Floor Statements

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

I rise in strong opposition to this amendment, although I appreciate the concern of the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

First of all, we all know how important Medicare is to our seniors. Two hundred thousand new beneficiaries sign up every month, and anything that would disrupt their entry up into the system would be a terrible hardship to impose on our seniors. This amendment would actually interfere with the operation of the current system before a new system could be put in place, causing serious disruption in the Medicare program in the enrollment process for new beneficiaries.

That much said, CMS does share the gentleman's concern and is in the process of examining this issue. That

project is currently in the information-gathering phase, focusing on identifying all of the systems and entities and understanding the nature of the transactions that rely on a beneficiary identifier. There are many parties involved, with a variety of information claims processing and data exchange systems, and once they get this base research done, they can move forward on reforming the use of the Social Security system. I would tell the Members that in the new drug plan they do not use the Social Security identifier.

So I would urge the gentleman to maintain his interest in this subject to work with the committee as we oversee CMS's gathering of this material and evaluation of this problem; and the fact that they have managed to develop the drug plan without using a Social Security identifier indicates to us that they will take the time and invest the resources to change the base underlying system. But any radical change to that system will deny current beneficiaries coming into the system, month by month, their benefits.

Mr. Chairman, I do rise in strong opposition to this amendment. I certainly support denying impotence drugs to sex offenders, but to arbitrarily eliminate any class of drugs from a formulary, first of all, sets a terrible precedent and has the same potential for mischief as State mandates on health plans have demonstrated is possible. So the precedent being set here is one I object to.

But much more important, these drugs are often medically necessary. ED drugs help men who have lost sexual function caused by prostate cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, nerve damage, or cardiac conditions. It is important that these drugs are available when they are medically appropriate and there is no evidence of abuse for medically appropriate situations. They are not sold over the counter, they are prescription, must be prescribed by a physician, and they are so important in the cases where they are medically needed, that it would be, in my mind, a gross disservice to our seniors to automatically deny them access under our prescription drug program to these drugs.

First of all, where does this approval end? We do not say to seniors, we will not prescribe cholesterol medications for you or drugs for high blood pressure until you have changed your diet and exercised. Yet diet and exercise could eliminate the need for taxpayer-funded drugs in many categories, but we do not require that.

Secondly, we are very interested in, and increasingly interested in, early identification and prevention of serious illness, and sexual dysfunction is often an early sign of other very serious conditions. Those diseases may go untreated and undetected if there is no need to go to the doctor to talk about impotence, to evaluate the causes of impotence and, therefore, be entitled to the prescription. So it interferes with early diagnosis and prevention in certain diseases.

It is also extremely important to consider this issue in the context of mental health and the costs of mental health in our elderly population. Certainly, in a long-term marriage, a healthy sexual relationship is important to the strength of that relationship and important to the mental health of the people involved. Would we rather pay for depression treatment, or would we rather have that couple eligible for the kind of medications that the gentleman wishes to ban from the Medicare program?

So if we take a holistic approach to health and remember that mental health is important to reducing the cost of physical disease and that early identification and prevention of serious health problems is extremely important to lowering the long-term costs of Medicare and giving the program sustainability that is crucial to the well-being of our seniors, then my colleagues will vote against this amendment, even though I appreciate that, superficially and politically, voting for it would be a desirable vote.

I would urge my colleagues to oppose the availability of these drugs for sex offenders. I would urge my colleagues to oppose eliminating them from the Medicare formulas, because they are often medically appropriate and they are important to the long-term health and well- being and early identification of disease in our seniors.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Madam Chairman, I rise to congratulate the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and the subcommittee for doing a remarkable job in funding our Nation's education, health and workforce priorities in a time of intense fiscal restraint.

This legislation includes in education: increased funding for special funding, for No Child Left Behind, and for Head Start. It has a tremendous increase in the Pell grant area which will help our young people go to college, get the education they need to succeed and contribute. It holds firm on TRIO and GEAR UP, so important to kids who are the first in their family to go to college. So in education, while it does not do everything, it does some important things for our children, and I thank the gentleman. I hope in conference we will find a little more additional money for title I, but this is a good start.

In health, it also has some very important accomplishments. By increasing Community Health Center funding, it decidedly reaches out to additional uninsured people. It provides the support vitally needed for the important initiative to implant information technology in our health care sector, which is our best hope of both improving quality and reducing long-term costs, and it provides the money needed for the government to educate our seniors about the important, generous prescription drug program that will go into effect January 1. I thank the gentleman for those very important education dollars.

There are, of course, as always, areas of concern. I hope that in conference there will be more money for the Community Services Block Grant because that is the critical, flexible money that cities, particularly, use to fill the holes in the safety net programs, to provide day-care for women returning to work, and so on.

In HCAP, I hope we will restore the funding and thoughtfully review some of the other problems in the bill. But this is a fine job done, and I commend the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula).

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

I offer this amendment because one of the things that has concerned the Members of this body is the plight of the uninsured in America. The community health centers reach out to help the uninsured, and they are very effective and very important to that health care system, available to those who are either underinsured or uninsured.

But the HCAP grants are becoming equally important because they enable the community health centers to create a whole network in neighborhoods and urban communities that can reach out to the uninsured and the underinsured and bring them into the system and provide them with a patient home and the kind of support that they need.

Many of these people have chronic illnesses. Many of these people are a

very high cost to the system because they do not get care until they land in the emergency room or the hospital.

This amendment to provide some funds for the HCAP program is modest. It merely moves money from the CDC budget, from the VERB program, which is funding for an anti-obesity media campaign that is now duplicative of Federal and private sector programs. Even the Bush administration's OMB says, ``There is no longer a need for this Federal program.''

I would maintain that now that every school board is conscious of the problem of obesity and so many groups, including McDonald's, have taken on this cause, that it is not necessary to spend the Federal money on the obesity campaign; but it is absolutely crucial that we put some placeholder dollars in the budget for the HCAP program.

This program is in 45 States across the country and has already provided access to care for 6.2 million uninsured and vulnerable Americans and has placed about the same number of children and parents, children and adults, into either Medicaid or CHIP.

In Waterbury, Connecticut, the biggest city in my district, the HCAP program started only a year and a half ago. It has already provided 750 low-income city residents with case managers who help them coordinate complex care regimens, make sure they have access to low-cost medications and track their progress. This same program has enrolled 450 patients, HIV/AIDS patients and diabetes patients in the appropriate kind of management program to monitor their conditions and keep them healthy and out of the hospital, better quality of life to the patient, savings to society.

Eighty physicians because of HCAP, 80 physicians from Waterbury have signed up to provide their fair share of specialty care to this uninsured population, and the hospitals have donated lab services.

Ultimately, this HCAP grant is going to electronically provide electronic health records for 120,000 patients in the greater Waterbury area through every hospital and doctor's office so that this kind of patient coming into the system with no insurance but complex needs can immediately have their medical record accessed by their physician; their medication protocol accessed by their physician; the history of their care accessed by their physician. Therefore, the physician is able to provide to these uninsured and very ill people timely, fast, high-quality care.

So the HCAP program has been extremely helpful to building beyond the community health centers out into the community a system to provide access to medical care for uninsured people, and that is why I am so interested in the passage of my amendment that just would move a little money from a program that is at the end of its useful life into this critical area so there would be a placeholder on which we could build in conference.

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

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman feel confident even without any placeholder, should, say, the Senate fail to provide a placeholder, as they have in the past, that we will be able to address this in conference?

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I appreciate the good work the Committee on Appropriations and the subcommittee has done.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Offered By: Mrs. Johnson of Connecticut

Amendment No. 23: Page 25, line 16, insert ``(increased by

$11,200,000)'' after ``$6,446,357,000''.

Page 29, line 1, insert ``(reduced by $11,200,000)'' after

``$5,945,991,000''.

Page 27, line 15, insert ``: Provided further, That of the

funds made available under this heading, $11,200,000 shall be

made available for the healthy community access program''

after ``public office''.

Offered By: Mrs. Johnson of Connecticut

Amendment No. 13: Page 25, line 16, insert ``(increased by

$10,802,000)'' after ``$6,446,357,000''.

Page 48, line 7, insert ``(reduced by $10,802,000)'' after

``$8,688,707,000''.

Page 50, line 4, insert ``(reduced by $10,802,000)'' after

``$110,000,000''.

Page 27, line 15, insert ``: Provided further, That of the

funds made available under this heading, $10,802,000 shall be

made available for the healthy community access program''

after ``public office''.

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

I rise in strong support of the legislation before us which I consider to be extremely important. It builds on the President's policy by merely allowing the use of embryonic stem cells created for fertility purposes to be donated with permission, but without payment, by the woman for research, research to cure some of the terrible diseases that plague our lives. These free citizens would simply exercise their right and their conscience in donating embryos that would otherwise be discarded, destroyed, as waste.

I believe we have a moral responsibility to advance the research that saves lives, relieves pain, and prevents suffering, rather than destroying those embryos. Those embryos could produce the stem cells that would save lives, and should not be destroyed as waste.

Why do we have to do this today? Because if we do not, stem cell research will be done, but will not be uniformly governed by NIH's ethics policy.

Why do we have to do this today? Because no nation has created a sustained, strong, globally-competitive economy without the freedom to research the frontiers of knowledge.

Finally, why do we have to do this today? Because it is the right thing.

Now, we have heard a lot of discussion on the floor today about destroying these cells as taking life and, as a matter of conscience, this is a complicated issue and one on which we disagree. If you believe life begins when the sperm enters the egg, then, yes, you would believe this is a taking of life, though we would unceremoniously toss those same cells into a waste bucket. But if you believe that life begins when the fertilized egg is implanted in the mother's womb, which, of course, is essential for it to realize its potential for life, then using a fertilized egg that has not been implanted is not a taking of life. If, further, you believe that life begins later in the process, then you are not taking life.

So I ask each of my colleagues to think carefully in conscience when life does begin; and, on that issue, your vote on this bill rests.

Madam Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. Certainly if we do not do a better job of educating our children in the arts, we will be a Nation of poor spirit and little understanding. It is really through the arts that we understand how destructive is greed.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment, recognizing the very serious problems that its proponent seeks to address. But it would be very unwise to cut the budget of the NEA, especially after we succeeded in adding a little money back to it, because the NEA is simply doing a fantastic job now of strengthening public arts education, of strengthening arts institutions, and of helping arts institutions to market themselves and strengthen the economies of not only our inner cities, but small, rural communities. So in Connecticut, the NEA, in conjunction with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, has really helped us develop the itineraries that we needed to attract tourism to the small towns with arts institutions or performing groups where the agricultural economy is failing.

In our schools, the HOT schools, (the Higher Order of Thinking schools), have been supported by the NEA, and have helped children understand that not only thinking is a powerful process, but original thinking is an extraordinary process children can possess and use to grow in mind and spirit, as well as technical capability.

In 139 of Connecticut's schools, they are using the NEA's Shakespeare in American Communities, a free educational kit that really helps kids grasp the power of Shakespeare. Who better can teach children about the horrendous power of greed to do evil and the tremendous opportunity of love to do good.

So the arts are extremely important to the spiritual strength of this Nation, the strength of its economy, and the health and well-being of our children, for the arts provide the power to aspire to new heights of greatness in each of us.

So I must oppose this amendment, because it drains resources from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 938, a bill to establish the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area Act. The Upper Housatonic Valley, encompassing 29 towns in the hilly terrain of western Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut, is a singular geographical and cultural region that has made significant national contributions through its literacy, artistic, musical, and architectural achievements, its iron, paper, and electrical equipment industries and its scenic beautification and environmental conservation efforts.

I would like to thank Chairman Pombo and the Resources Committee for bringing this legislation forward and for recognizing that through this broad, flexible and locally led initiative, the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts will be able to make real progress in protecting the river and its heritage. The heritage area has broad support throughout the region, from historic and civic organizations, local businesses and governments, and our State governments have expressed strong support for the establishment of a National Heritage Area and are enthusiastic about the potential for celebration and preservation of the heritage. It also has inspired the development of a local organization that has already begun hosting hiking events and historic visits.

Congress established criteria in our 2000 legislation that clarifies that designation requires a cultural, natural and historical heritage of national significance, must have broad public support and a qualified entity to manage the Area. The Park Service agreed that the Upper Housatonic Valley meets the Department's ten interim criteria for designation of a national heritage area and cite us as the best example of how to go about becoming a National Heritage Area.

The Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area would extend from Lanesboro, Massachusetts, 60 miles South to Kent, Connecticut. This region of New England was

home to the Nation's first industrial iron sites from the 1730s to the 1920s. The first blast furnace was built in 1762 by Ethan Allen and supplied the iron for the cannons that helped George Washington's army to make other weapons for soldiers of the Revolutionary army. While most of the furnaces, mine sites and charcoal pits have been lost to development and time, the few that remain are in need of refurbishment. The Beckley Furnace in Canaan, Connecticut, was designated an official project by the Millennium Committee to Save America's Treasures and now has been well restored.

The Valley's history as a cultural retreat from the Boston and New York areas provides both past and current riches for the country. Since the 1930s visitors from all over have come to hear the music at Tanglewood, Music Mountain and Norfolk, see the paintings at the Norman Rockwell Museum, watch serious theater at Stockbridge and musical treats at Sharon. Today's local authors draw on a long tradition going back to the 19th century, when Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edith Wharton lived and wrote here.

The Housatonic Valley is also rich with environmental and recreational treasures. The Housatonic River, just below Falls Village, Connecticut, is one of the prized fly-fishing centers in the Northeast and is enjoyed by fisherman from not only Connecticut and Massachusetts but the entire eastern seaboard. Olympic rowers have trained in this river as children have learned to swim, boat and fish and value its ecosystem. The Upper Housatonic Area, with its remoteness from, but ties to large cities, occupy a special niche in our national culture and I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), chairman of the Committee on Resources, for bringing out today and through this House H.R. 938, legislation that establishes the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area and designates a number of other National Heritage Areas as well.

This program of National Heritage Areas is really a wonderful program. The 29 towns that encompass the Upper Housatonic Valley have worked together, their first selectmen, their historic societies, and a very large group of volunteers to inventory the historic, the economic, and the environmental assets of this area. And truly, in my district as in the others, they are unique areas, uniquely important historically and uniquely endowed environmentally.

By having a structure within which they could work together with the technical experts from the Federal level, they have developed a knowledge that enables them to plan and will enable them to strengthen the economy through thoughtful tourism programs. Truly this is a partnership between the Federal Government and very small local governments that will bless every life in the Upper Housatonic Valley and the other Heritage Areas throughout the country.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time. I do rise in strong opposition to this bill. I am a strong supporter of my own State's law requiring parental involvement, but I strongly oppose this bill.

First of all, it is quite different from any bill that has appeared before us, and it is truly ironic that we should have this bill before the House on the very same day we are passing a Small Business Bill of Rights. One of those rights is for small business to be relieved of litigation.

The majority of physicians in America practice in one, two, or three- man practices, which are small businesses. But, this bill opens up a new lawsuit possibility against them for civil damages in case they do not notify the parents, and that is plural, of a young person who comes to them for abortion services. It requires that the physician serve this notification in person. Now, what happens if that doctor gets in his car, goes and drives and notifies the mother, but since he does not know the mother and father are estranged, he does not notify the father. The father then has a right of action against him.

This is not fair or right. This bill requires physicians to reveal information that under HIPAA and all confidentiality laws, they are not allowed to reveal. So this puts a burden on physicians that is extraordinary, and they are small businesses, and we need to remember that.

Secondly, it puts young people, remember, it does not put the teenager of a healthy family in jeopardy, it puts the teenager of the at-risk family, of the family in which there is a lot of abuse, in jeopardy. Many of the teenagers who become pregnant young are pregnant because their fathers impregnated them, or an uncle or a nephew or a cousin. These are ugly situations, and if they find a grandmother or an aunt or a cousin who will substitute for a mother who may be the drugee and effectively out of their lives, who might help them deal with this situation, and that grandmother does not happen to know that she has to comply with State notification and all the other laws of both States, she will be subject to criminal penalties.

This is a bad bill for the children who most need our help.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise in strong support of the Markey amendment.

I consider this one of the most important environmental votes Congress will cast this year, the vote to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas drilling.

According to the U.S. Geographical Survey, this area would produce far less oil than the U.S. consumes in a single year, and is the only conservation area that protects a complete spectrum of Arctic and sub- Arctic ecosystems in North America.

The ecosystem will be seriously damaged by drilling in the ANWR, make no mistake about it. Roads, pipelines, drilling platforms and communities to support personnel all involve disturbing this critical natural habitat by moving a great deal of extremely heavy equipment across fragile lands, by locating multi-ton rigs and whole communities of people to support the drilling operation on this fragile land base.

Drilling supporters claim that everything can be done in the refuge using ice roads and platforms. But even if ice roads did not melt in summer months, the reality is that there is simply not enough water in the refuge to create the roads and platforms necessary to drill in the ANWR refuge.

Just building 1 mile of road takes a million gallons of water. There are only eight lakes scattered across the refuge containing enough unfrozen water to build a mile or more of ice roads. That means the only alternative truly is permanent gravel roads crisscrossing the refuge and, in fact, there is not one oil field in Alaska's North Slope that does not have permanent gravel roads.

Some drilling supporters cite the central Arctic caribou herd as illustrating that the caribou and drilling can coexist harmoniously. But calving females have completely withdrawn from the drilling area around Prudhoe Bay and are declining around the Kuparak complex. While there is ample area for the central Arctic herd to move away from the drilling facilities for calving and still be supported, this is not the case for the porcupine caribou herd. They are a much larger herd and the coastal plain where they calve is much smaller. They would be displaced into the foothills where both they and their calves would be extremely vulnerable to predators.

Finally, it would take a decade to deliver oil from the ANWR, and the amount, again, as I said earlier, would be very limited, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

On the other hand, the National Petroleum Reserve and other areas are capable of providing far more oil. In fact, the Federal Government, the State of Alaska, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, and others are in the process of leasing 50 million undeveloped acres in this region.

We do not need to drill on the ANWR plain. If we were to increase the fuel efficiency of automobiles by just 3 miles per gallon, we would save a million barrels of oil a day, five times the amount we would get out of ANWR. Or, if just California increased their use of currently available clean diesel technology cars, pickups and SUVs just to the levels seen in Europe today, just California could save 110 million gallons of gasoline by the year 2010.

So this vote is not about oil, it is about our values and how we balance the value we place on a critical environmental resource and its ecosystems, and the value we place on exploration in a low-yield area. Indeed, it is about prudent stewardship.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) 2\1/2\ minutes for purposes of control.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the Johnson-Holt amendment. It is a simple amendment. It is simply truth in advertising, EPA truth in advertising.

For the past 3 decades, American motorists have been buying cars, relying on miles-per-gallon stickers that grossly overestimate the miles per gallon a car can get. For some vehicles, the advertised miles per gallon is off by as much as 30 percent.

With gas at $2 a gallon and some cars costing more than my husband and I paid for our first home, such false information is simply intolerable, and it is intolerable that our tax dollars are paying for the EPA to develop false and misleading information.

The auto makers are not at fault; neither are the oil companies. It is our own government. That is the culprit, and we cannot tolerate EPA providing wildly inaccurate miles-per-gallon information in the future.

The way to change this is simple. We simply have to modernize the testing procedures that EPA uses. The EPA uses 30-year-old testing standards. The EPA assumes that highway drivers never exceed 50 miles an hour; but of course, they do, and the faster they drive, the more wind resistance they get and the lower fuel economy they achieve.

The EPA also assumes that the rate at which drivers brake and accelerate has not changed over 30 years. Even though the cars have changed dramatically and so have the driving habits. They do not notice that driving in cities is entirely different with its stop-and-go traffic and traffic jams than it used to be 30 years ago.

So our amendment is really simple, straightforward, and common sense. It mandates that EPA update the tests used in determining estimated fuel-economy ratings to reflect real-world driving habits of American motorists.

This is an important little amendment. It is a pocketbook issue. New cars are expensive. Gasoline is expensive. People can buy whatever car they want, that is their right; but they should have accurate information on which to base their choice, and their tax dollars should not be spent for false and misleading information.

So I urge the support of my amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time on the Rogers amendment so that we can move on to the gentleman from New Jersey's (Mr. Holt) comments on our amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) on the Rogers amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Now, let me get to the heart of this matter, because if I thought this was going to cost people jobs, I certainly would not bring it up. This question specifically was litigated in 1985 in the D.C. Circuit Court, Center for Auto Safety v. Thomas, and the court clearly determined that the CAFE calculation cannot be changed unless Congress changes U.S. Code 49, section 32904(c). My amendment does not change that section. My amendment only changes section 32908, which has to do with the data that underlies vehicle stickers.

Now, the EPA has changed its testing procedures at least twice since 1975. It did not add a lot of cost. It was not a big problem. It is an EPA center that does this testing. And every time they changed their testing procedures for the sticker purpose, they did not change it for the CAFE standard purpose, because to do that, you have to change section 32904, and my amendment does not change section 32904.

So I am sorry we have not been able to communicate well enough about this, because I certainly do not want to cost manufacturing jobs. I am a big advocate of manufacturing. But I do want consumers to have honest information. And the adjustment in information that the Rogers amendment to my amendment brings is an amendment that will bring down the miles per gallon for those that are high achievers and bring it up for those who are actually low achievers. So it actually makes the problem worse rather than better.

So I urge the body to oppose the Rogers amendment and support the Johnson amendment, because the Rogers amendment has the effect of gutting my amendment, whereas my amendment does not address the CAFE standards section of the law, which is section 32904(c) and only addresses the vehicle sticker section of the law, 32908.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time.

I rise to recognize the life and work of Bob Matsui and to support this legislation which will name the courthouse after him.

Bob was truly a remarkable individual, intellectually very smart but, more importantly, humanly, deeply in touch with the challenges that America has faced over his many years of service here. He focused on the fundamentals. Often they were not sexy, often they did not attract a great deal of attention in the press, but, for example, he spent many years working with me and others on trying to build the R&D tax credit into our Tax Code in a way that would recognize the dependence of American companies on invention to maintain their position in an intensely competitive global economy.

He understood the big issues and he understood the small steps that had to be taken for us to be successful in the macro arenas, whether the macro arena of economics, the macro arena of strengthening and supporting families struggling through difficult matters, the security of our retirees. On so many fronts, Bob Matsui was a thoughtful voice, profoundly in touch with the challenges our society faces today and over the many years of his long service.

I salute him and I thank the gentleman for bringing forward this legislation to name a courthouse after him in his home base.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time.

As a member of the Save Our Cities Caucus, which is chaired by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner), I rise in strong support of full funding of the Community Development Block Grant and Community Services Block Grant.

Our cities are hardest hit by the tough social problems of this age: poverty, drug abuse, underachievement. And I am proud that Republicans have long understood that the Federal Government has a responsibility to support our cities. They are the life blood of our commerce, but locally controlled Federal dollars are far more powerful than arbitrary Federal programs.

It is extremely important that we fully fund these critical programs because they preserve the local power of local governments to fix holes in the safety net, to assure the services that people need. In New Britain, my hometown; in Meridien or Danbury, Connecticut; or in Waterbury, the largest city in my district, Community Development Block Grant funds and Community Service Block Grant funds leverage several times their value to provide child care, elder care, literacy programs, substance abuse treatment programs, after-school programs. They help those cities demolish buildings that are a blight or that harbor drug dealers. They help clean up brownfields. They improve fire stations. They improve parks. They rebuild sidewalks. They reconstruct streets. They work to make our cities able to attract the economic development that provides jobs and a healthy urban environment.

So between the Community Development Block Grant and the Community Services Block Grant, the Federal Government has traditionally contributed, and under Republican leadership, generously, to assure the safety net in the cities and the economic strength of our urban communities.

So I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) for recognizing, as the majority of Republicans do, the importance of these flexible block grant programs to our urban communities.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

The genius of our federalist democracy is that it maximizes the power of people to govern themselves by explicitly requiring that those decisions that can be made at the local level are within the purview of local government. Those decisions that can be managed at a State level are within the purview of the State government, and that only in exceptional cases can Federal power override the power of State and local governments.

This is a very tragic situation. It is a difficult and serious issue. It is one that every State legislature has struggled with. And the laws in our different States are different because the people across our large and diverse democracy differ on some of these issues.

I personally believe that the reason America is still vital and strong is because we are a federalist democracy, and we do have this wonderful vitality and differences in how we govern ourselves at the State level.

For 7 or 8 years this has been a tragic and disputed case in Florida. It has been through the Florida court system. It has had review. And we are setting the precedent in this bill of creating a Federal option when people do not like what the laws they made for their own State deliver to them.

Under our system, they should just change those laws, and they had time to do that. It does not make me happy to speak against this bill. I am not on the committee. I have not had background in it, but I know from talking to many Members on the floor that this is a matter of very deep concern to them. They are very concerned about what we are doing here tonight, and I just want to put on the record not only has this bill had no hearings but Members had no notice. And many Members will be very surprised tomorrow morning to find out that we passed this bill in suspension.

That is an insult to democracy on such an important issue that I regret that this has come to the floor and I personally oppose it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address an issue that should trouble America's consumers. Seventeen million new cars were sold in 2004 and not one had accurate gas mileage rates posted on the window stickers.

Unbeknownst to America's drivers, the gas mileage stickers on their cars are wrong, inflating fuel economy figures by up to 300 percent. Worse, the EPA has known their tests are to blame. The tests used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to measure fuel economy are 30 years old and are based on car technology from the late 1970s and 1980s.

The bogus tests results mislead consumers into thinking they are getting better mileage on the road--and a better deal at the gas pump-- than they really are. This year alone, American consumers will spend about $20 billion more on gasoline than they expect because of the misleading gas mileage stickers. Talk about a pocket-book issue.

Because changing these tests requires a change in the law, I am proud to introduce the ``Fuel Efficiency Truth-in-Advertising Act'' with my colleague Congressman Rush Holt. My legislation requires the EPA to update its fuel economy testing procedures to reflect today's ``real life'' circumstances and the use of ``real world'' gasoline. If this legislation is enacted, when it says 35 miles-per-gallon on the sticker, drivers will get 35 miles-per-gallon on the road.

An example of a flaw in EPA's current method is underestimating highway speeds. The EPA highway cycle assumes an average speed of 48 mph and a top speed of 60 mph. Many State highway speed limits are set at or above 65 mph and government data indicates that fuel economy can drop by 17 percent for modern vehicles that drive at 70 mph instead of 55 mph.

Another flaw is in the type of fuel used for engine certification. Fuels used for engine certification tests are artificial. The EPA uses highly refined fuel, not what we consume in our cars every day. Using these artificial fuels may be fine from a laboratory standpoint, but they don't help drivers when they overstate actual fuel economy.

There's more. The tests assume acceleration and braking rates that don't match reality. They overstate trip lengths. They understate increased idling and stop-and-go traffic in our expanding urban areas. They keep the air-conditioner off, while flipping on the A/C reduces gas mileage by 2.5 miles-per-gallon.

We would not tolerate 30-year-old tests for anything--so why do we allow it for gas mileage? Make no mistake, this is a pocketbook issue for Americans who are pinched by the high price of gasoline. The easy and common-sense steps this bill calls for will give every future car owner the truth--the truth about how their cars will perform, and the truth about how much they're going to spend on gasoline every year.

AAA, the Nation's largest auto club with 47 million members, supports this bill. So does the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club and a host of consumer, scientific, and environmental groups.

This broad-based and diverse coalition believes, as I do, that Americans deserve better than the results of a 30-year-old test. We recognize that buying a car is a huge investment in most Americans' lives, and the government should be helping consumers make smart choices, not misleading them.

And so I ask my colleagues to join with me in supporting the Fuel Efficiency Truth in Advertising Act. Do it for the hundreds of thousands of car owners in your districts who deserve the truth--not bogus test results.