Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, this is the last in the series of bills from the Resources Committee and, perhaps, the last time that I will be on the floor as ranking member and Chairman Hastings will be on the floor as chairman.

I just want to thank my colleague from Washington State for all of the work we have done together. We obviously don't always agree on issues, but I think the Resources Committee has reported out more bills and passed more bills in the House than any other committee in this Congress. We have been very active. We are hoping that the Senate will go along with a few that we have pending, and we will get some of those bills enacted into law.

In particular, I want to thank the chairman for his partnership on an issue absolutely critical to the Pacific Northwest, which is the management of the Columbia River system and the Bonneville Power Administration, in the phenomenal gift of that clean and inexpensive power to our region and to the Western U.S. generally.

We have some major issues looming, in particular, the negotiation or renegotiation or termination of the treaty with Canada regarding the Columbia River Treaty. A session that the chairman held in his district in Washington State on a cold day in February was, I think, very critical in helping move that discussion and debate in a productive direction for all the stakeholders and was particularly critical for a position of our region in this negotiation.

I am only hopeful that we will soon get the attention of the State Department and whomever else they have seen fit to involve in this process and have a recommendation from the State Department regarding modification or termination of that treaty so we can enter into meaningful negotiations with the Canadians. The gentleman played a particularly key role in that, and I want to thank him for that and, obviously, a lot of other work on forestry and other issues.

I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, for too long, Federal policies have unfairly disadvantaged Indian tribes in western Oregon and, obviously, elsewhere around the country. After signing many treaties with the western Oregon tribes, the United States removed them from their original homelands throughout the western part of the State and put them on only two reservations, which were established at the time to house potentially people from more than 60 tribal governments.

Many of the tribes confederated on these reservations far from their ancestral homes. Other tribes refused to leave their ancestral homes and were basically forgotten by the United States, despite its promises that it had made in treaty agreements with them.

Later, in 1954, one of the darkest chapters was when all but one of the

Oregon tribes west of the Cascade Mountains lost their Federal recognition in the Western Oregon Termination Act.

The termination era, as scholars call it, was terrible Federal Indian policy. It was so bad that it was only 30 years later that it was formally rebuked by Congress.

Starting in the seventies, Congress began the process of restoring the western Oregon tribes to Federal recognition and of cleaning up the mess that the United States Government made in western Oregon. In fact, I began my congressional career as an original sponsor of the Coquille Restoration Act, legislation to restore one of Oregon's terminated tribes. I partnered with then-Senator Mark Hatfield on that legislation, which was later enacted into law.

While six Oregon tribes are now federally recognized, it remains difficult for these tribes to function as the sovereign nations they are and to govern themselves as effectively as they could.

Shifts in Federal Indian policy have made it time-consuming and expensive for western Oregon tribes--and other tribes around the country--and the Department of the Interior to work together on land- into-trust issues. These policy shifts have also deprived two of the tribes of sufficient land bases, and it has created a legal anomaly with regard to the Coquille Indian Tribe's forest.

H.R. 5701, the Western Oregon Indian Tribal Lands Act, is a long overdue, no-cost, commonsense bill that will go a long way to helping resolve some of the problems the Federal Government and its policy shifts over more than a century have created for the western Oregon tribes.

This legislation clarifies on-reservation land-into-trust procedures for the Grand Ronde and Siletz tribes, so the tribes don't have to face outrageous delays in dealing with the Department of the Interior. The bill also makes good on decades-old promises to restore land bases for the Coos and Cow Creek tribes, and it puts the Coquille Indian Tribe's forest on an equal footing with those of other Indian tribes nationwide.

H.R. 5701 deals only with Oregon issues, Oregon tribes, and Oregon constituents. All of the provisions in this Oregon tribal bill have received some form of consideration by both the House and the Senate. This package also enjoys bipartisan, bicameral support, the rarest of rare things, I would say, in Washington, D.C., these days.

I strongly encourage my colleagues here in the House to join with me in passing this legislation swiftly, so we can get it over to the Senate and hopefully get the Senate to act before the hopefully soon- looming adjournment of the 113th Congress.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

You forgot I reserved, Doc, so I do get to respond.

I have to say we were looking for a logical reason for what I would say is your recalcitrance to further create wilderness so that areas may remain undisturbed for future generations. I thought that was potentially a plausible reason.

In fact, it was so plausible that the next day in the gym a Republican Member who was there that didn't know either me or you that well asked if that indeed was a true story. I played him along for just a brief period of time and said, ``No.'' I appreciate that you have corrected the record.

In the NDAA bill, we also did do a wilderness package as it relates to your State and some other wilderness bills that I think were very bipartisan and reasonable. I appreciate the fact you supported that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman.

Now, why would an Oregonian insert himself into the perpetual water wars in California? Well, first off, this bill has had no hearings. As you can see from the debate here on the floor, there is extraordinary disagreement over the potential impacts of this legislation. That is not just critical to Californians, it is critical to Oregonians.

I have a letter here from the Pacific Fishery Management Council. They believe that this could have a hugely detrimental impact on some audit species which compose about 80 percent of the California fishery and about 50 percent of the fishery in Oregon.

We went through this before about a decade ago where there were inadequate outflows. There were problems with the forge fish, the smelt, and the returning salmon, and we had a season that was closed for 2 years. It put many, many Oregonians out of work. There was impact beyond commercial fisheries and coastal communities on recreational fisheries. It cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. We got a couple of hundred million dollars in Federal relief.

The experts, the Pacific Fishery Management Council and their lawyers who have read this bill, believe it does change the management of the water in ways that are detrimental and would void the biological opinion and would probably put us back into another couple of ``no fishing'' years a few years down the road given the cycle of salmon, particularly, section 103(d)(2) and section 103(c).

I have heard here on the floor, despite the fact no hearing has been held--the bill just burbled up very recently--that on one side they are saying, ``No, don't worry, it will not have a detrimental environmental impact, and, if it does, well, we will stop doing it.''

But I just looked at that section of the bill and it doesn't quite say that definitively. In fact, it changes the standards, and then it says, ``If additional negative impacts might happen, then the Secretary could suspend some of the provisions of this bill.'' Not exactly certainty, and we need some certainty here for our fisheries.

We have been hurting for years. Last year, we had a good year, thankfully. We are still dealing with buybacks because of reducing the size of the fleets from past problems. Fishermen are burdened with the buyback year in, year out. I just got the terms of that adjusted in the NDAA. They had a payday loan from the Federal Government. Now we got them a reasonable loan from the Federal Government. The government didn't even pay for their buyback. Heck, in the Northeast, they paid for a couple of buybacks. No, we had to pay for our own with a payday loan. Now we are going to jeopardize the fleet 1, 2, or 3 years out because we won't have the returns with the endangered species.

So this is a bad idea to do in the waning days of a Congress, to bring forward a bill which is controversial, over which there is disagreement on the actual language in the provisions of the bill, and which my experts, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, say would be detrimental and would cause those problems.

Pacific Fishery Management Council,

Portland, OR, December 6, 2014.

Hon. Jared Huffman,

U.S. House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Huffman: Thank you for your letter of November 17

and follow-up on December 3 requesting Pacific Fishery

Management Council (Pacific Council) comment on

legislation related to operation of the State Water Project

and Central Valley Project in California (HR 5781) and its

potential impacts to fisheries. Although the timing of the

bill did not allow for full Council deliberation, we present

the following concerns, which are consistent with previous

comments the Council has made on similar legislation. Absent

changes in the legislation to address these concerns, the

Pacific Council does not support HR 5781 moving forward.

HR 5781 would override Endangered Species Act protections

for salmon, steelhead, and other species in the Bay-Delta in

order to allow increased pumping from the Delta in excess of

scientifically justified levels. These measures also protect

salmon stocks not currently listed under the ESA, which are a

primary source of healthy sport and commercial fisheries from

Central California to Northern Oregon. The bill introduces a

new standard for implementing the Endangered Species Act

concerning Central Valley salmon and Delta smelt, a keystone

species in the Bay-Delta ecosystem. (See Sec 101(3), and

102(b)(2)(a).) It is unclear how severe the negative effects

of this new standard might be, but it would certainly impact

current water management policy that protects ESA listed

salmon stocks from further decline and helps prevent

currently healthy stocks from becoming listed under the ESA.

The bill contains several provisions that override the

salmon and Delta smelt biological opinions (for example

Section 103(d)(2), Section 103(c), and others). Section 103

could result in dramatically higher pumping than is

authorized under the biological opinions, and would cause

significant harm to migrating salmon and steelhead and other

native species. The 1:1 inflow to export ratio for the San

Joaquin at Vernalis overrides the `reasonable and prudent

alternatives' to standard operations that were set out in the

2009 Central Valley biological opinion in order to protect

Sacramento River winter-run Chinook and other salmonid

species. Further degradation of salmon habitat is contrary to

the provisions of the Magnuson Stevens Act (Sec.

305(b)(1)(D)) and something the Pacific Council strongly

opposes.

Section 103(f)(2) provides exemptions for mitigation of

negative effects on listed fish species, which alleviates the

project from compensating fisheries for negative effects of

its operations; it is unclear if there is an exemption for

mitigation of negative effect on non-listed salmon stocks.

Exempting mitigation responsibility for harm to salmon

populations provides the exact opposite incentive to the kind

of salmon protection and enhancement advocated by the

Council, and essentially amounts to redistributing the value

of salmon fisheries to agricultural or municipal interests,

as well as increasing the risk to ESA listed fish stocks

threatened with extinction. Additionally, the Pacific Council

is concerned about whether Central Valley projects are

achieving their current mitigation responsibility, and

providing these exemptions could preclude seeking remedy. If

this bill moves forward, it should provide direct mitigation

for the proposed actions and risks to which it would subject

fish populations and fishing communities, not avoiding this

appropriate responsibility.

In 2008 and 2009. $158 million in Congressional aid was

provided to deal with the disaster of the closure of ocean

salmon fisheries off California and Oregon south of Cape

Falcon due to a collapse of the Sacramento River salmon

stocks. These fisheries are an important source of jobs for

coastal communities, which cannot be replaced simply through

disaster relief. Without adjustments to this bill, we fear

such a disaster could be repeated in the reasonably near

future.

Thank you again for the opportunity to comment on this

legislation; please don't hesitate to contact me or Ms.

Jennifer Gilden of the Pacific Council office if you have any

further questions.

Sincerely,

D.O. McIsaac, Ph.D.,

Executive Director.

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

The gentleman mentioned taxpayers. I think taxpayers might be concerned that this foreign entity which will ship our oil over 1,700 miles across America will be exempt from a fee that all of the American companies and others using our current pipelines have to pay because of a bizarre ruling from the IRS, which often makes bizarre rulings. Tar sands oil will not be required to contribute toward the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.

I think U.S. taxpayers might be concerned that a foreign entity which is going to ship tar sands oil 1,700 miles through the United States to an export zone, in all probability to be processed and exported in a tax-exempt area, won't be paying much, if any, taxes in the U.S. except some property taxes, and it won't have to contribute toward this trust fund. In case there is a spill with this line, the U.S. taxpayers and other entities in the U.S.--mostly U.S. companies--will be liable to pay for their mess. So I have a concern about taxpayers.

Another part of this is three citizens of the State of Nebraska brought litigation because this bill would give a foreign entity the right to take their private property in the United States of America-- in Nebraska--by eminent domain. I don't know. I am not aware of any other time we have given a foreign entity the right to take the private property of U.S. citizens. These same citizens won a case in district court, and this bill would essentially nullify the ruling that they won, which is still under appeal to the Supreme Court in that State.

So here we have a foreign entity that won't pay taxes that other oil companies and others who ship by pipelines will be required to pay, a foreign entity that will be given the right to take the private property of U.S. taxpayers and residents--and for what? Yes, there will be construction jobs, and jobs are good, but those are fairly ephemeral, and there is a lot of other construction going on, particularly in the fracking area and with some proposed liquid natural gas export facilities that will help provide employment in the construction trades. In this case, there will be 35 permanent jobs for this tax-exempt sludge that will be shipped to a zone in Texas where it is most likely to be exported.

Do we need to export more oil, gas, and diesel from the United States of America? Is that going to help lower the price at the pump for Americans? I don't think so.

And, in fact, we are today exporting 422,000 barrels of gasoline a day, 1.3 million barrels of diesel every day, and yet truckers are still being pretty well extorted at the pump. That is 54.6 million gallons of diesel, and yet our truckers are still being gouged at the pump because there is a diesel shortage.

Well, wait a minute. We are exporting that, and now we are going to take this tar sand goop, process it in the U.S., and export it. That is not going to help the truckers. It is not going to help the American consumers.

And then there are some minor environmental issues. You know, tar sands do create 81 percent more greenhouse gas than most other forms of fossil fuel extraction. They are going to destroy forever large portions of boreal forest. Now, sure, that is a Canadian issue. If I lived in Canada, I would be protesting this. I don't. But we don't need to facilitate it in the United States of America by building a pipeline there.

They will use precious water resources, create huge waste pits that will be polluted with the extract, except for the part which is shipped south to be processed and shipped overseas.

So I really don't see this as something where we should preempt the laws of the United States. There were 2.5 million comments. Apparently the Republicans don't care much about the public comments. There are 2.5 million comments that are still being meaningfully evaluated that are raising concerns about various aspects of this project.

But here I will say, bad legislation; good politics. We are trying to help someone get elected to the Senate who is currently a Member of the House. The Senate is moving potentially ahead with this bill. So the House, with very little notice, decided they would bring up this bill which we have passed in one version or another eight previous times. So this is nothing but bare, naked politics and the use of the House to promote someone's candidacy to the United States Senate, which I think is really a disgrace to this institution.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, would you tell me the time remaining, please.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman).

I have no additional speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let's just sum up.

We have the most carbon-intensive way of creating ultimately diesel and gasoline by extracting these tar sands. They contribute 81 percent more greenhouse gases. Of course many on the other side believe that greenhouse gases are potentially beneficial or aren't a problem.

We have a foreign entity here that will be exempt from paying taxes, like U.S. entities do, into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. And U.S. taxpayers will be stuck with the bill should a spill occur.

We have a foreign entity--granted, they are our friends and neighbors in Canada--but still, a foreign private corporation being given the right of eminent domain over citizens of the State of Nebraska.

We have, in fact, this company saying that it is likely, if this pipeline is completed, that gasoline prices will go up in Midwestern areas of the United States and their production will be exported from the United States; so it is not going to be a direct benefit to Americans or deal with energy independence, which we heard earlier.

Of course, we are cutting short the evaluation process that every other energy-producing entity in America has to go through in terms of environmental reviews, and of course, we are cutting off any meaningful consideration of the 2.5 million comments that have been received by the State Department.

But, hey, it could help a House Member beat a Senate Member and get elected to the Senate, so I guess it is a bad bill whose time has come.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Well, Mr. Speaker, I would start out by saying this feels like Groundhog Day, but I have already done that when we brought up these same bills multiple times in the past. I could start, as I did the last time we considered this package of bills, by reading a statement from the last time we debated these bills and then pretend to get angry at my staff because they gave me a statement that is 8 months old, but I made that point the last time we debated this energy package on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, the House has passed nearly all the provisions in this bill at least two times. Now, I think most Americans still remember high school civics. The House passes a bill; they send it to the Senate.

The Senate either takes it up or not; and, if they do, then we work out our differences in conference committee and send it to the President for signature. We just keep sending the same bills over to the Senate under the premise that, somehow, they will do something because it has been sent multiples times from the House. It hasn't worked in the past, and it won't work in the future.

This package really also ignores reality. We are producing more natural gas than we ever have and more oil than in over 25 years. We are projected to be the number one oil producer in the world in the next few years.

Meanwhile, thanks to a worldwide glut of oil, gas prices are going down. They are the lowest they have been this time of year since 2010, except perhaps in my State, where we are getting price-gouged because we don't have a refinery.

If Republicans really cared about keeping gas prices down for American consumers, maybe they would take a serious look at the fact that we are exporting 1.6 million barrels of gasoline and diesel every day. There is no shortage.

We are exporting 1.6 million barrels a day; yet truckers are paying extraordinarily high diesel prices because we are exporting more and more diesel and saying, ``Well, you have got to pay the same price they are going to pay in Europe.''

Mr. Speaker, inside the Beltway here, we don't really deal with facts and statistics very much; so, today, we will take up and pass the same tired legislation for the second, third, or fourth time so any Republican Members who happen to be in a tough race can claim that they have been productive on this issue.

This is just an opportunity to check the energy box again and again so you can try to get voters to check the box for the so-called energy experts on the ballot, but we are not legislating; instead, we are wasting time and taxpayer money to put on a rerun show. If you are going to do a rerun show, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, then I am going to do the same.

Every time we have come to the floor to debate another legislative fish wrap this summer, I have brought up the same issue, Western wildfires.

Now, this poster shows Weed, California--or what is left of it. A wildfire destroyed half the town and over 150 homes. In my home State, a major fire is burning 10 miles away from the town of Estacada, threatening over 150 homes, forcing evacuations, and forcing the Governor to use the State's conflagration act to mobilize emergency resources.

In the West, there are over 50 active fires burning, one in the Willamette Forest outside of Eugene and Springfield. It is costing $1 million a day with attempts to keep it from running toward a town. Two days ago, the Forest Service said they have $179 million left for suppression.

Last week alone, they spent $150 million on suppression efforts. That means, next week, while we are out of session, they will run out of money, and they will do what they always do: they will start pulling back money from the fuel reduction, forest health, and other programs to fight the fires.

You can't stop fighting the fires. These fires are enormous, unnatural, and unprecedented in many ways. On top of that, we have a drought which might or might not have to do with climate change, which the other side of the aisle doesn't believe in, but, nonetheless, they are a fact.

Now, it doesn't have to be this way. We could do something real. We have the rarest thing in Washington, D.C.--a bipartisan--that means Democrats and Republicans are on a bill, 52 House Members, including myself, 52 Republicans on a bill--bicameral--similar bill, same bill in the Senate--supported by Democrats and Republicans, and, lo and behold, it is a bill supported by President Obama.

Maybe that is why they won't even hold a hearing on it or move it-- because the President supports it--despite the fact that it would deal with a very real problem.

We aren't investing enough money in a regular fashion to get ahead of the fire problem in the West and to do the fuel reduction and the forest health we need. The agencies don't have enough in their budgets, and, every year, in fact, they overspend their firefighting budgets, and they have to cancel projects and other needed activities.

There has been no hearing on the bill. We can't find time to hold a hearing on a bill that has to do with wildfires that are burning up the West. We can't find the time; instead, we are going to pass these bills for the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth time. We can't find the time. We are too busy here pretending.

We have 196 Democrats who have signed a petition to overrule the Republican leadership and bring that bill to the floor of the United States House of Representatives. Fifty-two Republicans are cosponsors of that bill.

Many of them have active fires burning in their districts; and will they defy their leadership and do something that is needed for Americans in the Western United States, needed for our natural resources, and needed to prevent these towns from burning down? No. They can't do that. They will not sign the petition.

So here we are. Western communities are burning. You can pretty much step outside the door and smell the smoke from here. We have a potential solution to get ahead of this problem in the future and deal better with it, but, instead, we are wasting time here today passing, yet again, bills that have already been passed and have already been sent to the Senate, but we will send them over to the Senate again, and they can put them on the same stack of paper.

If you look at these pictures, we are wasting the second-to-last day--well, now, it is the last day, actually--on repeat because we have to get home for elections.

I mean, we don't need to pass the budget for the year, the appropriations bills. We don't need to take more meaningful consideration of what we are getting into in the Middle East and spend more time on it, and we can't certainly find any time to deal with the wildfire issue. Let's just pretend.

Yet, again, you get to check a pointless box, and I don't think the American people are going to be fooled.

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

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).

It is unfortunate that we are here today. We have departed from reality, which would be the districts we represent, where I just spent 5 weeks, and now we are back inside the Beltway. And we are doing things in this case that we know will never become law, but we do have an opportunity actually to do something real and allay the concerns--legitimate concerns--of farmers, ranchers, and others who feel that the EPA is either overreaching or has written a somewhat garbled rule. I would agree with that.

But instead of approaching it in a measured way and saying we want to be certain that you are not doing this, and we want to be certain that you are doing this, this would say that anything and everything that they have considered over the last 2 years in developing this rule is now ineligible for future consideration. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that the determination that certain things are exempt, well, we probably can't revisit those. Can we use the Court's decision or any of those documents? Seems not.

So where do we end up if this cockamamy thing passes the House and becomes law--which it won't? Well, where we end up is back in the earlier era of the 2003 and 2008 guidances. And many of the groups that are here today supporting this unbelievably broad overreach are actually groups who had objected strenuously to what the Bush administration did in the 2003 guidance and the 2008 guidance.

Here is a quote from the American Farm Bureau, 2003:

No clear regulatory definitions to guide their

determinations. What has emerged is a hodgepodge of ad hoc

and inconsistent jurisdictional theories.

2008, American Farm Bureau:

Guidance is causing confusion, added delays in an already

burdened and strained permit decisionmaking process which

ultimately will result and is resulting in increased delays

and costs to the public at large.

Then, on the other side, groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and Ducks Unlimited also found the objections of the 2003 and 2008 guidances to be totally inadequate, and, of course, the Supreme Court itself split 4-1-4 on one of the guiding documents behind this.

So instead of wading in, rolling up your sleeves, and acting like legislators, you are acting like idiot ideologues here today. You are saying nothing that was considered in developing this rule can ever be used again

to develop a future rule. What does that mean? That means you are stuck with a 2003-2008 guidance, which all these groups found to be disturbingly inconsistent, expensive, causing unnecessary delays, and we need new guidance. We do need new guidance. We do need new definition.

There are some who have the agenda of wanting to repeal the Clean Water Act altogether. Let's go back to the good old days, when you could light a match and watch the Cuyahoga River burn or when the Willamette River in Oregon was an open sewer. Let's go back to those good old days before the Clean Water Act.

No, I don't think the American people want to go there, and I don't think a majority in this House want to go there, but instead of fixing and limiting the problems and the potential defects of this incompetent rulemaking that is ongoing and is, at this point, only proposed, perhaps the Agency itself will wake up and withdraw and revise the rule.

That is what public comment periods are all about; but no, we are going to preempt it before then and say nothing that went into developing this rule can ever be considered again in developing another rule. You are stuck with something that doesn't work, which these same groups object to.

It is just very sad that we are aren't a legislative body anymore. You take someone who has got a tough race, you give them a bill, they go out and rah-rah-rah, they pretend they did something, and they go home and get reelected, instead of really doing something.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, remember, should this bill pass and become law, which it never will, it will tie us to the 2003-2008 guidance, which the Farm Bureau has described as a hodgepodge of ad hoc and inconsistent jurisdictional theories, and will result in and is resulting in increased delays and costs to the public at large. That is why we are here today.

Everybody agrees that we need clarification, but you are excluding them from using the judicial decisions and any document that was used in coming up with this problematic rule, and you are saying you can't use any of that. So, basically, we are stuck with the 2003-2008 guidance, which, prior to this grandstanding over here, everybody agreed needed to be fixed. Now we are going to be stuck with it forever.

Instead of using a legislative scalpel, you pulled out the giant sledgehammer here. Sometimes it is harder to be a legislator and to actually get into the guts of something and figure out what is wrong and what isn't wrong, and Mr. Bishop has done that.

They cannot expand the scope beyond those water bodies covered prior to the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in those two cases, and it cannot be inconsistent with the judicial opinions of Scalia's and Kennedy's in Rapanos. This is not judgmental stuff. These are clear legislative restrictions. This would be taking and putting walls around their rulemaking and saying, no, you're staying inside those rules. In addition to that, they can't increase the regulation of ditches. They can't eliminate any historical statutory or regulatory exemptions for agriculture, which do not exist under the 2003-2008 rules. There are questions about ditches under the 2003-2008 rules, and they are interpreted differently in all parts of the country.

You are going to bind us to something that doesn't work because you want to grandstand and pretend you are doing something for people who have legitimate concerns. Sometimes it is harder to say to them that this is a difficult and complicated question, because Americans want to preserve the clean waters of the United States. We don't want to go back in time, but we also want you people to farm and to ranch and to do other productive activities. That is hard to do, and that isn't what this bill before us today will do. It will bind us to the problems of the past.

Well, there are two real crises before us, and the Republican response was the misbegotten legislation, withdrawn yesterday, as it should have been, but the other wasn't even on the table in any form.

There were 236 new fires started in the Western United States last night. There are 31 large fires that are uncontained. And the Forest Service and the BLM are running out of money. In the Senate bill-- which, granted, it didn't pass--but in the President's proposal was emergency firefighting money. But somehow, the Republicans here don't think those fires are an emergency and they don't care about the loss of resources, the potential loss of life, and the loss of property that is going to result.

When those agencies run out of money, they can't stop fighting the fires, but they have will have to cut back on programs of preparedness and things that would mitigate the disaster of future fires, deal with forest health, fuel reduction, and all those things. But they couldn't care less. They are taking no action. They didn't even put forward a lame proposal on that, unlike their very lame proposal on the border.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Many years ago, I worked as a bicycle mechanic, so I know how to patch a tube. But if you get to the point where you can't see the tube anymore for the patches, then it is time for a new tube.

Well, that is where we are at here today. We have had study after study that we are not even investing enough money in our infrastructure to bring it up to a state of good repair, let alone build a modern 21st century infrastructure.

We were the envy of the world with the Eisenhower program. We were the number one in infrastructure in the world. Where are we now? We are number 26. We are down there slugging it out with Third World countries, in terms of our infrastructure.

140,000 bridges on the national highway system need repair or replacement. Forty percent of the national highway system is so deteriorated that it has to be totally replaced. You can't just patch it anymore. You just can't resurface anymore.

Our transit agencies have a $70 billion backlog to bring their existing systems up to a state of good repair--not to build new transit options for Americans, no--just to bring what we have up to a state of good repair.

Why are we here today? Because there are people on that side of the aisle who actually don't believe it is either the duty, obligation, or right of the Federal Government to invest in a national highway system, a national transportation system. They believe in devolution. Make the States do it.

We tried that. In the 1950s, Kansas built a brand-new turnpike. It ended at the Oklahoma border because Oklahoma ran out of money, and they didn't build it until the Eisenhower bill went through.

They want to go back to those good old days of the 1950s, when you couldn't even have roads that connected between States. That is nuts. It was bad in the middle of the last century, and it is nuts for the 21st century.

Are we just going to kick the can down the road again? If we pass this Republican proposal to continue the current anemic levels of funding until next May, that is not going to bring the States the certainty they need. It is not going to bring the industry the robust investment they need. It is not going to get us the jobs we need.

Yes, we will limp along until next May, and then there will be incredible uncertainty about the next construction season. There won't be major new projects planned. Nothing will happen. We need to resolve that this year.

We should stay here, as the gentleman from Oregon said, and resolve it this August. Five weeks, guys, and we can't get to this issue? Then you are going to kick it into next year? Better, at least, that we are confronted with it before the end of this year; then maybe we can get a robust funding source.

Maybe we can make the investments we need. Maybe we could give the

States the tools they need next construction season and the certainty they need next construction season to go forward.

We just had a Standard & Poor's study. 29,000 jobs are created, and these are not just construction jobs. They are engineering jobs, technical jobs, and manufacturing jobs for the equipment that goes into this or the steel that goes into this. These are small business jobs with a small business set-aside.

We are foregoing an incredible stimulus to our economy, putting hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work or at work, building us yet again toward a world-class infrastructure.

It is just shameful this has been bipartisan forever. Washington, canals and highways; Lincoln, the transcontinental railroad; Eisenhower, the national highway system; and Ronald Reagan put transit into the national highway program--now, we are here limping along with yet another patch that isn't adequate, won't give us the recovery we need, and won't give us the transportation infrastructure we need to be competitive in the 21st century.

It is a very sad day. We should reject this proposal and get to work.

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

I rise today just before Congress goes on a 5-week recess for the entire month of August and the first week of September. During that time, we will celebrate Labor Day. There are a lot of reasons to celebrate Labor Day, but it has particular context to this debate today.

One hundred years ago this Labor Day, Martha died.

Now, perhaps not everybody here knows about or has heard about Martha. Martha was the last passenger pigeon. She died in the Cincinnati Zoo. None of us remember passenger pigeons, but they were in numbers so great--billions--that they would darken the sky for hours or days as they passed. Yet, within a very short period of time, they became extinct. I believe she is stuffed and on display at the Smithsonian. I think they have a special exhibit on this that I would recommend to people to remember the way things used to be.

We did then, 50 years later, pass the Endangered Species Act. So this is kind of symmetrical in that, 100 years ago, there was the last passenger pigeon, and 50 years later, we adopted a law to try and preserve species. I think the most eloquent words I have ever heard on endangered species were from Justice Douglas on the Mineral King decision. This doesn't do all of his decision justice, but here is just one sentence:

When a species is gone, it is gone forever. Nature's

genetic chain--billions of years in the making--is broken for

all time. Conserve water. Conserve land. Conserve life.

Then he went on to speculate about what might be lost with any individual species, what potential it might have had. Could it cure cancer? If we lose these species, who knows?

So Congress 50 years ago--in a very different time and in a very bipartisan way--passed the Endangered Species Act.

Today, we have before us yet another missed opportunity. I am not going to look at the Endangered Species Act and say it is perfect. It isn't. I believe a 50-year-old law could use some revision. A lot has been learned. A lot of real science has changed in the interim, in particular, the individual listing of species, and particularly when they occupy the same space. It becomes very problematic, as opposed to taking more of an ecosystem-based approach. There are some who are modifying the whole idea of how we deal with critical habitat, but that is not before us today. It wasn't considered by the so-called ``working group'' of the committee or ``special group'' or whatever it was.

They concluded that the Endangered Species Act is a failure because it hasn't recovered enough species. They did leave out a little fact that 90 percent of the species that are listed are recovering at the rate specified in their Federal recovery plans. This doesn't happen instantaneously. There are years of degradation of environment, years of overharvesting or of overhunting. Those things don't get changed in a short period of time, but 90 percent are on target. They left that out probably because it didn't support their conclusion that the act just isn't working at all.

We have an estimate, actually, that without the Endangered Species Act passed by a more enlightened Congress--bipartisan--50 years ago, there would be 227 species that would have gone extinct since the law's passage. They include gray wolves--although, there are some trying to turn around that recovery effort, including some in this administration--green sea turtles, humpback whales, and, of course, the iconic bald eagle. Without the Endangered Species Act, they, in all probability, would all be extinct, a memory for our generation--gone.

As I said, it is not perfect, and I think there are changes we could make. It is truly a deliberative process in the committee, but that wouldn't be just a small group from one side of the aisle going around the country, holding so-called ``hearings'' or ``listening sessions.'' We could assure greater transparency in ways that weren't considered and won't be proposed here today. We could promote better the use of best science. We could improve cooperation and coordination with the States that are committed to species protection and recovery.

However, none of the legislation before us will do that. It will do nothing to improve species recovery. It will do nothing to improve the science underlying listing decisions. Instead, actually, contravening what the Republicans espouse to wish, these bills will, instead, increase the amount of red tape that is involved, create more reporting requirements, divert agency resources from recovery efforts, and most oddly--and, I think, perhaps, it is the oddest and most objectionable and nonsensical part of this legislation--it will deem that any data submitted by any Native American tribe, any city, county, or State, will be deemed to be the best available science.

Now, there are 16,000 counties in America. Let's say a couple of them come to a different conclusion. Suddenly, the agency is confronted with: we have the best available science from this county, and we have the best available science from this county, and we have the best available science from this county. Hmm. Wow. Haven't we created an unbelievable potential for litigation over any decisions that are made given that mandate? I think we have. Of course, that may be why they go on later in the bill to limit attorneys' fees--because they are anticipating that there will be a huge proliferation of litigation, and they want to mitigate the costs of the problem that they are going to create with this nonsensical ``this is the best available science.'' I think it is going to create a lot of tension, potentially, between States and counties--rural counties and urban counties--because they are all vying to submit the best available science.

Here we are, yet again, taking up time on the floor, and I guess we need to do that before we get to real things, like the suing of the President of the United States despite the fact that courts have definitively decided we can't do that. We have political tools, and it is a controversy, but that is not before us today--that is tomorrow--so we are trying to kill time to build up to that end just before we go off on recess. But I am going to raise another topic, and it is a bit sensitive.

About 12 years ago, I had massive fires burning in my district--the Biscuit Fire--and the committee just happened to be holding a hearing on

wildfires. It devolved into the usual partisan ``you go to your corner, and I will go to mine. We need to do a forest supplemental. We need to do this.'' As sometimes I do, I expostulated a bit in the committee, and I went and used my entire 5 minutes to say how wrong I thought this was and that I thought fires were very bipartisan in their destruction and that we should cut it out.

A few Members--oddly enough, from very different perspectives--came to me afterwards. That would have been George Miller. It is predictable that George would side with me, but also we had Scott McInnis, we had John Shadegg, and, ultimately, we had Greg Walden involved. We sat down, and we hammered out something that, ultimately, didn't pass through the House, but our framework was adopted by the Senate--HFRA. Then it came back to the House and was adopted. It was an attempt to expedite fuel reduction and prevent the intensity of future fires.

I look at that as a model of how we should deal with fires. We do need to do more fuel reduction work, and we do need to do more preparation and pre-positioning, but we also have to fight the fires that are burning today.

Now there is the rarest of rare things in Washington, D.C., even rarer than the rarest endangered species, which would be a bill which is bipartisan. I guess a lot of people don't know what that means anymore.

It means it is supported by both Democrats and Republicans, bicameral, by both Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate in substantial numbers, and is supported by the President of the United States.

Now, that is a pretty endangered thing. It has been around for quite a number of months. We have yet in the House. And it is a bill that is designed both to mitigate for future fires and to more efficiently fight fires.

The agencies that are tasked with fighting fires are about to run out of money. It happens every year. Who cares if they run out of money? Well, they have got to keep fighting the fires.

All right. Well, what do they do? They gut all their other programs-- including the fuel reduction program, the forest health program, the timber program, the recreation program--things that are going to bring about more intense and more fires in the future and impact anybody who has a national forest or interior lands in their State or their area.

Now, this bill has yet to have a single hearing or any consideration, except for a mention in the Ryan budget which said he didn't support it. That is it. That is the total action by the House of Representatives on this issue. That is very sad. That is what we should be here on the floor today considering.

There are, as of this moment--I just checked it out because it is worse every day. We have, currently, nationally, 25 major fires: seven in Oregon--these are all uncontained or partially uncontained--six in California; four in Washington, including the largest in the State's history; three in Utah; two in Idaho; one in Colorado; and phenomenal lightning storms are predicted over the next 2 days, which means many, many, many more fires. Yet Congress is going to pass, I expect the House will pass, this ESA, so-called ESA bill today and leave town without dealing with the firefighting issue. I think it is very sad.

Now, some say, well, we have already done our job. We passed a bill, a couple of bills, a number of bills that could deal with forest health, future mitigation, fuel reduction. That is true. But even if they became law today, they wouldn't deal with today's problem that the agencies are going to run out of fire. And even if they became law today, it would take many years to get there.

I have got some pretty good estimates. We have somewhere around 75 million acres of land at high risk of wildfire in the West. And if we use the most conservative possible estimate, one that estimates there is a lot of commercial value there that reduces thinning cost, one that assumes that there is a lot of biomass available that is economic, you could get it down to, say, $300, $500 an acre. Well, that would be $20 billion to go out and do that work. We are about to spend the paltry budget for this year, $300 million for fuel reduction on fighting current fires. So we aren't exactly getting there.

It is a real issue, and that is what we should be dealing with here today.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

The gentleman made a point with which I would agree, which is they should consider and give due weight to local submissions and people in the area. But unfortunately, and perhaps the gentleman is unaware, this bill elevates that, and it does say all science submitted by States, tribes, and local governments is, by definition, the best scientific and commercial data. Then, if you refer back to the law, under basis for determinations on endangered species and a number of other things, the Secretary shall rely on the best scientific and commercial data.

Well, now, suddenly everybody who is submitting something has the best commercial and scientific data, and the Secretary is somehow supposed to sort out between 10 different counties, five States, 14 cities, and 18 Indian tribes who all have different disagreeing best available commercial data and science. You are creating a standard which, given the existing law which you didn't change, is going to be impossible to meet.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself 1 minute.

Well, tomorrow I fully expect the Republicans to prevail on the floor of the House to authorize litigation against the President of the United States for nonjusticiable controversy, all per all the previous precedents of the court.

I would note they spent $525 an hour on attorneys to defend the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act, which was ultimately found unconstitutional. And I expect they will spend well over $500 an hour for a nonjusticiable political stunt suing the President.

But beyond that, during this Congress, the requests, subpoenas, et cetera, by the committee to the Department of the Interior for purported conspiracies, which have yielded nothing, cost $2.5 million. The total award to attorneys was $1.7 million. So if we reined in the subpoenas a little bit, you could save more money than by limiting the attorneys and people's access to justice.

With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller).

I would inquire of the time remaining on both sides.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

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

Mr. Chairman, I would reserve the balance of my time, since I only have 1 minute remaining, until that side has no further speakers.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I will close where I ended my opening remarks, 25 major fires burning in the West: seven in Oregon, six in California, four in Washington, two in Utah, two in Idaho, and one in Colorado. And by this time next week, probably twice as many, but next week Congress will be out of session.

The agencies will run out of money. They can't stop fighting the fires. So

what they will do is they will pull back money that would prevent future intense wildfires from prevention programs. They will pull back money from recreation programs. They will pull back money from a host of things that Americans care about and want to have funded just to fight these fires. It is an endless cycle. We need to deal with it.

We could have dealt with it here today instead of spending multiple hours on a bill which is going nowhere, which is poorly drafted to the point where anybody, any city, county, tribe, State who writes on the back of a napkin can submit that to the agency and it must be considered the best available science and commercial data. And under the law, the Secretary has to use that to make a decision.

How the heck is that going to work? You are saying you are worried about attorney's fees; you are creating a universe for new litigation with this misguided approach.

So I wish we would return to a bipartisan addressing of the forest fire issue because I know there is bipartisan concern on it. There is a bill pending in the House--54 Republicans, 54 Democrats. We should take that bill up today, tomorrow, or Thursday before we leave town and fund our firefighting efforts.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, although I do not oppose the amendment.

This is similar to an amendment offered by the chairman in committee which carved out an exemption for private individuals. This would carve out another amendment for the Department of Defense.

Unfortunately, crafting legislation so it doesn't have unintended impacts is often a difficult, deliberative process. In this case, the overly broad language in this section would still require commercial data from timber and oil and gas companies. That is not covered by the exemptions in the bill. And also, it could require data containing business activity locations, operation plans, information regarding species found on their lands, and they would be published on the Internet, which would be an invitation to trespass in the case of private timber companies having to publish that sort of invitation.

So I don't think the exemption goes far enough. I think the entire provision should be stricken. But again, I will not bother to oppose this amendment, but I will oppose the underlying bill.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, and it was mentioned by a number of Democrats on this side, we don't think the Endangered Species Act is perfect and we could work on a bipartisan basis on modernization-type reforms to bring it into the 21st century, compliant with current science. However, that is not before us today. But I am hopeful that this amendment, because of a very unsettling precedent by the Obama administration, will get bipartisan support.

Now, the Republicans may, in this case, agree with the objectives of an agency of government which has gone rogue in this case, which is Fish and Wildlife. They have been trying for years to remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, science isn't on their side. Wolves have not recovered throughout much of their range. Oregon and Washington have a few packs; California, Colorado, Utah, and New York have none. However, they have cooked up a little bit of science to justify their determination to delist.

Now, in the case of Oregon, OR-7, his mate, and pups, might be pretty safe. They are down in the corner of the State. California won't be hunting wolves because of their own Endangered Species Act. But his relatives up in the northeast corner of Oregon, should they cross the border into Idaho, they will be immediately assassinated. That is the result of what Fish and Wildlife and Congress combined have done.

They cooked up the science. Unfortunately, science has to be peer- reviewed and published in journals. No journal would publish it. Not even some of the captive industry journals or the livestock association journal. Nobody would publish it. They said this is junk.

So what did they do? Well, they came up with a zombie journal. They revived an internal journal called North American Fauna, which was an internal Fish and Wildlife little newsletter, and it hasn't been printed previously since 1991.

Now, again, I imagine most Republicans are saying: So what, if this helps us get rid of the wolf--which many on that side of the aisle would like to do--so be it, that is good.

Well, just think what is going to happen when Fish and Wildlife and this administration, or another administration, wants to make a decision contrary to what you care about? What if they want to cook up a phony science on the sage-grouse, the lesser prairie chicken, or on some of these other species that have been talked about today? They drag out the North American fauna label and they say: Hey, it has been published, and that is what we based our decision on.

This is a very disturbing trend by an administration--inexplicable that this administration would go down this particular path. And again, even if you may agree with delisting the wolf and greatly reducing the populations, which are nowhere near what they should be for a full recovery, threatening again a future, more comprehensive, listing-- again, a bit shortsighted if you support that, but you may.

But just think if you let this stand. If you let these people these Federal bureaucrats, these hacks, get away with this. They cooked something up. I mean, really? You can't even get the sheep journal to publish this because they really hate the wolves, or the cattleman's journal, they really hate the wolves. No, they wouldn't publish it. They had to come up with a phony internal journal, because it was so bad that they knew they would be subject to ridicule and violating essentially their own morals and ethics by doing that.

I would hope that the Republicans can support this amendment, because even though they may agree with the ends here, they surely should disagree with the process.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, well, I didn't understand that.

Look, a Federal agency revived a journal that had been extinct for 23 years. It is an internal document. They took phony science and published it in that, and then they based a delisting decision on it. If they based a listing decision on it, you guys would be going berserk over there.

What I am precluding is future Federal agencies, no matter where they come down on a listing decision, from using phony science which is only self-published. This is like whack nuts who write books about crazy things and they publish it themselves and say: Look, it was a book. Yeah, it is a book. You paid to publish it.

In this case, they used taxpayer money to publish a phony study to justify a decision they had already made, which you might happen to agree with.

But what happens when they use that same tactic to do that with a decision you disagree with, to actually list something?

This has nothing to do with transparency. It doesn't need to be transparent because they couldn't use it. It is phony science. They would not be allowed to use phony science by self-publishing it. That is simply what the amendment does, and I can't believe you guys are going to oppose it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I am bemused by this.

It is simple. It says:

The term ``best scientific and commercial data available''

includes all such data submitted by a State, tribal, or

county government.

That means all the data. That means if all the counties, States, and tribes don't agree, you have conflicting best available data. That is what we are saying. We want them to take all data into account, but you can't deem that theirs is the best.

In the case of nitrification in the Columbia River, Oregon and Washington disagree. They have competing science, but now, they would have to weigh it equally. I have heard tribes say to save salmon and delist them, you have to take all the dams out of the river. That becomes the best available science, if submitted by a tribe?

What are you guys thinking? We want them to listen to everybody. Everybody can submit something, but we don't then deem it to be the best available data. That is nuts.

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

I just wonder if the gentleman can name one piece of litigation which was sponsored by Federal tax dollars, and I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, the gentleman can't name one lawsuit, one organization using Federal tax dollars. I guess that is probably because he is familiar with OMB Circular A-87 that says neither a State, local government, or an Indian tribal government can use money provided by the Federal Government for legal expenses for prosecution of claims against the Federal Government.

Well, okay, that leaves a big hole. What about nonprofits? They get Federal money. That would be OMB Circular A-122, ``Cost Principles for Nonprofit Organizations,'' which says, ``Costs of legal, accounting, and consultant services, and related costs, incurred in connection with defense against Federal Government claims or appeals, antitrust suits, or the prosecution of claims or appeals against the Federal Government, are unallowable.''

So we are now going to have the agency chase a Chimera--that is, something that has never happened and can't happen under law. They have got to go out and spend a bunch of money trying to unearth it.

If the gentleman could just name one instance, then that might change the argument, but he can't.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, unfortunately, the gentleman misstated what his amendment does. It doesn't say that individuals filing litigation under the Endangered Species Act must disclose whether or not they receive any Federal funds and are using any Federal funds in this case. It doesn't say that.

It says that Fish and Wildlife Service must determine. How is the Fish and Wildlife Service going to determine whether or not someone used Federal funds?

As he said, money is fungible. He is saying they may be violating the circular that prohibits nonprofit organizations from doing this. They may be violating the circular.

These are, of course, criminal offenses, that prohibit State, local, and Indian tribal governments from using Federal money for such litigation. He is saying that may be go going on, so then Fish and Wildlife should just discover it themselves.

How is that going to work? It sends Fish and Wildlife on a mission that it is not equipped to handle. They can't say: pretty please, tell us.

If someone is violating the law, they are probably not going to volunteer it to Fish and Wildlife.

If you wanted to do this, you would have to write an amendment that amends the Rules of Civil Procedure or whatever--I am not a lawyer-- that would require that these litigants disclose at the time of filing their litigation. Saying Fish and Wildlife should find out after it has been filed is absolutely absurd.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, the end of this week begins the August recess, or district work period. Some of us will go home working--and I am going home to a State that is on fire. We have four major fires, and many dozens of other fires are burning in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, and Utah.

The Forest Service and the BLM have about exhausted their budget for fighting fires. They can't stop fighting fires. So they are going to have to gut their other budgets, including budgets that would mitigate future fire risk, fuel reduction, and other programs. They will also cut recreation and other things that people really care about. Congress has not seen fit to give them adequate money.

There is a bipartisan, bicameral proposal, supported by the President--that is about the rarest thing in Washington, D.C., these days--to give the Forest Service and the BLM the tools they need, an adequate budget, and for these extreme fires--the 1 percent that cost 30 percent of the budget--treat those like emergencies, like we do floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes.

What have the Republicans done with this? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not one hearing. Not one mention, except in the Ryan budget, where he said he didn't support that approach; they should just gut their budgets, or we should kill some other program to pay for fighting fires.

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

The so-called Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, which I opposed for many reasons, but buried deep within it--you know, they were sitting down, crunching numbers. They had the Ryan-Murray budget deal, and they had to meet certain targets. They were short. You can't raise taxes around here. Well, yes, maybe you kind of can, things that are taxes that don't look like taxes.

So the deal that was cut was a 125 percent increase in the TSA passenger security fee. Now, many Americans probably wouldn't object too much to a passenger security fee increase if they thought it was going to enhance passenger security, especially with better throughput for the long lines at the airports. But no, that is not where the money is going. It is just going somewhere in the Federal Treasury. Maybe it will help reduce the deficit. Maybe it will be spent on something else. No one knows. But airline passengers will pay it.

A one-stop flight from Eugene to San Francisco used to be $2.50. The tax will now be $5.60. That is a pretty steep increase, and that is what really drove me to support this legislation.

I am happy to talk about increased taxes and have an upfront debate about it, where it is needed and where it needs to be reformed, but these invisible things like this, where some backroom deal between a senior House Republican and a Democrat in the Senate, where they just stick it on to airline passengers, that shouldn't happen.

It can happen, in part, because nobody knows. They weren't watching the debate, it was buried in the bill, and they don't see it in the required full-fare advertising. There is just one big number.

Well, where does all that money go? Well, guess what, a lot of it goes to the government, and as of this week, on a one-way flight to San Francisco, another $3.10 will go to the government. So I think if we had good disclosure of the tax part, then it wouldn't be as easy for some of my colleagues to sneak that stuff through.

Now, secondly, we are kind of looking at the nanny state here. Do you know what the current rule is? Well, the airlines can advertise the taxes after the full fare, the aggregate fare, but it has to be in smaller print. It has to be in smaller print. Talk about the nanny state. Give me a break.

What do you think, Americans are idiots? Besides that, I have trouble with small print, and a lot of other people do too. So they are probably going to be really squinting, trying to read the small print part, where the big numbers stand out.

Third, why airlines? Why did they go after the aviation industry? Whoa--were there a lot of complaints? No, there weren't. In May 2011, there were four complaints about fare advertising out of 1,062 complaints. If they really wanted the FAA to focus on things, they would look at customer service, baggage, 143, 120, boarding problems, 116, refunds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So the FAA somehow went out in search of a problem that didn't exist; but guess what? Did they fix the problem that didn't exist? Did we go from four complaints to zero? Oops--no. Actually, May 2014, with the new full-fare advertising rule with the tiny print for government and big print for the total cost, they had 12 complaints. Complaints are up 300 percent.

Now, I wonder what that is about, so I would say that this was a nanny state rule in search of a problem that didn't exist that may have created a problem that does exist. There is a whole host of issues that go to price sensitivity, many studies about that, and other things.

So it is detrimental to the industry; it is, I think, confusing; and I think it

is deceptive. In March, I was going to hike the Grand Canyon. I was going to rent a car that was going to sit for 7 days. I didn't want to pay a lot for a rental car to sit for 7 days. So I went on Priceline, and I bid. I got a car for $19 a day--pretty good, but I know that the next page is going to tell me what I am really going to pay.

Now, any informed consumer knows that. It is prominent because you have to get finally to click and agree to the end, so you are going to see the whole thing. It is the same thing with airline tickets under this bill. You will see first what the airline is charging you. Next, you will see what the government is charging you, and then, finally, you will see what you will pay.

That is just like I paid for this rental car, just like a hotel room, just like for cruises and everything else.

Now, I don't want to give anybody down at DOT any ideas--or whatever other agencies have jurisdiction in those areas--because I don't want them to start thinking, well, wait a minute, maybe we need a nanny state rule too because we don't have one for rental cars and we don't have one for cruises. No, that is not my point.

My point is consumers are pretty smart. We are not concealing anything here. Give us full and meaningful information, and help me prevent people sticking fees on to airline passengers that have nothing to do with aviation in secret budget deals in the future.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

No, I have no requests for time. Apparently, we have done something unusual around here, created something that doesn't seem to be controversial, except among a few talking heads out there somewhere.

Mr. Speaker, having no requests for time, I am happy to yield back the balance of my time.

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

Well, it is Groundhog Day again here on the floor of the House of Representatives. Much of the speech we just heard actually was read 3 years ago on the floor. Three years ago, we were in a different place. There was a new pending rule. There was tremendous uncertainty whether this would be an undue burden on individuals--no, in the end, it isn't at all--on individual farmers--no, except for the largest farms over 6,000 acres--or on forestry. And no, it has not been a problem, and I have a heavily forested State. So there was tremendous uncertainty, and the House Republicans moved this legislation. Of course, it went nowhere in the Senate.

Here we are 3 years later. We have been living under the permit and general permit process, and I am going to look forward to hearing some very specific problems, denials, or litigation from the other side--not maybe, there should have, could have, would have, might be stuff, because I am not aware of any. And we have asked.

Now, sure, my Farm Bureau supports this. Hey, whatever. That is great. Others say sure, but it is not anything that we really have on our priority list.

But, you know, here we are.

Fires are burning in the West. We don't have time for a hearing or a bill to get money to the Forest Service and the Interior Department, but we do have time to do pretend legislation that isn't going anywhere in the Senate again to deal with a problem that doesn't exist.

Why doesn't it exist? Well, first of all, all individuals and applications by farmers are exempt under a permit. You follow the label, you are fine. No one can sue you.

Then you have, if you are a bigger applicator, if you are like someone who is paid to apply pesticides and herbicides, you have to give notice under a general permit. That is all you have to do. You file it online. Not too burdensome. Most applicators, I think, have access to a computer.

Is there an approval process? No. Is there a waiting period? No. You just file it, and then you are exempt from litigation if you follow the label.

So why would we have this? Well, there have been a few instances of problems, and we want to be able to track where those problems originated. So if you have a general permit out there for an industrial application or a commercial application of a certain herbicide and it starts showing up downstream with dead fish, you know probably where it came from and you can trace it back and you will probably find out that they violated the label.

Now, why did this come about? Well, for a real reason: 92,000 steelhead were killed in southern Oregon because an irrigation district chose to use a powerful herbicide in its irrigation canals and they didn't follow the label in terms of the waiting period for it to degrade. They ran the water through and killed 92,000 fish. That is where this all started.

So we are not saying they can't use it, they can't apply it--you know, they can--but we want to know where it is coming from. In that case, it was pretty easy to track back. The trail of dead fish led right back to the irrigation canal.

In other cases of impaired waters--and I have a long list in my State, and I am sure there are other States--we are not quite sure how they got impaired or where they are being impaired, and we would have a better indication if we merely have this notice requirement.

Now, there will be a lot of fear-mongering here today: ``You won't be able to use stuff on your lawn.'' ``You will be liable.'' ``It won't be available.''

No, not true.

``Farmers won't be able to apply their own herbicides and pesticides.''

No, not true.

``Very large farms, commercial applicators will not be able to use it.''

No, not true, but they will need to put a notice online they are using it, and they are supposed to follow the label.

I really find it unfortunate that we are spending time on this instead of getting some additional allocation of funds to fight fires in the West. My State is burning up. Washington State is burning up. California is burning up. Other intermountain States are burning up. The Forest Service and BLM are going to run out of money this week or next.

They have got all their other budgets to pay for fighting fires because they can't stop fighting the fires. They can't stop.

But Congress has a bipartisan, bicameral bill agreed to by the President. There is nothing else like that in Washington, D.C., with the partisan activity around here, the conflict always between the House and the Senate.

Here is a bill agreed to by Democrats and Republicans--52 Rs, 52 Ds on the bill. Here is a bill that is pending in the House and the Senate, bicameral--it is also bipartisan on that side--and it is supported by the President.

But we can't find time to take action on that and get the Forest Service and BLM money this week because we are

doing stuff like this about pretend problems that don't exist and scaring people who use these products legitimately. It is a very sad waste of our time.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty).

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

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

In conclusion, I think we have heard arguments on both sides. I am convinced more by the arguments I have heard on our side. I don't believe it is an undue burden on States. I live in a mosquito control district, and 3 years ago, they had tremendous concerns.

Last year, they went ahead with their regular program, and this year, they are going ahead with their regular permit, under a general permit which they filed online. They said it wasn't a big deal.

So I don't know where the millions of dollars comes in, unless we have States or applicators or other who don't own computers or whatever. I can't figure out where that number comes from.

So I don't believe we have created an egregious problem. Given some of the past problems and the number of impaired waterways in my State, we just want to know where the stuff is being applied. We certainly want to be certain it is applied according to the label, but if it is not, then we have some capability of tracing it back and finding the responsible party and preventing future problems and potentially penalizing those people.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, we have a crisis in firefighting funds here in the United States of America, and what has this Congress done about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Zero. Nada. It hasn't even held a hearing.

Right now there are 11 major fires burning in Oregon, five in Washington--one the largest in the history of the State--two in Utah, two in Idaho, one in California, and one in Arizona. There are forecasts for a substantial amount of new lightning storms moving through, and that means more fires. Our resources are about at their maximum, and the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service are about to run out of funds. Now, this was predictable.

The budget set by the Republicans and Paul Ryan was totally inadequate. There was a proposal, which is the rarest of things in this town, a bipartisan--Republicans and Democrats--bicameral--Senate and House--proposal supported by the President of the United States, and that was to look at what has happened over the last 10 years of the dramatic increase in the severity and the occurrence of fires, particularly in the Western United States, on public lands and to give the Forest Service a budget adequate to fight those fires year in and year out. And also, for those extraordinary fires, the ones that are pretty much unprecedented in history because of mismanagement, climate change, and a number of other things, to fight those with emergency funds just like we deal with tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes.

That money should not come out of the budget of the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior, because what do they have to do? Starting later this month, they are going to devastate the remainder of their budget. That means, instead of going out and reducing fuels on fires through contracts, using private contractors and mitigating the future risk of fire, they are going to have to cancel those contracts for this year because they are going to have to spend the money to fight the fires.

Then, it is not only firefighting contracts they have to cancel, they have to devastate all across their budget, including recreation programs and their timber sale programs, things that bring in revenue to the Federal Government. Any State that has Federal lands administered by the Department of the Interior or the Forest Service-- most of the States in the Union, much more of an impact in certain States than others--will see a detrimental impact because the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior are going to have to rob their budgets to pay for the costs of these fires.

It also means that we didn't have as many people pre-deployed; we didn't have as much equipment pre-deployed; and we didn't have all the resources we needed ready. We also need a whole new firefighting fleet. We are using World War II aircraft. They are kind of at the end of their useful life. And we are now pressing into service planes that are not particularly efficient at fighting fires because we don't have a fleet of planes, a modern fleet of planes, to assist our firefighters to help save their lives on the ground and help save the lives of people in the communities that are affected.

And what has this House of Representatives done? Nothing. Not even a hearing. Now, we can blather on forever about all sorts of things. We can have 50 investigations of this or that day in and day out. But can we take an action on something that is staring us in the face, which is the forest fire crisis in the Western United States right now?

Come on. Wake up and smell the smoke before it is too late. Take action. Pass this bicameral, bipartisan reform supported by the President of the United States. Give us the resources we need to fight these fires and to prevent future fires so we won't have more years like this.

Madam Speaker, you have heard the term ``reinvent the wheel.'' We have some people around here who want to un-invent the wheel. The Tea Party--``small government at any cost''--radicals have what they think is a brilliant new idea. It is called ``devolution.''

We will devolve the duty, the obligation, and the funding of the national transportation system to the 50 States. Oh, what a great idea. Well, no. Actually, we tried it in the last century. It failed pretty miserably. Here it is: 1956. This is the brand spanking new Kansas Turnpike. Oklahoma said they would build--oh, they ran out of money, so Oklahoma didn't build their section. Kansas did. For 3 years, cars crashed through the barrier at the end of this and landed in Emil Schweitzer's farm field. That is devolution. They want to go back to that.

Dwight David Eisenhower said, no, that is not acceptable. He passed a bill for a national transportation system, funded by a user fee, and the highway got completed.

Now we want to go back to that era? We want to compete with the world by spending less on transportation, by having less Federal coordination, and by passing a pathetic Band-Aid bill today with pretend money that will limp us through the next 9 months?

No. We need a substantial investment in our national transportation system--putting millions of people back to work, making us first class again, and competing with the rest of the world. No devolution.

Mr. Speaker, we can pretend that we care about the future of America and its transportation system. We used to be number one in the world, widely recognized. We are now rated 26th, and we are moving down quickly.

The system is falling apart. There are 140,000 bridges that need repair or replacement, and 40 percent of the pavement on the National Highway System has failed to the point at which

you have to dig it up, not just resurface it. There is a $70 billion backlog in our transit systems just to bring everything up to a state of good repair. That is not even to begin to think about building a 21st century transportation system to compete with the rest of the world. For the Chinese, 9 percent of their GDP goes to transportation. They want to be able to move people and goods more efficiently and to out-compete us. Even Brazil, 6 percent. India, 6 percent. The United States of America, 1 percent. We have got to get serious about this.

Today, we are going to do a little shuffling around of some money, and say, oh, we can pretend, by pension smoothing and this and that, that we are creating money so we get around not creating more debt or deficit here. Come on. Really, it is pretty phony stuff. Let's get real about how we are going to fund our transportation future.

We are fighting with people who believe in a theory called ``devolution.'' That is, they want to devolve the duty of building a national transportation system to the 50 dispersed States and let them figure it out. We tried that. This is 1956. The brand new Kansas Turnpike ended in Emil Schweitzer's farm field for years because Oklahoma couldn't afford their part of that system until the Eisenhower bill passed, and we had a highway trust fund.

We know this works--user-fee based, a national system, coordinating among the States, not having roads that disconnect at the border, not tolling the heck out of everything, which some people would have us do, not fragmenting the system. What are you going to say to the Port of Los Angeles, where 40 percent of the freight comes into the country? Oh, you figure out how to get the freight out of L.A. to serve the rest of the country, and you pay for it. No. This is a national obligation. It is international and national competitiveness. We have to get serious, and this bill here today is not serious or long term.

I thank my good friend for yielding that time.

Mr. Speaker, sometime in the end of July or, at the latest, very early August, the inadequate budget for forest firefighting for the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service will be exhausted-- that's right, exhausted.

We are going to be at a point where there will be fires raging across the West. We are looking at record drought, record dry fuels, and you will be able, probably, to smell or see the smoke across a lot of the country.

Mr. Speaker, we should be doing everything we can to prepare for this and prevent this in the future, and that is the crux of this argument. We are not going to stop fighting fires. They can't because the forests will burn and people will die. No, we are going to stop it, but they will borrow from and decimate every other account in their budgets.

Forty percent of the Forest Service budget goes to fighting fires on an annual basis, which means every year we repeat this little Groundhog Day thing. They have to suspend the programs that would prevent future forest fires--that is fuel reduction programs, forest health programs.

They have to cut into the recreation budget and all of the other activities and things that they must do--cut into their timber management program, everything gets decimated--and the money just goes to fight fires.

We have the rarest of rare things here: a bicameral, bipartisan bill that is supported by the President of the United States. What else in this town is bipartisan, bicameral, and supported by the President?

Mr. Speaker, this should be a no-brainer. I have asked for hearings in the committee on the coming catastrophe this summer. No hearings have been held. We have legislation with 100 cosponsors--no action, no hearing, and no action on that bill.

We need this funding this month, and that way, the Forest Service won't have to decimate the programs that would prevent or mitigate future forest fires. So, come on, guys, let's wake up, smell the smoke, and do what is right and needs to be done--an adequate budget to fight the catastrophic forest fires across the Western United States.