remember, as a young kid, that my father took me to the county hospital where the neighboring rancher was--we were out on a ranch in California--and it was horrible. That is where he was sent to die because there was no Medicare.

Oh, the stench was unbelievable.

I am sorry your father endured that.

Your grandfather.

I was just thinking that I have got more stories to tell, but I really want to turn to our colleague from New York. Mr. Tonko and I are often on the floor--with you also--to discuss jobs in America, how to enhance our American economy with research, economic development of all kinds, transportation infrastructure, Make It In America.

Mr. Tonko, tonight we are on a somewhat different subject, but I know it is one that you are very familiar with, one that you have spent your entire career addressing in trying to help seniors and others who have been on the short end of the stick. Thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Tonko.

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure for me to be on the floor with Representative Tonko because of his passion, his knowledge, his ability to articulate with clarity, in this case, the importance of the Social Security program, Medicare, as well as the Affordable Care Act. The gentleman makes a compelling argument.

I want the public of America to really grasp the importance of what is happening here in Washington. Yes, we are going to have a new President, and there will be an inaugural and all of the celebration that goes with that.

Let me put it this way: When that is done, there is a majority of the Congress and the Senate, together with the President, that fully intend to embark on unraveling the very critical safety net for more than 30 million Americans. And for everyone else who has insurance at every age--Medicare all the way down who has insurance--they will also see a dislocation and an unraveling of their insurance benefits because this market could seriously unravel. So as the gentleman said so clearly, be academic, study the facts, and study the pros and the cons of the various alternatives that are out there.

I know, as an insurance commissioner and having been dealing in the issues of health care for many years now, that there are improvements needed in the Affordable Care Act. There is no doubt. We have been saying that since shortly after it became law. And even when it became law, I said this should be done this way or that way a little differently. We are 8 years into this and, as you say, millions, tens of millions actually--around 30 million directly--are involved and benefiting from the program, either through Medicaid, through the exchanges, or through the various benefits that are out there. So it is really, really important.

I want to also pick up on something that Representative Kaptur brought to our attention. I am going to put one more chart up here. I was surprised and a little bit appalled, just before we broke for Christmas, that the new chairman of the subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee who deals with Social Security introduced a piece of legislation. We looked at it.

It was just before the Christmas holidays, so I picked it up and started looking at it. I go: whoa, wait, wait, wait. This is a major step to unravel the Social Security system. Remember, back in the George W. Bush administration, in the first 3 years of his administration, he tried to privatize Social Security. He failed miserably at that. Thankfully, he failed. Congress wouldn't stand for it. At least, the Democrats in Congress wouldn't stand for it.

I see this piece of legislation introduced in the last session, in the last days, and I am going: Whoa, what does this mean? This man becomes the chairman of the subcommittee that deals with Social Security, and I am going: oh, no, they wouldn't; they wouldn't go after Social Security again. But the bill does. It does it in a way that, once again, gives enormous benefits to the wealthy and not so much for the others.

This is a little chart about what happens if that piece of legislation by Mr. Johnson actually becomes law. These are the benefits that would be received today. In 10 years, these would be the benefits. This is the top 20 percent rather, and right here is the middle. That is about a $3,000 a year reduction.

Keep in mind that, I think, well over 50 percent of the seniors in the United States depend upon Social Security as their principal source and, in many cases, their only source of income.

So you get a decline. What do they want to do? They want to increase the age to 69 before you could apply for full Social Security. They want to radically change the cost-of-living index. I know what I heard from my constituents when there was no cost of living over the previous 2 years--and a very small one this last year--the cost of care for seniors continues to rise because they are on the expensive side of things. There are some other provisions in it. So this is a wake-up call. This is a wake-up call.

Clearly, the majority party here in the House and in the Senate have promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which we have talked about. They have also made it clear that in the past--and we believe in the months ahead--they will attempt to privatize a large portion of the Medicare program. So Medicaid will be largely gutted, and the increases that we have seen through the Medicaid program will be wiped out.

The Medicare program will have significant benefit reductions, and, if they intend to voucherize it, which they have talked about, then as Representative Kaptur said, they will throw the seniors to the mercy of the insurance companies.

My basic point tonight was to raise the alarm and to begin to discuss here amongst our colleagues the reality of what is being planned for America. Don't look at this as a partisan issue, Republican or Democrat. Look at this as a personal issue.

Look at this as an issue that was given to me by a woman who is a farmer in the community I represent north of Sacramento who never had insurance. She was an entrepreneur, a self-employed farmer. She never had insurance. If she needed care, she would go to the emergency room. That worked when she was young, but then she became a little older, and then cancer.

The treatments for her cancers were unaffordable. She would go bankrupt. The Affordable Care Act came along with guaranteed coverage and an insurance policy through the exchange in California that she could afford that would provide her with unlimited medical services for the rest of her life. No cap, no annual cap, no lifetime cap. She got her cancer treatments, and she has moved along. She said: I still need care. And if they repeal the Affordable Care Act, I won't get it and I will die.

That story is repeated across America. It is repeated in my district. I can give many more examples. So this really is, in her case and in many others, a life-or-death situation. So, yes, we will be academic as Mr. Tonko has said. We should be. We should understand the implications of one policy versus another. We should understand when you start with repealing a trillion dollars of taxes, that will have a profound impact on health care in America. And the benefits will go to the wealthy. That is academic.

But it is also this woman, a small farmer who developed cancer. She had no hope. The Affordable Care Act comes along, and she is able to get insurance and she is able to get the chemotherapy necessary to save her life. She is back on the farm.

Repeal the Affordable Care Act and this woman, along with millions of Americans, are in serious jeopardy. So be aware. Social Security on the chopping block; Medicare on the chopping block; the Affordable Care Act is on the chopping block. Tax reductions for whom? Yes, mom and pop would get $130 a year from the tax cuts. The billionaires in the Trump administration would get $200,000 a year in tax cuts. Mom and pop are likely to lose their insurance.

I now yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Tonko very much. It is always a pleasure and learning experience to be on the floor with Mr. Tonko.

I now yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). We are about to wrap it up as we are nearly out of time.

As we look at this issue, this conversation puts before us and the American people really two paths to travel. The President-elect recently said: We're going to repeal ObamaCare, and it'll be great. And our Republican colleagues have bought into that and are now processing legislation to do that.

The discussion today from my two colleagues here indicates another path, and that is, make it better. Make the Affordable Care Act better. The drug issue, there is no reason in the world that the pharmaceutical companies should be prevented from price competition. They are. It is the law of the land that prevents the government and other purchasers-- the government from negotiating prices. That is a law that can be changed.

There are many things that we could do to improve the health care of America. But two paths: one, working together to improve the Affordable Care Act and Medicare and Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration, the programs that provide the health care and the insurance for Americans; or another one, a path that is going to be extraordinarily destructive.

The repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which is already underway in the Senate and will soon be over here in the House, promises Americans not just the 30 million that have insurance but all Americans with a very serious health problem in the future.

Final comments, and then we will be out of time.

Very briefly.

I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) for joining us. I can assure you, we will be back.

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

``The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular State.''