Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Now, we have the idea of a 5-year planning process, a 5-year plan, and then, you can just add things to it, so really, it is kind of not really a 5-year plan anymore. It is meaningless.

There is an urgent, urgent need for more leases offshore in sensitive areas, there really is--southern California, Virginia, Maine, areas that are incredibly productive in terms of their fisheries, that are heavily recreated, and have other uses.

There is an urgent need to plop down some oil wells there because we have only exported 1.7 million barrels of oil and gasoline yesterday-- refined. There is a shortage, and that is why prices are high. If we just produced more in the most sensitive areas, without any environmental review, then the price would drop.

Well, no, actually, production has doubled since the Republicans first passed this bill, its fifth year in a row--it is Groundhog Day in June.

Now, they are still pretending. Actually, we heard a new argument yesterday: prices would be higher if we weren't exporting all of that diesel and gasoline, and the American Petroleum Institute hopes we will start soon acting like a colony and export crude oil to our friends in China and elsewhere, so they can make manufactured goods and sell them to us. Now, this is a great plan, and we are going to make it even better by not planning anymore.

There are 36.1 million acres of land under lease onshore. We had an argument about that yesterday--that is half the bill--and 23.5 million are not in production, but we need to lease more. Offshore, 220 million acres are available under the current leasing plan, 33.2 million acres have been leased, and 28.1 million of those 33.2--that is a pretty high percentage--aren't producing, and that is about 85 percent.

We need to lease more. We need to lease it now, so the oil companies can sit on it until they drive the price to $200 or $300 a barrel, which they will because we pay the royal price--we produce oil more cheaply here, but we pay the royal price.

We are exporting gasoline and diesel and paying extortionate prices, and the oil companies are making obscene prices, and only if we didn't have a planning process and we leased in some more sensitive areas, price wouldn't go down.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I believe I have the right to close, so I would reserve until the other side has concluded.

Madam Chair, we had extensive debate yesterday, and it is really not worth revisiting today. We had the same debate last year. This bill passed and has languished in the Senate and will not go anywhere in the Senate. We had the same the year before, the year before, and the year before.

You can pretend that you care about high oil prices at the same time while protecting the unbelievably obscene profits of the oil industry. You can pretend that the fact that they are sitting on 28.1 million acres of leases offshore that they have yet to develop doesn't exist and they need to lease more acreage.

They basically sit on these leases for years and watch the value of their asset, which is the oil underneath, rise. They have no incentive, actually, to drill in many of these areas because they pay a de minimus--a few bucks an acre kind of lease on an annual basis--and, hey, what a great activity.

Meanwhile, the speculators on Wall Street, according to the head of ExxonMobil--who is a pretty good authority--have jacked up the price because of speculation about 60 cents a gallon at the pump.

So every American should know every time they go to the pump, they can thank speculators on Wall Street, and inaction on the Republican side of the aisle either attempts to delay any minimal regulation or reforms of wild speculation of flash trading in the commodities market.

Instead, they are going to pretend, if we let more leases that the oil companies can sit on, that somehow the price will begin magically to come down, even though all the development in the last few years and the doubling of exports of oil of gasoline and diesel has not brought down the price. It is a so-called world market.

We produce it more cheaply here, but we pay the same price as the most expensively produced North Sea oil, so it is all kind of meaningless.

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

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, what we are talking about here is obscenely profitable oil companies getting a giveaway while we are running massive deficits.

Now, everyone says that they want to run government like a business and lower deficits. The GAO has estimated that if this is allowed to run its course without any of these leases being renegotiated, it will be a $50 billion windfall to the oil industry--not million, $50 billion.

Now that would be a nice piece of change, both for revenue sharing for the States and for the Federal Treasury. We could apply it all to deficit reduction or other needs, maybe even fund the continuation of the national transportation system. Who knows.

The bottom line is, as the gentleman pointed out, it may or may not have been intentional on the part of people at the then-Minerals Management Service to give away these assets to the oil companies.

But for 3 years before they slept with them--or whatever happened-- they did include it in the leases. And then what the Court found was that the law that the Republicans passed in 1995 didn't allow those sorts of conditions to be in the leases.

So this is a new approach. The Republican law was defective. The Clinton administration--at least some members of it--were corrupt. It is a bipartisan problem. Let's fix it in a bipartisan way.

This would just say, if the companies who got this windfall and won that Court case want new leases, we would condition new leases upon them negotiating and paying a fair return to the taxpayers on the old leases and, in that process, make the taxpayers whole.

It is a legal and simple way to fix a problem that was caused both by the law, as written, by the then-majority Republican party and the few corrupt members of the Clinton administration.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Well, first my condolences to the gentleman from Utah for being a Cubs fan. I am a Red Sox fan, and we have had some problems too. But that was an interesting moment and an interesting analogy made.

Mr. Chairman, I am not aware of the specifics of the instance of which he speaks. But I would say that this, as a remedy for a past action, would apply in the future, and it would not undo whatever took place in the past that the gentleman is referring to. And the principle here is fairly extraordinary. It kind of says, Federal bureaucrats never make mistakes.

So we have proposed leases in an area. We go through a public comment period. Local people comment. A hunting and fishing group comes in and says, you know, this is absolutely, like, the primo area for hunting or fishing or something else. Or it becomes apparent that this is, like, right in a main recreation corridor, something that the Federal bureaucrat overlooked in drawing up the lease boundaries.

But if this were adopted and became law in the future, at the end of the public comment period, it would be, We are the Federal Government. Thank you very much for pointing out that we really screwed that up, that we were just about to wipe out a prime habitat, that we were just about to block or really degrade a prime recreation corridor. We are bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. We didn't realize that. But we are sorry; public comment periods don't mean anything anymore. We cannot condition, withdraw, or change the lease. And that would be it.

I don't think that would be good. I really don't. So, there may have been--and, again, I am not aware of the circumstances to which the gentleman is referring in the specific, but I believe that this amendment, looking forward to whoever is in the White House and whoever is administering these programs, would really preclude any part of the public from having meaningful comment and getting a meaningful response from the Federal bureaucracy which has proposed leasing in their neighborhood.

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

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

I do have the right to close, so I will yield myself 90 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, as described, that might be an amendment that would be much more acceptable, but it actually doesn't say that. It says that, after the conclusion of the public comment period for a planned competitive lease sale, the Secretary shall not cancel, defer, or withdraw any lease parcel announced to be auctioned in a lease sale.

Now, what the gentleman described is not what this section F would do. This basically says we listen to people--we listened, we heard, it goes forward. Maybe that is not the intent, and if it isn't the intent, then it would need to be modified. So I believe that the public comment period for leases that are drawn up by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., headquarters should be meaningfully commented upon through a process by people in the vicinity, and their comments should be given some weight in whether or not the lease is modified or goes forward, as I previously described, if it impedes upon prime habitat or particularly on a recreational corridor.

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

I do not.

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

Mr. Chairman, again, the sentiments expressed by the gentleman having to do with a particular experience in his State--perhaps his district-- is one thing, but this is really clear in the statutory language. It says that we will hold the public comment period. When it closes, the lease goes forward, no matter what we heard.

What the gentleman is talking about is that there was a public comment period. The public comment period was closed, and he says that some time later, outside of the public comment period, someone submitted information which was used and overcame all of the other testimony and/or comments that were provided.

That is a whole different circumstance than what this is. This is very simple. It just says that there will be a public comment period; we will listen; and at the end of that, we don't care what we heard, it has to go forward as proposed.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned earlier, the chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, under oath before the United States Senate, testified 3 years ago that the price of oil was $30 to $40 higher than it should have been, and the price at that time was about $100 a barrel, a little less than it is today. So $30 to $40 of the cost of each barrel of oil didn't have to do with the company passing through exploratory costs or lease costs or anything else; 30 to 40 percent of the cost of every barrel of oil is due to speculation by commodities traders on Wall Street, flash traders, derivatives traders, and others.

This isn't your grandfather's swaps market or commodities market. It is not users hedging themselves against future inflation. It is not producers hedging themselves. No, it is rampant speculation by people who have no intention of ever accepting delivery of a barrel of oil, have no use for a barrel of oil, except to manipulate its price to make it more expensive to make money for themselves and the people they represent, which is a very small minority of Americans, less than 1 percent. Meanwhile, the other 99 percent of Americans pay more at the pump.

We should do something about this. Now, there are those who think the modest position limits in Dodd-Frank will be a horrible, onerous burden on these speculators, and that maybe they can only extract $20 a barrel--maybe only $10 a barrel out of us--so you would only be paying an extra 30 cents at the pump to Wall Street. But as it stands today, after you take out other associated costs, about 60 cents a gallon that every American is paying at the pump today, no matter what the price is, where they live in the country, whether it is very high or very low, is going to Wall Street speculative interests.

We should do something about that. If we want to provide relief to the American people at the pump, we should do something about that.

This amendment is very simple. It establishes an account where money from lease sales would go to this account, and it would be made available to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission so they could upgrade their computers and do other things to better track and rein in speculators. Basically, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been choked to the point, in terms of personnel and equipment, I think they are still using Commodore 64s, and they are trying to chase supercomputers. We can do better, and we could do something real for the American people here today other than Groundhog Day on the fifth anniversary and repassage of this legislation that will not become law.

Now there are those who will say you are increasing the deficit or whatever. No, it just says those leasing moneys would be put into this account, and they would be subject to appropriation. We would then have to convince the Appropriations Committee that it would be a good thing to upgrade the Commodity Futures Trading Commission so they could crack down on some

of the flash trading and speculation that creates volatility and higher prices for Americans. I think this would be a very good thing to do.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an article from Oil Daily in 2008, and it is on the subject of a 1-day increase of $17.51 in the price of a barrel of oil, and they go on to say nothing in the world happened, that traders were astonished and horrified with the volatility, and this should really settle the argument whether this is speculation or fundamentals at work. There is massive speculation in this market.

Even the chairman of ExxonMobil says that a good deal of the price being paid at the pump has to do with speculation. We can whistle past the graveyard and continue to bow to Wall Street and defer to them, but this is the reality. I wish that we would do something about it, but I fear we won't because they are very generous in even-numbered years.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

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

We just had a debate over the potential impact of export of LNG on domestic prices. There is no arguing that the low domestic prices for natural gas have been a boon for our country. Some manufacturers are actually moving operations back from overseas. Others here are being advantaged in the international markets, much to the concern of some of our competitors in Europe and elsewhere. So we can say that is good. We are not going to settle that issue in my amendment. I am going to bring up another issue.

But the reason natural gas companies want to export is to realize higher prices, and some of these terminals will require new pipelines to connect to domestic natural gas supplies, particularly some of the new supplies.

Here is the problem. In 2005, Congress passed the Bush-Cheney energy plan, which gave the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission--a group of nameless, faceless, obscure bureaucrats--the authority to grant eminent domain to pipeline companies. That means companies have eminent domain authority generally reserved for the greater public interest to build pipelines to export natural gas.

Now I had three amendments. This one simply requires disclosure. I just want to bring a bit more focus during the expedited--should this bill become law--application and approval process for persons in the area, whether or not there is a prospect that a natural gas pipeline will exert eminent domain over their property. Now, it is just disclosure, because, as I say, my other amendments weren't allowed, if eminent domain is going to be used to export natural gas to a pipeline terminal.

Now, earlier this year I voted with, as I have every year, every single Republican in favor of H.R. 1944. That is legislation to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in 2005, Kelo v. City of New London, where the city of New London was found to have the authority to use eminent domain on behalf of private development interests. The Republicans, as I mentioned earlier, brought up a bill to overturn that decision, the Private Property Rights Protection Act, which passed with every Republican vote and a number of Democrats on our side of the aisle.

The same principle applies here. I am not challenging--because that is not allowed--the issue of eminent domain for a private pipeline for the export of natural gas, but I am saying that at least persons who are in proximity to that, or actually in line with that proposed pipeline, should have the opportunity when the company applies to know that it may be used so they can address their point of view during the application process.

Now, there are some industry talking points saying wait a minute, wait a minute, this eminent domain isn't in section 3. They are right. I agree with them. They are absolutely right. However, section 7 regulates pipelines, and pipelines in some instances will be required and will be used to access these natural gas terminals, and I am simply saying that persons in those areas should know that eminent domain is intended to be used.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Well, unfortunately, it isn't left to the States. The gentleman is wrong. The Bush-Cheney energy act preempted the States-- preempted the State authority. It gives a faceless, nameless Federal bureaucracy, which on every other day is opposed by the other side of the aisle, the authority to grant eminent domain for a private company, for private profit, for the export of natural gas, which may well drive up the gas prices of the property owners adjacent to or who have been penetrated by that line.

This amendment doesn't delay anything. It doesn't give any significant new authority. It just requires the simple disclosure that if this terminal is built, a new pipeline is going to be required, and that pipeline, under section 3, with the faceless, nameless Federal bureaucrats behind it, is going to be granted eminent domain authority to take people's property. That is the bottom line. You can try and dance around it and say, well, I am against Kelo because that was another kind of development, but no, I am against this amendment because we wouldn't want people to know that they were going to lose their property rights to eminent domain because of faceless, nameless Federal bureaucrats.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

We have before us two bills which have previously passed the House but that have been merged into one bill and that will again pass with a Republican majority.

It mandates offshore oil drilling from Maine to the southeast coast. It mandates offshore oil drilling off of South Carolina. This would all be done under expedited or potentially nonexistent environmental reviews if they didn't meet extraordinarily brief timelines, and they would not be allowed to evaluate any options that did not include drilling. As the Republicans are extremely fiscally conservative, this would double the revenue sharing for offshore oil drilling, creating a $30 billion loss for the Federal Government and benefiting a few southeast States.

As for the onshore portion of the bill, every permit for drilling on Federal lands in the United States would have to be issued within 60 days, and the concept of multiple use, which is hunting, fishing, recreating, mountain biking, horseback riding--go on down the list--and other activities, are all subsumed to energy development, which becomes the big--oh, wait. What? I mean, really. This is my June 2013 speech. I mean, this is last year's speech. Who gave me last year's speech? Really. Oh, guess what? It really doesn't matter, because this is the same bill from last year--two bills into one. Exactly the same bills passed the House last year and the year before that and the year before that. Every year since the Republicans have taken over, when gas prices spike up, they pass imaginary legislation and pretend they are doing something about high gas prices instead of tackling the real causes, which I will get to in a moment.

So many people have heard about Christmas in July. We now have a new tradition here, which is Groundhog Day in June for energy bills, in a faux sort of attempt to pretend we really care about the extortionate prices that people are paying because of Big Oil in the United States and speculation on Wall Street.

God forbid we should take on either of those very powerful and generous forces, generous to some, not to others. Does anybody believe this?

I guess there are a few people who believe anything, but since they first brought this bill to the floor in 2011, U.S. oil production has gone from 5.6 million barrels a day to 8.4 million barrels a day--not shabby, basically a 50 percent increase.

Let's look at another chart. Exports--we are talking about--now, we have a new theory. This isn't about lowering prices in America; it is about avoiding even higher prices in America because we are stabilizing the world markets.

Well, I have had a lot of complaints from truckers. Look at how much diesel we are exporting. Since the Republicans started this campaign, the combined exports of refined gasoline--remember the shortages, that is why we are paying higher prices, supply and demand--have gone from 700 million barrels a day to 1.5 billion. We have doubled our export of refined product, and the truckers are really getting stuck here.

Look at this line. You want to know why diesel prices are up? Because diesel exports are up phenomenally--phenomenally. So we can blather on about: Gee, all we need is more production, more production--so we can export more?

In fact, now, the oil industry is pushing to end our ban on the export of crude oil. Now--right now, at least--we get some value added, and we get a few more jobs by exporting refined products.

Now, the industry wants us to lift the ban and say that we will export crude oil from the United States of America, I guess, so that we can prevent bigger price spikes if there are future crises because this is the new theory promulgated by The Wall Street Journal.

We hear a lot about the President. Here is a reality check on that issue: Federal onshore production is up 30 percent under President Obama. In fact, President Obama is providing over record production levels and plummeting imports, while the exact opposite happened under the Bush-Cheney energy policy, which actually was designed to make us more dependent upon foreign oil, and that did happen in spades during the Bush-Cheney administration.

The Energy Information Administration, they are right, there was a blip in our production offshore. It had to do with a little oil spill called Deepwater Horizon, and there was a temporary suspension of drilling and new permits. That is history now, but that does make your average look lower over time.

The Energy Information Administration says that offshore production will reach record levels--that is, all Federal offshore oil production will reach record levels by 2016; but that is reality that doesn't matter.

Now, we have a really nifty title, and that is something that they spend lots of money on consultants around here--both parties do--to come up with nifty little sayings. The nifty title is Lowering Gasoline Prices to Fuel an America That Works Act of 2014.

Well, since we started this argument with the Republicans on this issue about increased oil production leading to lower gas prices--well, 2008, when we had drill, baby, drill, in order to lower gas prices that were $3.50 to $4 a gallon--and guess what?

They haven't gone down, so that argument kind of doesn't work anymore, but now, they are saying: well, they would have been higher if we weren't producing more oil.

If we produce just more, they might not have been even more higher, or maybe they would be lower because that is what we said for the last 4 years, that they would be lower.

Since we are exporting a whole heck of a lot of it, they are not because we are paying a world price for oil, and now, they want us to pay a world price for natural gas, one place where we do have an advantage, so the prices don't go down.

There is such an abundance of oil, as I mentioned earlier, the American Petroleum Institute wants to lift the ban on the export of crude oil from the United States. Wouldn't that be great?

The U.S. can export crude oil to China. China can use it to run their electrical generating facilities, which supply their manufacturing facilities, which will produce value-added products, things that we formerly used to make here in the United States, and they will sell them back to us.

We get to sell them a raw material, kind of like a colony, and they sell us back sophisticated materials. That is kind of like something we fought a revolution over a couple of hundred years ago, but now, that is okay with some on the other side.

This is both coasts and Alaska and tremendous degradation of environmental protections on the inland areas, as I mentioned earlier. This will really do away with multiple use.

Now, we heard from the chairman, who is an esteemed colleague, that the spike in Iraq would have been worse if we weren't producing so much and exporting so much.

Actually, I just saw the statistics yesterday. Oil production hasn't dropped at all. The other OPEC companies are putting more oil out, and Iraq is at 95 percent of where they were before this, so actually, there has been no reduction anywhere, but somehow, prices are up about 20 cents a gallon at the pump.

Now, if we just produced more oil, that wouldn't happen. No, that is not true. We are producing more oil.

If we just exported more refined oil and diesel and gasoline, that wouldn't happen. Well, no, because we are. What happened?

Wall Street is speculating on the price of oil. We had sworn testimony from the CEO of ExxonMobil 2\1/2\ years ago, before the United States Senate, when gas was getting to 4 bucks a gallon, and he said, hey, don't blame me, this isn't ExxonMobil doing this, it is Wall Street--because of the deregulation of Wall Street, the fact that we haven't yet implemented position limits on speculators, on commodities, as we were supposed to do under Dodd-Frank, which they want to repeal.

He said 60 cents a gallon. Drive up to the pump, and you are sending 60 cents a gallon to Wall Street speculators.

So if they wanted to do something today or tomorrow or yesterday or last year--or maybe next June--about spiking oil prices, it would be to go after the speculators on Wall Street. That is the quickest relief that we could provide.

Mandate position limits--or even better--repeal the provisions of the Commodity Futures Trading Modernization Act--which I voted against, which was a Clinton-era Republican bill--that actually allowed massive new speculation by nonconsumers, nonproducers, something that we never had, never needed, and don't need today.

So next time you go to the pump, say, oh, well, if we just drill right here off of Maine or right here off of Massachusetts or right here, I would pay less; or think, wow, if they wanted to really give me relief, they would take on the big oil companies, they would take on Wall Street--but they won't do that.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I have no further requests for time and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, nothing I have heard has refuted the points I made earlier.

In fact, the gentleman from South Carolina made the point about high diesel prices. Well, if he was harking back to a time when diesel was actually cheaper than gasoline, well, back then, we didn't export much refined diesel. Now we are exporting in the vicinity of 1 million barrels a day of diesel. So the price of diesel is up because we are paying the so-called world price. And if we exported 2 million barrels a day, the world price wouldn't go down.

And then you have the issue with the speculators on Wall Street, as I mentioned earlier. According to the head of ExxonMobil, 60 cents a gallon--and that would be diesel and gasoline--goes directly to speculators on Wall Street, those high-frequency traders who are so vital to our economy.

We do have a few statistics just to keep it straight. Gasoline production was at a record high in May, but unfortunately, gas prices were pretty darn high. This is from the Energy Information Administration, and they quote the American Petroleum Institute, which is the group that wants to begin to export crude oil. So if we produce more crude oil, we will put it in the world market or sell it to China so they can refine it. And that will somehow insulate us against price spikes because we will be flooding the world oil market with oil that is produced more cheaply here but sold more expensively over there. But unfortunately, that means that we pay the same price here that gets paid over there. That is another problem.

But anyway, the chief economist for API, John Felmy, said: ``We've developed a good export market for distillates. So we produce more gasoline than demand warrants.'' Yet the price is up. Go figure.

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

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

Mr. Chair, the ranking member mentioned earlier that there is a section in the bill of merit which would require four studies: whether the technology and personnel needed to monitor the effect of high-frequency trading are accurate; the role it plays in providing liquidity; whether it creates discrepancies between market participants--I would recommend people read ``Flash Boys'' if they want the answer to that question--and whether the CFTC's existing authority is sufficient with regard to high-frequency trading.

Those all have great merit. We should have the answers, but I have one additional request, which would be to examine whether high- frequency trading increases market volatility. CFTC already did one study. They found that there were 27,000 contracts traded during a 14- second period during the flash crash, but they came to no conclusion regarding how or what role they may have played in the flash crash. I think that we should further investigate this.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove my name as a cosponsor of H.R. 809.

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

Mr. Chairman, these limitation amendments often don't go to matters of national security.

I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

We won't take much time if the gentleman just would allow me 1 or 2 minutes.

I agree. And Mr. Westmoreland will also be brief. This is extraordinarily important, and I thank the Chair for his indulgence and his support.

We, in the Open Skies Agreement with the EU, anticipated that some countries might try and go forum shopping, that is--like the cruise line industry--look for a nation that has lesser laws regulating labor, safety, and then also allow outsourcing. This would be a model for Norwegian--for this airline, which does not fly to the United States, to incorporate in Ireland. They would then hire crews from Malaysia to fly planes based in Singapore and hope to serve the United States with these crews.

This is the cruise line model. It is a recipe for disaster. You shop around the world to find the least regulated, least trained, and cheapest labor you can--as has happened with the cruise line industry-- and in this case, in aviation, it will both threaten consumers and national security given the Civil Reserve Air Fleet requirements of aviation.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

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

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. It is not so obvious with this administration. They are desperate for the TPP, they are desperate for the trans-America free trade agreement, and we are very worried that they would think that disapproving this application from Ireland representing Norway, who intends to operate a rent-an-airline, rent-a-crew from Singapore, would somehow derail their talks. So I don't think it is obvious. This is sending a message to the White House that we are not going to let this happen.

With that, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chair, I want to thank my colleague from California, Representative Huffman for his leadership on this issue. I also want to thank Chairman Wolf and Ranking Member Fattah for working with us on this important amendment.

West Coast fishermen are in a tough spot, and in a very unique spot. Unlike other regions of the country where fishermen had their buyouts funded by taxpayers, our fishermen took on the loan willingly and knowing they would have to pay it back. And they are paying it back-- but at an interest rate that is two points above prime and therefore costing them 5 percent of their landings.

Representative Huffman, Representative Herrera Beutler, and I are working to legislatively refinance this loan. In fact, today, that refinance bill passed out of the House Committee on Natural Resources and it has already passed the Senate Committee. But it's going to take some time to implement.

West Coast fishermen are facing increased observer costs. We are transitioning to electronic monitoring, but that's going to take time-- too much time in my opinion. But until electronic monitoring is adopted by the Council and NOAA, fishermen will have to pay for 100 percent observer coverage--which can be as high as $350-$450 per day.

And now, fishermen are bearing an additional cost--$2.4 million this year to help pay for the management of the fishery--known as the ``cost recovery fee.'' West Coast fishermen are willing to pay this fee. They knew the fee was coming. But, right now, with the mounting costs of the buyback loan, the observer costs, and pending trailing amendments that will make the fishery more economically viable--this additional financial burden is too much.

This amendment would provide one year of relief to West Coast fishermen. It would mean the difference for many fishermen of selling their boats and trying to find a different livelihood in already distressed coastal communities, or staying in business.

This amendment is bipartisan. It does not score. And it might not seem like a lot of money to people in this body, but it's a huge deal for my fishermen, their families, and small businesses that depend on the fleet to make a living. I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, for years, I have struggled with the VA bureaucracy in my region. There are attempts to downgrade the Roseburg Hospital. We are still fighting over adequate status and staffing. It took 6 years after I got funding for a critical new VA clinic in Eugene for them to break ground so we can get expanded services in staffing. Day in and day out my staff and I have to push the VA to get our veterans the benefits they have earned and the services they deserve.

Now we find that these problems were systemic and nationwide. It is right that General Shinseki has resigned, but that is just the beginning of the housecleaning and the reform we need in the Veterans Administration to see that they become an organization that is totally oriented toward serving our veterans and getting them the services they have earned and they deserve. Veterans shouldn't have to fight, they shouldn't have to wait in line. We can do better, and we must.

Mr. Speaker, next Monday is Memorial Day, one of the most solemn holidays in America. We remember those who gave their lives in ultimate sacrifice to our country, those who were wounded, those who are veterans, and those who are still serving our country in dangerous occupations around the world to defend our freedoms.

This is a day that should be solemnly celebrated, and it will be in many places. It could be better solemnly celebrated if the United States Congress would exert a little more oversight and get a little more funding to the VA, so that we don't have veterans dying on waiting lists. We have got to get to the bottom of that scandal, and we have got to adequately fund that agency and give them permanent funding.

Beyond that, there is another group in America who have a very special Memorial Day celebration every year, and that is the United States oil industry. They are, of course, very patriotic. They don't pay much in taxes in the U.S. They have over $100 billion stashed overseas because they don't want to pay U.S. taxes, even though they pay a higher rate many places overseas.

They are very patriotic, and so every year, they have a special celebration where they run up the price.

Now, the oil companies and their handmaidens on the Republican side of the aisle will say: It is all about shortage. All we need is to drill in sensitive areas offshore. All we need to do is build the XL pipeline, and your prices will come down.

Well, that is pretty amazing except, of course, it is a huge lie. Today, the United States of America will export more than 450,000 barrels of gasoline, while they are running the price up on Americans, saying: Hey, don't you know there is a shortage?

Funny thing, I haven't seen any little red flags or yellow flags like they used to have at gas stations saying they have got no gas. No, they have got gas, but they have got it at an exorbitant price, so this is the annual celebration.

Now, ExxonMobil, last year, they were hurting. They only made $32.6 billion. Their last CEO, when he retired, they gave him a $500 million bonus. They are hurting. He went out and bought oil fields with it in Africa. That is pretty cute.

There is a shortage, and that is why you are paying over four bucks a gallon in many places, particularly in my district and in the Western United States, over four bucks a gallon because of this extraordinary shortage.

So here we are, it is Memorial Day. Wouldn't it be nice if we reined in the oil companies? Wouldn't it be nice if we stopped subsidizing them with tax breaks?

Well, not on the Republican side of aisle, they think that is patriotic to subsidize the oil companies' tax rates because they need them because there is a shortage. Well, no, there isn't a shortage, but, hey, they still need and want those tax breaks, and they want to price gouge people at the pump.

So I, for one, will celebrate Memorial Day appropriately, remembering those who have served our country, but for one Member of Congress, I would like to do something about what is going on with oil and gas prices.

I would like to take away their subsidies. I would like to get the speculators on Wall Street out of the oil and gas business. They are driving up the price.

Even according to ExxonMobil, 75 cents a gallon you pay at the pump today, 75 cents of that dollar--$4--that is going to Wall Street speculators, something that didn't use be to be allowed and a bill that I voted against which deregulated that commodities markets, which was supposed to be re-regulated under Dodd-Frank, but the Republicans are opposing any and every effort to re-regulate the commodities market.

Unfortunately, there are few on my side of the aisle who are in the pockets of the oil industry, too, so we could do better. We could do better for our veterans, and we could do better for the American consumers. Let's do it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Well, we are off to a good start. We are finally recognizing that the Federal Government has a critical interest in our harbors, our ports, our inland waterways, and we are actually going to begin to spend taxes collected to maintain those things on those things. That is tough in Washington, to tell the truth.

There is a great set-aside for small ports, who were zeroed out because of the Corps of Engineers' lack of funding. It doesn't deal meaningfully, unfortunately, with the Corps of Engineers' $60 billion backlog of critical projects, including dams and spillways.

It didn't increase the tax or user fee on inland waterway users, even though they wanted it--they were begging for it--and even though Grover Norquist gave it a green light because of intransigence on the Republican side. No new fees, no new taxes for anything, we are just going to start to spend existing tax collections on what they were originally intended for. That is good. That is progress around here.

What is going to happen in 2 months or a month and a half when the highway trust fund goes broke? It needs additional funds, and we are going to have to, at that point, suck it up and vote for a way to pay for our Nation's infrastructure, so we can continue to be a great Nation.

Mr. Speaker, later today, the Republicans, in violation of their own rules, are going to push through a permanent extension of research and development tax credits, at a cost of $16 billion a year. That is another $16 billion a year of deficit to be added to the national debt--over the next 10 years, $160 billion.

Now, that is not to say that research and development tax credits don't have tremendous merit. They can do a great deal to encourage American innovation and research, new design, development. They can boost our economy. They can help our international competitiveness.

Sure, they, among many other programs and many other investments, are and can be good for the economy; but they are going to violate, waive their own rules, and say: we are not going to pay for it, we are just going to magically fund it, and don't worry about the new debt and deficit.

Now, the Senate has passed a different version. They have 62 provisions in their bill, which include energy efficiency, saving consumers money, new R&D for solar and wind, alternate fuels, among many, many other things that they put in there, that they think also have merit to help consumers, help boost the American economy.

The Republicans over here say: no, those other 61 are off the table, unless you kill or cut some other program. We can't afford them.

Then there is another issue that also comes to the floor. We had, this week, testimony from the Congressional Budget Office. The highway trust fund goes flat this summer. That means the Federal Government, beginning this summer, will make no new commitments to the States for repairing the 140,000 bridges on the national system that need repair or replacement, repairing or replacing the 40 percent of the national highway system that is in very sad repair, the $60 billion backlog in our transit.

Nope, we can't afford a penny of that. In fact, the Ryan budget says we are going to abandon--abandon--Federal investment in the national transportation system, and we are going to devolve it to the States. The States will fund, pay for, and somehow coordinate a national transportation system because we simply can't afford it.

Well, oddly enough, the shortfall in the trust fund is $16 billion a year. That is the exact cost of the R&D tax credits.

Why can't they wave their magic wand and say, well, hey, a million direct jobs and a couple million more indirect jobs in transportation, not only in construction, but in design, engineering, in manufacturing and research, we don't want to lose those?

We are not talking about maybe keeping or getting a few jobs. We are talking about losing well over a million direct jobs and a couple more million indirect jobs in the area of transportation, but their magic wand doesn't work for transportation.

Now, there could be a lot of cynical reasons for why they are just pushing this one R&D proposal. It probably doesn't have anything to do with campaign contributions or powerful interests that are out there. I am sure it doesn't.

One has got to wonder: Why is transportation--national transportation--old hat and unaffordable, but R&D, somehow wave the magic wand, and we can afford it?

Now, I was conflicted at coming here this morning because, at the same time, one of the greatest advocates that this body has ever had for national transportation, James L. Oberstar, died suddenly the other night.

I thought Jim would--rather than having me go up to his memorial service today, he would rather have me come to the floor and advocate for something he believed in and knew was essential for the future of this country, which is adequate investment in our system, a coordinated national system of transportation and infrastructure, an energy- efficient, 21st century system, and a repair to our 20th century system.

That is what we need. No more of these political shenanigans on the Republican side. Let's get serious about real investments and putting America bact to work.

Mr. Speaker, today we gather to honor Congressman Jim Oberstar, a true gentleman of the House who ably represented Minnesota's 8th District for 36 years. He was a fixture of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting as staff in the 1960s and 1970s, and then as a member and finally Chairman from 2007 to 2011. I was blessed to work, and sometimes ride, alongside Jim for many years.

As a tireless advocate on transportation issues, Jim earned well- deserved admiration in many circles, including in my home state of Oregon. He accompanied me on tours as an advocate for increased infrastructure investment. Jim truly understood the importance of the investment as a way to create American jobs, improve safety, and build roads and bridges to accommodate a 21st Century economy. His passion and leadership are evident in projects across the country.

Jim was also an avid cyclist, and I am grateful I had the opportunity to show him my state in 2007 during the Cycle Oregon event. He was one tough athlete, easily outpacing cyclists half his age.

Like many people in Washington, DC, Minnesota and beyond, I feel fortunate to consider Jim not only a colleague, but a friend and a mentor. I only wish he had lived long enough to share all of his knowledge with the rest of us.

My sympathy goes out to his loved ones, including his wife, Jean.

Mr. Speaker, this year, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Senior Companion Program. This important program pairs senior volunteers with frail seniors or disabled adults who are homebound. By providing companionship, taking care of routine chores and providing transportation to medical appointments or the grocery store, Senior Companions are often the only reason that frail seniors or disabled citizens are able to remain in their homes. The program helps over 60,000 Americans continue living on their own, which not only benefits the individuals but saves the federal government millions of dollars. Other Senior Companions provide assistance and friendship to seniors who would otherwise be isolated.

I was responsible for bringing the first Senior Companion program to my home state of Oregon back in 1977. After being elected to Congress in 1986, I kept up my commitment to Senior Companion and other Senior Corps programs like RSVP and the Foster Grandparent Program. These programs have improved the quality of life for the citizens of my district and across the country. By mobilizing seniors to volunteer their skills and experience, vital community needs are met at a lower cost and senior volunteers reap the mental and physical benefits of remaining active in their communities.

After 40 years of success, we need to maintain our commitment to our nation's seniors. I have built a bipartisan coalition and led the fight against misguided proposals to defund Senior Corps and dismantle the current structure of the program in this year's budget debates. We must continue to utilize the talents of seniors and work to improve and protect vital Senior Corps programs like the Senior Companion Program.